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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New public TV series from South Africa: “I am Woman”

Starting on April 1, South Africa's public TV channel SABC3 has been running a weekly series called "I am Woman."  Every week, the show tries to follow the arc of a woman’s journey, the ways in which she comes to understand herself and the world by creating herself as the world and the world as herself. Imagine doing that without over-weaning ego or impossible humility, and you get the picture. The leap of faith is ultimately each woman’s discovery and invention of her own amazing and ordinary kind of humanity. Her discovery, and ours. If you don't live in South Africa, you can also view the series online. Last week’s episode followed Diana Motsisi and Themba Nkosi. Diana Motsisi is a nurse working and living in Johannesburg. She is proud to report, and has the picture on her mantle to prove, that she touched Madiba when he came out of prison and went into hospital. She cared for Madiba, and this makes her happy, in a wry, amused sort of way. She had three sons and wanted, more than anything, a daughter. And then … Mbali came along. Motsisi was as happy as happy could be. Now she could finally “share the feminine” with someone, with her daughter. We learn quickly that Diana Motsisi’s journey is Mbali’s journey. From childhood, Mbali doesn’t 'conform’ to the norm, doesn’t want to share the feminine, doesn’t want to be a girl, isn’t a girl. As Mbali grows older, she transitions, at first on her own and then with family and therapeutic assistance, into Themba. Themba Nkosi, gender activist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7dEhdc9PtQ And that’s where the real story is. Transition. Learning. Transformation. Revolutionizing not only expectations but also material conditions. Community. Loss. Caring. Freedom. Love. Touching. Sound familiar? It is. On one hand, it is the story of thousands upon thousands, millions, of individuals and their loved ones’ journeys through gender transformation and gender choice. The timeliness of this particular broadcast last week is that May 17 was International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO). May 17 was chosen because, on May 17, 1990, the General Assembly of the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. This week, The New York Times reported that Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, the 'father’ of modern American psychiatry, at 80 years of age, has just -- or is it finally -- apologized to the gay community for his work in establishing a so-called gay 'cure’. Of course, the long 'science’ of criminalizing homosexual and transsexual people, communities, cultures is never invoked when horror is expressed, from distant shores, at “corrective rape” committed in townships -- but where was the horror at the equivalent violence committed in clinics and hospital wards 'at home’? It is also the story of Joyce Banda, the President of Malawi, who in her first State of the Union address, announced her intention to overturn laws that criminalize same-sex relations. But it is fundamentally the story of South Africa, a story too often overlooked by the international press, perhaps because it is too 'soft’. Too sentimental. Too human. Diana Motsisi comes to realize that she has taken a kind of maternal and parental and human Hippocratic Oath to do no harm. Not doing harm means doing right, doing justice. It means she must, in her own words, “walk with him”. And so she does. In shopping malls, in schools, in public as well as private venues. Everywhere. It means she must ask, critically, “Have I done damage to my child?” It means she must take responsibility not only for her actions but also for her dreams and for the future. And it means they must share laughter, love, pain, regret, truth, wisdom and more. That too is the story of South Africa.

No room for ambiguity

Kenyan activists raise their voices, placards and fists over US$500 million allocated but not yet spent for anti-retroviral medications. That’s a lot of money, drugs, and lost lives.

Uganda, now you have touched the women

In October 2011, the Ugandan government sent Ingrid Turinawe to the infamous Luzira Prison--Uganda’s Guantánamo--for the treasonable act of walking to work. This week, the State, again, attacked Turinawe and other women activists for the “crime” of standing, speaking out, driving, and generally being. Big mistake.

Joyce Banda is President of Malawi

In her first order of business since being inaugurated as Malawi’s new president on Saturday, Joyce Banda fired the country’s top policeman. No reason was given for the firing, but the BBC reports that the police chief, Peter Mukhito, was in charge last year during anti-government protests over the worsening economy.

