Africa Is a Country

dan-moshenberg

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Dan Moshenberg

Dan Moshenberg founded Women In and Beyond the Global, a open access feminist forum.

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Uganda, now you have touched the women… again!

In April 2012, Ingrid Turinawe, then leader of Uganda’s Forum for Democratic Change Women’s League, was on her way to an FDC rally when police attacked her. They dragged her out of her car, groped, mauled, and tore off her top. Ugandan women responded with protests where they stripped off their tops. That was then, and this is now. In the looming shadows of upcoming elections, police attacked, mauled, groped and stripped Zainab Fatuma Naigaga, FDC Secretary for the Environment, on her way to a rally. It was all caught on video. Inspector General of Police Kale Kayihura first tried to explain that Ms. Naigaga had actually stripped herself. No one bought that explanation, but many started using the hashtag #SomeoneTellKayihura. Many have expressed outrage at the combined police brutality and shallowness. Repeatedly, people asked, “Why can’t police officers engage Ugandans with civility?” “Why are the police determined to hurt Ugandans?” Many see the police actions as an assault on dignity, while others see it as a consequence of the ongoing, intensifying militarization of the police force: “Ugandan police officers do not use handcuffs because they are trained to act in packs; they are not empowered as individuals to take action on their own. Therefore, a simple arrest turns violent because their attack instincts kick in!” Part of the outrage stems from the partisan nature of police violence, and part of it emerges from too many years of immunity raining down on police who were only following orders. Many recognize that the police assault on Zainab Fatuma Naigaga was an assault on all women: “Some women (and men) should never be seen naked, however willing they are, but no woman (or man) should be seen naked against their will. The police owe Naigaga and the dozens of women before her an apology. All Ugandans should watch that footage and imagine Naigaga was their mother, sister or wife. We are all naked and in our silence, we should all be ashamed.” The dozens of women before her. Once again, Ugandan women responded. The Women’s Democracy Group organized a protest. Sarah Eperu, FDC Women’s League spokesperson, explained the gender divide-and-conquer politics of the police response, “The police spokesperson, Mr Fred Enanga, said Ms Naigaga was a harlot who stripped on her own. The question we are asking is, if a person is a harlot, does it make her less of a woman?” An attack on one is an attack on all. Former Minister of Ethics and Integrity Miria Matembe understood the attack as specific to the Uganda and a general assault, “Women across East Africa should join us as we fight this.” On October 12, Ruth Sebatindira, President of the Uganda Law Society, condemned the police action, calling it a violation the Constitution which “grants full dignity to women… Uganda Law Society treats these events as an unacceptable, unfortunate and a backward assault on Ugandans by those supposed to protect them … We believe that a cowered population can not give back to a democratic nation.” The next day, women’s groups released a statement: “The Women of Uganda recognize that these brutal acts are continuously perpetrated by State Organs under the guise of procuring a lawful arrest… As women of Uganda, we strongly denounce these violent acts which seek to intimidate and limit women’s full participation in active politics and political leadership. These attacks in our opinion are deliberate and pre-planned against women interested in leadership.” Women know that the assault on Zainab Fatuma Naigaga is part of a general pattern that emerges from fear, some say terror, at the prospect of women’s leadership and power. They know that there will be a reckoning, maybe not in this election but some day. You strike a woman, you strike a rock.

The year of the girl child in Tanzania?

October 11 is International Day of the Girl Child, and October 25 Tanzania will run Presidential and Parliamentary elections. The presidential elections, in particular, will or will not be the closest ever, depending on which poll one prefers, but one thing is clear: youth matters. According to the 2012 Census, of the close to 45 million people living in Tanzania, 44.1 percent of the population is `young’, under fifteen, and 35.1 percent are `youth’, 15 – 35 years old. 79.2 percent of Tanzanians are young or youthful. The future is now. Perhaps it’s the young and the restless or the elections, or maybe the prospect of a new constitution which could expand the rights of women and girls, or perhaps reflecting on the International Day of the Girl Child that has Tanzania’s Daily News running a series of articles encouraging its readers to get serious about ending child marriage now.

For a variety of reasons, the rates of `child marriage’ in Tanzania are famously high, although according to some they have been descending slowly over the past decade. Just about every year, a `major’ study reports on the situation of `child marriage’ and `girl-brides’ in Tanzania. In 2013, the Center for Reproductive Rights published Forced Out: Mandatory Pregnancy Testing and the Expulsion of Pregnant Students in Tanzanian Schools, which documented the catastrophic nexus of “forced, early marriage”, “adolescent pregnancy”, and expulsion from school and from all its current and future benefits. Last year, Human Rights Watch published No Way Out: Child Marriage and Human Rights Abuses in Tanzania, and last month, HRW testified, “Although rates of child marriage have decreased, the number of girls marrying remains high. Four out of 10 girls are married before their 18th birthday. Some girls are as young as 7 when they are married.” More recently, the Fordham International Law Journal published, “Ending female genital mutilation & child marriage in Tanzania.”

