Jenni Williams
Jenni Williams (born 1962) is a Zimbabwean human rights activist and a founder of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (Woza).
Quotes
[edit]- The power of love can conquer the love of power.
- We formed WOZA as a movement to show a peaceful way women of all colours and class could restore dignity for the people of Zimbabwe.
- In Africa, women are regarded as second class citizens and women like me who ‘don’t know their place’ are also a target.
- The struggle for women's rights in Zimbabwe continues and needs to be heard by the men who are mismanaging this country.
- This pain is not a weakness. It is strength. Our grief binds us. Do you feel it?
- [1] Jen Williams, The Bitter Twins (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy).
- “Any institution that claims to keep women locked up for their own good should be watched very close, in my opinion.”
- [2] Jen Williams, The Ninth Rain (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy)
- There is, it seems to me, a certain type of man who is terrified of the idea of a woman wielding power, of any sort; the type of man who is willing to dress up his terror in any sort of trappings to legitimise it.
- [3]Jen Williams, The Ninth Rain (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy)
- It's always the same with family, Wydrin reflected. You spend your life consumed with guilt that you're letting them down somehow, and then when you meet up with them you can't wait to get away again.
- [4] Jen Williams, The Copper Promise (The Copper Cat)
- Don't be afraid of who you are.
- [5] Jen Williams, The Ninth Rain (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy)
- Show me a people who don't have a bloody history.
- [6] Jen Williams, The Ninth Rain (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy)
- Just between you and me, I've never crawled up a monster's arse before. It's quite exciting.
- [7] Jen Williams, The Ninth Rain (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy)
- What you brought back, darling, was the truth. Which is rarely comfortable and never painless, but often, ultimately, worth knowing.
- [8] Jen Williams, The Poison Song (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy)
- Words are always important,’ said Jolnir. ‘Even normal, non-magical words, in the right place, can change the world.
- [9] Jen Williams, The Copper Promise (The Copper Cat)
- Beginnings are very elusive things, almost as elusive as true endings.
- [10]Jen Williams, The Ninth Rain (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy)
- Our armies, with their shining armour and singing swords are rust and dusty bones. We are like... an echo of something that came before.
- [11]Jen Williams, The Bitter Twins (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy)
- To be suddenly alone when all you have ever known is connection. To be alone in the dark while you felt the distant pieces of yourself decay.
- [12] Jen Williams, The Bitter Twins (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy)
- Dark things are happening here, don't be getting me wrong. Young people lost, their poor families going out of their minds, and that evil thing lurking... It should have been dealt with a long time ago, but how could we have known?
- [13]Jen Williams, The Bitter Twins (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy)
- Not born of love, or affection, but a simple terrible need not to feel alone, just for a little while.
- [14]Jen Williams, The Ninth Rain (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy)
- There was too much, but every moment they were inside she was aware of the terrible danger they were in, and she had the distinct sense that her luck was now the thinnest piece of fragile ice, and they were edging out further and further over and abyss.
- [15] Jen Williams, The Ninth Rain (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy)
- I was empty, just a thing for gathering dust, and now I am full of something, and if that causes me to make poor decisions, then I will live with it. Or die with it. I don't care.
- [16]Jen Williams, The Bitter Twins.
- Life is suffering. Life is war, and sacrifice. Life is victory.
- [17] Jen Williams, The Ninth Rain (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy)
- Judging by the constellations just starting to glint into life, the scent of the wind and the texture of the earth... I would say we're precisely in the middle of nowhere.
- [18] Jen Williams, The Ninth Rain (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy).
- All people need, in my experience, is a little push in the right direction. Or a giant kick up the arse. I am always happy to provide either.
- [19] Jen Williams, The Poison Song (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy)
- Fear can keep you obedient, or the need to stay as free as you can.
- I can suffer all that, I can suffer it and come through stronger, a weapon forged for your hand, but I cannot abide inefficiency.
- [21] Jen Williams, The Poison Song (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy)
- This level of fuck up is an Eboran speciality.
- [22] Jen Williams, The Poison Song (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy).
- A fire that burns in secret, a lethal conflagration that you can only discover when its too late to save anyone.
