Africana Periodical Literature 
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| Title: | A Threat to the Nation and a Threat to the Men: The Banning of Depo-Provera in Zimbabwe, 1981 |
| Author: | Kaler, Amy |
| Year: | 1998 |
| Periodical: | Journal of Southern African Studies |
| Volume: | 24 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Period: | June |
| Pages: | 347-376 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Zimbabwe |
| Subjects: | population policy contraception Health and Nutrition Women's Issues Health, Nutrition, and Medicine Family Planning and Contraception Historical/Biographical Fertility and Infertility Politics and Government |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/2637531 |
| Abstract: | In 1981, the new government of Zimbabwe banned the use of the injectible contraceptive Depo-Provera. This article tries to explain the particular heat that the Depo-Provera controversy generated in the country. Drawing on archival research in English and Shona, and on retrospective interviews with former family planning workers and middle-aged and elderly Zimbabweans from Wedza and Buhera Districts conducted in 1996, the author demonstrates that the history of fertility regulation in general, and Depo-Provera in particular, led to the construction of Zimbabwean women's reproductive abilities as terrains of struggle between different groups of political interests. Depo-Provera was constructed by Africans as a form of medical colonization of African women's bodies and as a weapon for cutting down the African nation. At the same time, it was associated with 'subversive' conduct by women. The prohibition of Depo-Provera must be seen both as an act of nationalist self-assertion by the newly victorious majority government under ZANU (PF) and also as a significant moment in the gendered politics of reproduction in Zimbabwe. Notes, ref., sum. |