Malawians are fed up with Madonna

Malawi is fed up with Madonna and her school daze, with the singer’s refusal to consult and her autocratic ways. Given the autocratic politics of the Mutharika regime, that’s both quite a statement and none at all. Madonna’s foundation, Raising Malawi (a telling name), has reportedly spent $3.8 million on a state-of-the-art school for girls outside of the Lilongwe. What’s there to show for that? Nothing. But the bigger picture is that Malawi is fed up, and not only the Mutharika government with Madonna. Women are fed up with the ways in which the State has failed to respond to HIV and AIDS, and in particular to the ways in which HIV+ women live. For example, Bhatupe Mhango, gospel singer, activist, Malawian, is fed up with the injunction to keep silent about her HIV+ status. She is fed up with being fed up as well. Along with so many others, she is fed up with being told that she must not even whisper about her 'condition'. She is fed up with State blaming everyone, including 'the Chinese’, while the illness spreads. And so she is singing out, speaking out, writing out, and organizing. It’s what women organizing do every day, in Malawi as everywhere. As Hope Chigudu, Ugandan-born Zimbabwe-based feminist organizer in Malawi has explained the process, women gather together, speak, listen, tell stories, listen, share, create and support safe spaces for sharing, demystify the body, attend to new and older forms of leadership, attend to new and older leaders, work at keeping the processes open and sustaining, generate knowledge, cross the line. Women cross the line all the time. What does that mean? It means that when discussions of girls’ education in Malawi must be conducted by Malawian women and girls. What comes first? Is it private, safe, secure and clean toilets? Is it daycare for girl students’ children? Questions that cannot be asked or answered from London or Tokyo or Washington, DC. And so, the women of Malawi are fed up. Over the weekend, the government held a Women of Distinction ceremony, at the 'magnificent’ State House. Only problem was too many women showed up. So, when the women retired to the restrooms and found that the women’s toilets was actually the woman’s toilet, they 'invaded’ the men’s restrooms. More like … occupied, liberated, socialized and demystified. The distinctive and distinguished women of Malawi said no to the architecture of patriarchy and yes to themselves. They said, “Yes, yes we can go in there, for we are many.” And they did.

How to celebrate International Women’s Day

March 8, 2012. It’s International Women’s Day, and so how to celebrate? Over the weekend, The Independent on Sunday ran a piece entitled, “Revealed: The best and worst places to be a woman.” 20 categories of “surprising results”. Here’s one you might find interesting: Best place to read and write: Lesotho. Lesotho? Literacy rates among women in Lesotho far exceed those of men. 95% of women can read and write, 83% of men. Boys drop out of a school at a higher rate than girls. The boys leave school to search for work, usually elsewhere. Much of the high literacy levels are a result of government decisions to actually invest in education. That’s all to the good, and of course nothing of it is actually in the article. Is that it for Lesotho? Its one shot at International Women’s Day newsworthiness? When do the women of Lesotho become newsworthy and noteworthy? You know the grim news already. Lesotho is a hard place to be, whether one is reading or not. The annual per capita is $1000, which means over half, maybe as high as 70 some percent, of the population is living in poverty. Speaking of money, all the banking assets of Lesotho are owned by foreign banks. The economy is allegedly shifting to an industrial base, which thus far has meant Chinese and Taiwanese owned garment and textile plants, where women work. Men largely continue to work in South Africa, especially in the mines. Currently, 33,000 Basotho men work in South African mines, which helps explain the high incidence of HIV and AIDS as well as tuberculosis. Lesotho still has one of the highest rates of HIV and AIDS in the world. Maternal mortality rates: also high. No guaranteed paid maternity leave, as in Swaziland, Papua New Guinea, oh yeah, and the United States of America. Unemployment is around 40%, life expectancy is around 40 years. This is part of the context in which Basotho women currently live and organize. They are in labor movements, in local and national government, in protests and actions around big dams, around food prices, around … everything, including exclusionary practices. Senate Masupha is the first-born child of David Masupha, the principal chief of Ha-‘Mamathe, Thupakubu and Jorotane. When he died, his wife ‘Masenate, who is Senate’s mother, became chief. When she died, everything thickened. Brothers insisted that Basotho tradition precluded the daughter from assuming the chieftaincy. Senate shot back that that is a violation of her constitutionally guaranteed rights. She also argued it’s nonsense. The Court decision is still pending. Whatever the outcome, Senate Masupha is not going away, and that, hopefully, is a lesson for International Women’s Day 2012. Instead of 'being surprised' by decontextualized so-called data from development think tanks (and worse), celebrate the difficult, everyday accomplishments of extraordinary, everyday women. Celebrate Senate Masupha.

