On Valentine's Day, 2003, WOZA held its first demonstrations, calling on Zimbabwe to "Learn to love again." Valentine's Day was chosen as a significant date in the WOZA calendar because of the association with love -- love of self, of family, of community and of country.

On that day in Bulawayo, fourteen women and one man were arrested and held in appalling conditions for 24 hours. They were charged under the Public Order Security Act and then released. The Harare protest was conducted outside the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) office. Riot police arrested over 49 members, including a 65-year-old Dominican nun. Only one WOZA member, Jennifer Williams, was charged and all members were released within hours of arrest.

Western Sahara is a sparsely populated territory about the size of Colorado, located on the Atlantic coast in northwestern Africa just south of Morocco. Traditionally inhabited by nomadic Arab tribes, collectively known as Sahrawis and famous for their long history of resistance to outside domination, the territory was occupied by Spain from the late 1800s through the mid-1970s, well over a decade after most African countries had achieved their freedom from European colonialism.

The nationalist Polisario Front launched an armed independence struggle against Spain in 1973, and Madrid eventually promised the people of what was then still known as the Spanish Sahara a referendum on the fate of the territory by the end of 1975.