All three studies, and many more, have relied on the work and insight of Tanzanian organizations, such as the Children’s Dignity Forum; Chama Cha Uzazi na Malezi Bora Tanzania (UMATI); and the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) Tanzania. These organizations work with the Tanzania Women Parliamentary Group; the Tanzania Media Women’s Association; the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme; and Tanzania Youth for Change. Many of these groups, in particular the Children’s Dignity Forum, work closely with the Foundation for Women’s Health Research and Development (FORWARD), an African Diaspora women’s campaign and support organization. In 2013, FORWARD and the Children’s Dignity Forum co-authored, Voices of Child Brides and Child Mothers in Tanzania: A PEER Report on Child Marriage.

In other words, in Tanzania as elsewhere, women and girls, and some men and boys too, have been researching, mobilizing, advocating, circulating petitions, rewriting laws, organizing peer groups, and raising a ruckus for quite some time. Will this year be the year? The editors of the Daily News seem to think so, as they suggest in a recent editorial, “Yes, child marriages can be stopped.” Will child marriages be stopped as a result of the elections and the incoming president and parliament? Is the time for new approaches finally here? Will this be the year of the girl child in Tanzania? Stay tuned.

Mandela Day: 400 women, 800+ care packs for rape survivors, one vision of South Africa

Since 2010, July 18 has been `celebrated’ as Mandela Day. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela aka Madiba was born on July 18, 1918. Last Saturday, South Africa celebrated this day for the second time since Madiba’s passing. Last year, many bemoaned the empty symbolism of “a day of volunteerism”, and that not even a day but a mere 67 minutes. This year the criticism was less vocal, but not because people have taken on the banner of social justice. Rather, what with Marikana and Nkandla and imploding unions and load shedding and medical stockouts and tavern collapses and so much more, people are tired, tired of being tired at the empty show. The people at Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust decided to confront and transform that fatigue. This year, the Nelson Mandela Foundation called on people to embody Mandela Day, “not as a gesture of charity but as a call to justice.” As Kathleen Dey, the Executive Director of Rape Crisis, explained, “The appeal made no distinction between small, individual acts and bigger gestures as long as the focus was on those in need of help. Perhaps the answer lies in this: that the reason for our detachment is that average citizens don’t treat the poor as human, don’t engage, don’t get too close. For these citizens here is a message: let Mandela Day be the start of your journey to get to know the people you want to help. Let it become an entry point to your longer term involvement with an organisation that works with people and communities in need and that works to bring about structural change… This generation might have failed but the next generation has the chance to make a difference if we show them how.” The organizers and volunteers at Rape Crisis, many of them rape survivors themselves, decided that the point of the call to justice is to break through the enchantments of and inducements to scale, to understand for at least one day that making justice is a concrete, material action, day by day, year by year. And so they called on people to come to the Mowbray Town Hall and make something happen, specifically care packs for rape survivors who undergo forensic examinations at a forensic unit to allow them to wash and change into clean underwear after all evidence of the rape has been collected for analysis. These care packs are key to women retaining and reconstructing their individual and collective dignity during a process, in the police station, that often seems dedicated to attack precisely each woman’s last shred of decency. As Rape Crisis Communications Officer Sandile Ndelu explained, “We want to make sure that we (Rape Crisis) are at each and every step of the way supporting them, comforting them and that’s why the care packs are so important.” 300 people signed up; around 400 pitched up on the day. They made 865 care packs in one day, which is a fantastic intervention, and then there are the numbers yet. According to Kathleen Dey, “As an organisation we need 2600 care packs per annum, the city needs 6000 per annum and the province needs 9000 per annum.” These are the maths of social justice for women in just one province of South Africa, and 67 minutes just won’t do. But 400 people started to work through those numbers to a common vision of social justice, which the Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust articulates: “We have a vision of a South Africa in which women are safe in their communities and where the criminal justice system supports and empowers rape survivors in all its interventions.” 400 women, 800+ care packs for rape survivors, one vision of South Africa: that’s very new and very old maths.