London calling … to the faraway towns of Somalia

Talk about efficiency, how’s this for a developmental scheme. First, encourage, both directly and by 'principled non-engagement,' a civil war in a mineral rich area. Make sure thousands are displaced, especially the rural populations. Help to build so-called refugee camps which are located a great distance from everyone's homes and which are places in and around which women and girls become ever more vulnerable, ever more intensely vulnerable … in every way. Let that simmer for a while. Then convene a conference of experts and saviors, not to be confused with Ngugi’s feast of thieves and robbers. No, this will be a serious conference of 'people who care'. Be sure to invite everyone who’s anyone which means exclude anyone who’s nobody which means be very selective in whom you invite. Meet for a couple days, not in the country under discussion, of course. That would cloud your objectivity. You can care from faraway. Announce that this is an opportunity, that the natives must buck up and reform. Announce that the time has come to talk of cabbages and kings -- but definitely not queens or princesses of any sort. Then close the conference and declare that, this time, they got it right. Then, not twenty-four hours later, lead the dash to 'explore' for mineral wealth in the country under discussion. Hey, you’ve earned it. Sound familiar? Welcome to Somalia. And welcome, Somalia, to the world order, same as it ever was. This past weekend, a Very Important Conference was held in London, at Lancaster House, to 'address' the 'Somali situation'. Leading up to the conference, there was much talk -- well, there were a few articles here and there -- which argued for inclusion of the 'people'. Mary Robinson called for a focus on ordinary Somalis, and described Somali women struggling with structures of hunger and immiseration. Nobody at the conference paid attention. Before the Conference, Mary Harper noted that Somalis actually have better ideas than so-called experts, and definitely better ideas than so-called world leaders, about how to grow the Somali economy and how to improve Somalia’s political economies. She too was largely ignored. As Harper pointed out afterwards, the Conference's final communiqué, such as it is, is rife with, or better built on, contradictions. On one side, literally, the document speaks of Somali self-determination. On the other, again literally, it describes which areas of Somali will now be controlled by foreign governments and multinationals. As for Somali women at this conference, forget about it. Somali women were not 'forgotten', they were excluded. They were all excluded, from shopkeepers, like Faduma Aden Mohamud; Diaspora activists such as Rahma Ahmed, Amina Souleiman; Somali women community organizers of all stripes, such as Aydris Daar; prominent Somali women members of government, such as Dr. Mariam Aweis Jama and Malyun Sheik Heidar; and the list goes on and on. Women who survived the atrocities of the war and who have been crucial in both construction and reconstruction were literally not given seats at the table. That was Friday. On Sunday, The Observer reported that “Britain leads dash to explore for oil in war-torn Somalia.” So, it’s a story with a happy ending. Ask the women of the Niger Delta. They’ll tell you. Meanwhile, Somali women continue to organize while London's calling to the faraway towns. Now war is declared -- and battle come down.

Pay young women in Malawi to prevent HIV infection?

The Guardian reports: “Cash payments help cut HIV infection rate in young women, study finds: Research in Malawi finds girls who receive regular payments are able to resist attentions of older men and avoid infection.” The headline pretty much says it all … or does it? The Guardian report is based on a study that appeared in The Lancet: “Effect of a cash transfer programme for schooling on prevalence of HIV and herpes simplex type 2 in Malawi: a cluster randomised trial.” It’s accompanied with an editorial, “Paying to prevent HIV infection in young women?” The study’s interpretation of the findings is the telltale heart of the matter:

Cash transfer programmes can reduce HIV and HSV-2 infections in adolescent schoolgirls in low-income settings. Structural interventions that do not directly target sexual behaviour change can be important components of HIV prevention strategies.