- [23]Jen Williams, The Poison Song (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy)
- I’d burn the bloody tree down myself if u thought it would bring you back’ he said quietly. ‘Everything is so hopeless anyway, why shouldn’t we be happy for a bit? We could have don’t that, couldn’t we? I think so it would have been messy but… Instead my mind gives me this’ He gestured around at the dream desert, the dream sky. ‘A fucking dream of you. As if that would be enough.
- [24] Jen Williams, The Poison Song (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy).
- Because whoever it is, I’m sure I’ve already forgotten them. I can barely keep track of your brief human lives, you know here one moment gone the next. I should keep a list, so I can tick the names off as they depart.
- [25]Jen Williams, The Poison Song (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy).
- All of us back together under the same roof - that’s a bloody good end to this mess if you ask me.
- [26] Jen Williams, The Poison Song (The Winnowing Flame Trilogy).
- I just want to be able to have my kids have jobs and I want to be able to afford their schooling
- People assume that people on the ground know what the Arab Spring is
- many people don't know what happened in Egypt and Tunisia because the news is blocked
- Protests are not called by social network media, as some people want to portray
- Protests are called by … knocking on people's doors, talking to them, engaging them, understanding their issues and getting collective understanding of people power and the right to protest and how it can be exercised
- I am of light skin, they knew I was going to get very badly sunburnt, and we were just made to sit there for some form of punishment
- And when we tried to object, they started accusing myself and my colleague of being lesbians because she had been beaten and I was rubbing her back
- So it was a very bad day, and our lawyer had not been able to come to give us any update on our appeal process and I just thought: I don't know how we're going to get through this
- They were telling me they were going to murder me and bury me and no one would ever know
- Luckily for me, we ended up in a police station and some of the police officers were very sympathetic. There was no food there but one of those police officers came and whispered into the window of our cell: 'I'm bringing you food from your house. I know you are hungry.' So sometimes in life when you suspect the absolute worst thing, God sends you an angel
- It's an incredible mix of this Irish and this Matabelean nation, which is a fighting nation. My grandmother was once arrested during the early 80s because the Mugabe regime said she had arms caches. That's the melting pot that I come from
- We [Woza] get scared like anyone else," she says. "But I think what gives us the commitment to continue to do the things we do is that we speak 100% the truth, and we speak it from the moral authority that we are the mothers of the nation, and if your mother cannot speak out on your behalf then you have no one that will speak for you. So that is why we are committed to doing this: because we want a better future for our children
- It was just deeply frustrating for me to be a mother and see that my child had now gotten arrested for something that I was doing, and I was helpless. And so with Christopher's arrest, my mother-in-law [who lives in the UK] got a little bit worried and said: 'Look, please can we have the kids
- Also, because of my activism there were threats that they would be taken and put in the youth militia, where they train these kids to be violent, so I had no other option but to allow my two sons, who were still living in the house, to come and be in the UK. My daughter is much older; she had already left home
- In some ways, my blood has been too black to be beautiful
- In other ways, my skin has been too white to be right. And yeah, it's been a problem... My first marriage failed because, at the wedding ceremony, my ex-husband's mother and father arrived at the wedding and the reality that I was mixed race hit them when they saw my mother and they saw my brothers, who are much darker than me, and they just couldn't take it and they left the ceremony. They hounded my husband with all this stuff about the son of Ham and all this racist rhetoric, and: 'You're going to have black children' and our marriage failed as a result of that
- And now under Mugabe, quite often police officers who do not know me, who do not know my background, will make all sorts of racist [anti-white] comments to me and so I've also had that... So it hasn't been easy
- Seeing my mother want something better for me and seeing her sacrifices [as] a single mother raising seven children - it motivated me a lot... It was her as a role model and the fact I had seen so much discrimination that made me want to become a human rights defender
- Sometimes when we are singing, we are extremely discordant because, you know, your mouth is dry, you're scared and you're watching out the whole time for the police
- We had huge expectations that it would have... but we have not noticed any change. In fact, in some ways we can say the pressure on us has increased because post the signing of this deal, I then found myself back in prison. And after having made bail - and it was a huge legal battle - we then found that we were restricted to a 40km radius, and that has never happened before
- The woman who took on Mugabe,10 May 2005
Quotes about Jenni Williams
[edit]- Jenni WIlliams demonstrates the strength and perseverance that has become a hallmark of Ginetta Sagan Award recipients