In Morocco, a judge agrees: #mettre_une_robe_ nest_pas_un_crime

Yesterday, in Inezgane, south of Agadir, on the southern part of Morocco’s Atlantic Ocean coast, a judge decided that two young women were not guilty of… outraging the public through some sort of indecency. Supporters rejoiced. Defense attorney Houcine Bekkar Sbai declared: “I am very pleased with this verdict. This is a victory not only for these two women, but for all members of civil society who mobilized. Extremist thinking is unacceptable and no one can set themselves up as guardians of religion and morals.” Fouzia Assouli, President of the Federation of the League of Women’s Rights, added, “This acquittal is positive and means that wearing this type of clothing is not a crime.”

Now that this trial is over, the two women, constantly referred to as “the girls of Izegane” in the press, have broken their silence: “We have committed no crime or offense, and yet we have been dragged into court, unjustly, in fear and terror, in pain and suffering.”

The judge also found that the police were beyond reproach in this matter. Two women were harassed and terrorized, forced to hide, because of the perception that they were “girls” wearing objectionable clothing, and the police picked them up, held them, and then arrested the two women, and, only after a hue and cry was raised, began looking for and finally arresting men suspected of having harassed and intimidated the two women. And the police acted according to the letter of the law.

Supporters of the two women say the next step is to prosecute those who harassed the two women. Fair enough. What about the police and the letter of the law to which they abided? Supporters and activists have been reduced to arguing that these two women were not provocatively dressed. The next two… well… we’ll see. But for now “the girls of Inezgane” are not going to prison, thanks to the pressure of thousands of women across Morocco, and that is good news.

Wasila Tasi’u is fifteen years old and out of prison

In the state of Kano, in Nigeria, last year, a 14-year-old girl, Wasila Tasi'u, was charged with the murder of 35-year-old Umaru Sani. Wasila had been forced into marriage, and a week later, Umaru Sani died of rat poison ingestion. Despite calls from national and international women’s groups, the girl was tried in adult rather than juvenile court. As her lawyer Hussaina Aliyu, of the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) said, “All we are saying is do justice to her. Treat the case as it is. Treat her as a child.” Wasila was questioned without parents, guardians or attorney present, and she confessed to the murder. No one had to confess to the forced marriage, despite the Child’s Rights Act of 2003, Section 21, invalidating any marriage contracted by anyone less than 18 years old.  Her parents explained that in their region, girls marry at 14 years. According to Zubeida Nagee, a Kano-based women’s rights activist, Wasila “protested but her parents forced her to marry him." On June 9, the State notified the judge of willingness to drop the case, and the judge complied, saying, “I have no alternative than to pronounce according to the law that the application for nolle proseque is hereby granted.” Wasila Tasi’u is no longer behind bars, but she can’t go home again. Under the care of the Isa Wali Empowerment Foundation, Wasila will live with a foster family … perhaps for the rest of her childhood. According to a recent editorial in the Vanguard, “Rape? No; Infant Marriage? Yes”, the State response to all of this has been regressive. The editorial explains, “Section 29 (4) (a) of the 1999 Constitution, states, `full age’ means the age of eighteen years and above; (b) any woman who is married shall be deemed to be of full age.” With a deft hand, the legislators wrote a bill, which now sits on President Buhari’s desk, which retains the second clause while eliminating the first. If the bill becomes law, a girl entering marriage, forced or otherwise, would thereby attain “full age”. Problem solved. Wasila Tasi’u was released from prison, and from a possible death sentence, because of the work of countless dedicated Nigerian women, individuals and groups. Wasila Tasi’u found a new home, hopefully one where she will grow healthy, learn to read and write, and enter into full womanhood, thanks to the work of countless dedicated Nigerian women. Hopefully, she will join the countless women’s groups that are organizing across Nigeria, in the courts, legislatures, streets, workplaces, clinics, schools and households. Wasila Tasi’u is now fifteen years old, the same age Malalai Yousafzai was when she was almost killed. We stand on the shoulders of giants, who turn out to be adolescent girls.

What’s the word? Sister/woman have you heard from Manenberg?