Pay to prevent HIV infection in young women? Yes. But the larger lesson is that women’s health and wellbeing is always part of the whole life of each woman and girl as well as of women and girls, more generally. HIV transmission is not 'simply' a consequence of sexual behavior, whatever that is. It emerges from the whole life. Paying to prevent HIV infection in young women is an investment in women’s education and in women’s autonomy, and that is a real investment in a better future and an improved present.

What’s wrong with abortion

The war on women’s health in the United States is a war without borders. It also extends to attempts in Africa to legalize abortion. And the US Republican party and its auxiliaries are in front.

Dances with Samburu

The Samburu of northern Kenya are pastoralists, and they are under attack. According to Survival International, two US-based charities -- the Nature Conservancy and the Africa Wildlife Foundation -- bought lots of land, from Daniel arap Moi. How did he get the land? Good question. The Samburu, who had been forced out of nomadic pastoralism by the encroachment of fenced off ranches, had settled there twenty years earlier. For twenty years they used this piece of land for grazing and access to water. They made land decisions on communal interests, with no one having the right to permanently dispose of the land. While the decision making process was dominated by male elders, women, especially married women, were involved in decisions concerning land use and allocation. Until Daniel arap Moi bought the land, no questions asked. Then he sold it to charities. Since the sale, the Samburu have been harassed, beaten, raped. The lucky ones have "simply" been evicted and had to fend for themselves in makeshift lean-tos. The Samburu have gone to court to retain their land, and to get some justice. Africa Wildlife Foundation has "gifted" the land to Kenya, for "conservation." It is a familiar enough story: “Native people” caught in the crosshairs of conservation, charity, and gift economies bestowed upon them by the good people of the Global North. But there is more. The Guardian featured Samburu women prominently … in pictures. In the paper, Samburu women “sing a song” and “wear colorful beaded necklaces.” It’s not the first time that foreigners have visited sexual violence on Samburu women in the name of progress and civilization. For the past fifty years the Kenyan government has leased land in the Samburu District to the British military. It’s a training ground. Over 600 complaints of rape have been filed against the British military. Women like Miliyan LeKanta, Lydia Juma and Nigaripen Lesiamito have testified, in public, to the rapes. Testimony that resulted in their isolation and even expulsion from their own communities. The "internal" British investigation found the military not guilty. Then the Kenyans "lost" the evidence. As the women’s lawyer explained, “There is no glory in reporting rape.” That struggle is ongoing and it’s more than colorful beads and the singing of songs. Locally, the Samburu Women for Education & Environment Development Organization has been key in documenting the devastation of the evictions and abuse on the Samburu. In their report, which Survival International sent to the United Nations, they have shown the ways in which women as herders and farmers have been rendered helpless by the violence of police. They also have reported on women who have had to watch as their husbands have been beaten, sometimes to death, by police or by paramilitaries, and then left for dead in the fields. Houses are burned, villages ransacked, women raped. Sometimes, it is the price of charity. The bitter irony of conservation here is that the Samburu women are actually at the heart of the indigenous preservation of wildlife, in particular of elephants. The Samburu claims a kinship between elephants and Samburu women. It is a kinship of everyday village labor. This kinship results in cultures of respect and honor. It is a kinship which is hard to translate into a language of not-for-profit multinational charitable organizations, their ears more attuned to Samburu women singing and wearing fantastic bead necklaces.

The new sheriff

About a week ago, the International Criminal Court announced that Fatou Bensouda would succeed Luis Moreno Ocampo as Chief Prosecutor. This could be big news, but you wouldn’t know it from The New York Times, who barely reported the announcement. Fatou Bensouda is from Gambia. And she means business. Some people think she may be exactly what is needed to set things right. As a woman, as an African woman, she’s had it with waiting for the world to recognize violence against women as a crime against humanity. According to Bensouda, part of the problem of addressing sexual and gender violence has been the logic of inevitability. By this logic, rape happens as an “incidental” and “necessary” part of the machinery of warfare. It’s like "tradition". The word absolves practitioners, and everybody else, of responsibility as it cleanses the field of any history. Bensouda argues that the military use of sexual violence does have a history of change. For example, in recent years, it has begun to be used systematically as a weapon of war and as “part of the military machinery to fuel the fighting soldiers.” But the core of the refusal to address sexual and gender violence is the refusal to care about women:

Outside a prison context, targets of gender crimes are overwhelmingly female. The victims of certain crimes, such as forced impregnation and forced abortion are exclusively women and girls. This may explain why the progress made globally in recognizing, prohibiting, and finally enforcing gender crimes perpetrated in armed combat has been extremely slow.

