Paper short abstract:

Rural women secured household food during wartime far ahead of their urban counterparts despite elitist meta-narratives recognizing only veterans in senior government positions. Glossing over this onerous task endured by women beclouds the reality that no war could be sustained on empty stomachs.

Paper long abstract:

In many conflict situations the world over, women and children often bear the brunt of the vicissitudes of fighting. Once women are displaced from their traditional chores of fending for their families, misery and discomfort of whole families arise; the food situation spirals out of control if the very same women are expected to contribute food to the war effort. This paper argues that, although the narratives of the Second Chimurenga/Umvukela II attribute the eventual triumph of Africans to various elite individuals and groups alike, the economics of women participation in matters of food security conspicuously escaped scholarly attention. Women, along with their children, cultivated lands to produce food indispensable for the survival of their households, in addition to which they literally cooked for the guerrillas, in which process they sometimes sustained injuries or died altogether in the crossfire when belligerents frequently opened fire throughout the long duration of the war. Glossing over this onerous task endured by women beclouds the reality that no war could be sustained on empty stomachs, which this paper clarifies. In using archival material, engaging with secondary sources and conducting interviews with women food security revolutionaries and other stakeholders, this paper concludes that the majority of women played a critical role in the war, but ultimately gained much less than they had anticipated at its inception, although only a few of them entered the political arena as public figures to which they received recognition.