To honor the June 16, 1976 Soweto Uprising, aka Youth Day, the Rock Girls are on a five-day road trip, from Manenberg to Port Elizabeth. These girls embody all that is powerful and hopeful about Youth Day. They live the injunction of organizer Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living!” Based in Manenberg, Rock Girls was begun in 2010 by human rights lawyer and activist Michelle India Baird, who has worked for decades for women’s and children’s rights in the United States and in South Africa. In 2010, Baird was volunteering at the Red River School in Manenberg, on the Cape Flats. Established in the mid 1960s as a Colored `enclave’, Manenberg has increasingly become identified with gang violence, which means among other things with intensifying gender-based violence. It’s a hard place for adolescent women to negotiate gender and personhood … but they do, every day, and that’s where Rock Girls comes in, making change in Manenberg. In 2010, Baird saw, in her words, that “girls were not participating in the after-school running programme because they did not feel safe on the sports field. [We] began documenting the conditions around and at school, and created a plan to make their environment safer, starting with a safe place to sit at school when the older boys and gangsters harassed them.” So, Grade 6 girls designed a bench, painted murals, planted a garden, and organized like hell to make their school a safer place. They put the bench near the tuck shop on the school grounds, and declared the space a Safe Space. There are now eight benches around Cape Town, with another five pending. The girls started meeting regularly, and organizing, at the Manenberg People’s Centre Library. Last year, when they heard about the abduction of hundreds of schoolgirls from Chibok, Nigeria, they said, “Let’s go find them.” That began a conversation about pan-African women’s and girls’ rights and situations, especially as regards everyday safety for women and girls. Meanwhile, the meetings became more difficult, due to increased gunfire nearby. Undeterred, the girls decided to hit the road, to see South Africa, to meet girls in communities like their own, and to organize like hell. This week, it’s a five-day trip. The girls have studied reporting with the Children’s Radio Foundation and photography with Iliso Labantu photographers. According to Baird, this is a test drive. The next trip, they hope to drive north … to Rwanda. Stay tuned.

#MyDressMyChoice

In Kenya, women are organizing against the gender and moral police. Theyr’e using hashtags: #SavetheMiniskirt, #StripMeNot and #MyDressMyChoice.

“Our hearts are bleeding. We are mothers.”

Last week, Guardian lead writer Anne Perkins wondered about the discrepancy between media coverage of the South Korean ferry tragedy and the abduction of 200 girls from a girls’ school in Chibok, in Borno State, in northeastern Nigeria. She asked why there was so much coverage of the Korean children who died in a ferry accident and so little of the Nigerian schoolgirls. The coverage of both stories was never directly about the children, since, in both instances, the children were gone. The coverage was necessarily about the parents. And here’s where the absence of coverage by major, but not all, news media of the Nigerian parents’, and especially women’s, response is so telling. The Guardian has covered the story fairly regularly. In the United States, after the initial abduction of 200 to as many as 273 girls, the major news outlets, print and broadcast, have devoted little to no space to the Nigerian parents. For example, The New York Times ran one piece, soon after the abduction, and since then has been pretty much silent. But the women of Nigeria have been anything but silent. Nasirullahi Fathi Society of Nigeria (NASFAT), an Islamic women’s group, staged a peaceful protest in Ilorin, the capital of Kwara State, in the eastern part of Nigeria. They marched to the State, where Ummuhani Abdulrahman, the leader of the Ilorin branch of NASFAT, explained that they were protesting the Nyanya Municipal Motor Park killings in Abuja and the schoolgirls’ abduction in the northeast. She then presented a letter to the governor to be transmitted to the President: “Our hearts are bleeding. We are mothers. We know what it takes to lose a pregnancy how much more a child. We want these children to be recovered because they are our futures. They are what we depend on as mothers.” Across Nigeria, women are speaking as mothers, as sisters and aunts and daughters, as students and educators, as women who were once girls. They are marching, writing, singing, and uniting. Today, women of Chibok, dressed in black, marched on the National Assembly, in Abuja. They marched to protest the violence that took their daughters and the violence that followed, the silence from government: “Our daughters were carried away by the insurgents like cows into the wilderness. If they are dead; we want to see their corpses. For the past two weeks that the incident occurred, nobody has talked to us; has the government thrown away the bath water with the baby? We have come here to express our dismay, probably if the government sees us like this; it may ginger them to do what they are supposed to do. We want government to rescue our daughters from their abductors.” There are plans for further actions:  there was a Million Woman March yesterday, in which women wore red; a Women United for Peace in Nigeria march today; other smaller actions and events across the country. Across Nigeria, women are intensively mobilizing. Reading the American press, one is forced to ask, “Who cares?” Who cares about close to 300 Nigerian schoolgirls, abducted and now, according to one recent local report, ferried off to Chad or Cameroon, to be sold to the highest bidder? Who cares about hundreds of thousands of Nigerian women whose hearts are bleeding?

#WhiteHistoryMonth: How Unexpected

From this week’s Washington Post Travel Section--"How unexpected: There was more modernity than I expected, such as extremey modern infrastructure (roads, etc.) in many places, although there is still poverty there. "

The other news from Uganda this week

Here’s the `other’ news from Uganda this week. Dateline: Kampala: “Police have warned the public against undressing women whom they perceive to be indecently dressed, saying the Anti-Pornography law is not operational yet.” Yet.