The world has been extremely slow to address sexual and gender crimes. Not 'Africa'. Not 'Africans'. The world. African women, like Bensouda and like the ICC women judges from Mali, Ghana, Kenya and Botswana, join with women around the world in being fed up. In an interview two years ago, Bensouda said, “I am speaking as an African woman… And the African woman’s voice is getting louder and louder, whether as advocate or whether as a victim.” Individually louder and louder. Collectively louder and louder.

Angolan Independence

On Friday, November 10, 2011, Angola marked its 36th Independence Day since the proclamation of independence, November 10, 1975. It's a few days later but better way to acknowledge the day than to focus on … Angola asylum seekers? By and large, the Western media paid no attention to Angola on Friday, but then again what else is new. The great exception was Radio Netherlands Worldwide, which sported a piece entitled, “The `Mauros’ who could not stay.” `Mauro’ is Mauro Manuel, an 18 year-old Angolan lad who was recently informed he could stay in the Netherlands, where he’s lived, with a foster family, for the last eight years. Mauro wasn’t given asylum, but, on Tuesday last week, he was allowed a reprieve. The Dutch Parliament gave him a student visa. What happens next is up in the air. The “other `Mauros’” are women. Amalia is 17, Tucha is 19. Their father was killed, for political activities, and the older sister was raped. That’s when they fled Angola. They lived in the Netherlands for five years. Then, they were denied asylum and, after five years, shipped back to Angola. No matter that Amalia was 16 at the time, a minor. No matter that no one knows where their relatives are or even if they are. A year on, they still don’t know if their mother is dead or alive. “At the other end of the scale”, according to RNI, is Engracia. 33 years old. Completed her education in the Netherlands, where she lived for 14 years. No political violence. Supported by middle class kin in Angola and the Dutch Refugee Council, who paid for her ticket back and gave her 2000 euros. So that’s the RNI Angola Scale: weeping, terrorized, impoverished failed asylum seeking girl, on one end; successful, entrepreneurial woman, on the other. On one end, desperately poor and with no apparent means of securing income; on the other, `gifted’ handsomely, as a `returning refugee’, by the largesse of Europe. Really? That’s the scale? What about all those other women in Angola? What about the ones who organize, struggle, and keep on keeping on? Women like Teresa Quarta, chairwoman of the Association of Angolan Women and Sports (AMUD), who argued this week that women athletes is all fine and well, but Angola needs to attend to developing and supporting women sports managers. What about women like primary school Maria Emelia and Rosa Florinda, women who don’t deny that things are tough, that classes are overcrowded, that the country lacks sufficient numbers of trained teachers, that too many children are too hungry. Women teachers, across the country, who keep teaching, keep pushing, keep pulling. Factory workers, farmers and farm workers, nurses and doctors, women. Ordinary women. Women not defined by their encounter with the European state. Women defined as simply Angolan. When they look for a model, when they look for a Queen, for example, they need not look to Queen Beatrix, of the Netherlands, nor to her mother, Queen Juliana. Instead, they could look closer to home. They could look to Queen Nzinga, Nzinga the Warrior Queen of the Ndongo and Matamba, that woman who overcame local structures, who defied and often defeated the Portuguese, who almost single handedly created a new state. Nzinga was not a saint, was not some pure or ideal woman. She cut deals. She allied with the Dutch against the Portuguese. She provided safe haven for runaway slaves while at the same time engaging in the slave trade. That’s life. “It’s complicated.” Nzinga was not a heroine nor is she an icon. She was a leader. Nzinga led in war, peace, commerce, politics, and life. Nzinga was an Angolan woman who led Angolans into action. Nzinga was an Angolan woman, who presaged not only Angola’s national independence but also its national autonomy. Include her and her descendants into the narratives and `scales’ of Angola.