Category: Perspective

Legalise polygamy for both men and women

(Graphic: Flickr / charlesfettinger)

By now you will have heard, in the most recent instance of testicular politics, that Kenya’s Parliament recently passed a Bill that will recognise what they call ‘polygamous unions’. Apparently there haven’t been any real legal provisions for this form of marriage to date, except for citizens of the Muslim faith through the Kadhi court system.

What makes this Bill notable is the fact that the male legislators – the majority – managed to get rid of a clause in the Bill that would require consent on the part of current spouses before a man could bring another contracted partner into his domestic situation. If the Bill is signed into law, wives who have enjoyed a legal monopoly on matrimonial benefits are going to lose their security of tenure just like that. Take note: Kenyan women can’t legally marry multiple men.

If I had a suspicious nature I would imply that judicious pillow-lobbying on the part of shrewd girlfriends and concubines probably explains the enthusiasm with which the Bill was passed. But did they have to turn the contract of marriage into a form of Russian roulette for all other women while they were at it? Of course this Bill deserved a protest. So I stand in solidarity with women of Kenya in terms of opposing this law.

I am disappointed to have to do so because I am very much in support of legalising polygamous marriage and have been for much of my life. Freedom and fair play, say I, and if people have to sign a legal contract for reproductive purposes then let’s at least offer every citizen the same range of flavours.

How did I get so corrupted? Simple, really. Catholic Mathematics.

When I was growing up in one of those delightfully cosmopolitan yet shockingly conservative “middle-class” families, I learned about the birds and the bees and the morality thereof. One man plus one woman plus some love equals legitimate offspring, full stop. Real life, though, didn’t make this lesson convincing. I highly recommend that all children supplement their social education by eavesdropping on their mothers’ conversations with her friends.

Sifting through rants about husbands’ secretaries who wear miniskirts and suchlike, I realised that things were not adding up. All unmarried women were chaste, married women were faithful and men couldn’t keep their zippers closed. Catholic Mathematics? I might not have been in secondary school but I could do addition and percentages. Someone wasn’t being forthright about these birds and bees.

The one who truly sank me, though, was the Zanzibari gentleman who moved next door when I was about eight or so. He had two lovely spouses: a plump older light-skinned one and a slim, shy, dark-skinned younger wife. Not only did they smell deliciously of incense and pilau spices, they seemed to genuinely enjoy each other’s company and any opportunity to lavish food and attention on anyone who walked through the door. They seemed happier and healthier than all the desiccated diplomatic wives who darkened our doors with gin and bitterness.

So I thought: yes. People grow up aspiring to their fantasies of fulfillment, be it financial security, fame, power, whatever. Me? Two husbands, maybe three. One to go out and make some serious bacon and wear bespoke suits with great ties to feed my craving for some alpha male. One to stick around at home and make sure the kids get to bed on time and we’re all eating enough greens and bully me into getting a pedicure. One to be the Saturday night special: excitingly undependable, prone to adventures that might land us in jail, entirely too charming and handsome for his own good.

What will I be doing? Well either recovering from a night out with Number Three or chairing a board or simply co-ordinating and popping out and loving the United Colors of Benetton offspring of our unconventional family. I said it was a fantasy. But when these things take root in your formative years, there’s no getting past it.

To lay the Catholic Mathematics to rest, I had to figure out a moral basis for it that works for me and it has to do with polyamorous principles. Turns out it’s entirely possible, and also sane. As usual the laws and legal system are not keeping pace with the progressive nature of our contemporary society. I am only angry with Kenya because this crusade is personal and they have made it difficult for everybody for chauvinist reasons.

Polygamy, mostly polyandry, has always been around and in principle I have no beef with it. But the point is, and always is, to be fair when it comes to legislation. You can’t refuse people rights because of their race, their religion or their just about anything unless you’re unspeakably heinous. So why is it still okay to get gender politics wrong?

By all means, let us condemn this silly Kenyan polygamy Bill and all that it represents. In the meanwhile, though, if anyone is writing up a real progressive alternative please swing it my way. There are guys out there to marry simultaneously and this woman is trying not to run out of time and available options, not to mention patience.

Elsie Eyakuze is a freelance consultant in print and online media from Tanzania, working mainly in the development sector. She blogs at mikochenireport.blogspot.com. Connect with her on Twitter.

10 years ago

Monday, bloody Monday in Nigeria

Yesterday morning, my colleague got into his car to begin the hour-long commute from Nyanya to our office in downtown Abuja. Ten minutes into the drive out of his estate, he heard a loud explosion about 150 metres from where he was. At the sound of the explosion, he and other drivers slammed their brakes and almost veered off the road. His ears were ringing. The loud boom echoed in his head like a bell. Soon, the screams started. Then, people were running, scattering really, the usual purposefulness of ordinary Nigerians trying to make a living suddenly unrecognisable. The earth beneath him seemed to be shaking, and his entire body was shaking in tandem. The screaming mass of people had now blocked the road. From where he was, he could not yet see blood or destruction or destroyed buses or the crater that marked the spot where the bomb had hit. He clambered out of his car, then did what everyone else was doing: he ran towards the bus park ahead. He joined the early morning commuters as witnesses. He joined them in their despair.

“You know how busy Nyanya is in the mornings, especially Monday,” John told us when he finally made it to work an hour and a half later. It was 9.30am. “Can you imagine all those people, all of them trying to enter buses? There must have been like 200 or even 300 people there trying to make their way to their various places of work. There was so much blood. There was so much death. It was like a bad dream. I had to take pictures because even I didn’t believe my own eyes.”

He showed us his pictures, and it was just like he had said. So much blood. So much death. Like a bad dream.

Burnt and damaged vehicles are seen at the scene of the bomb blast explosion at Nyanya on April 14. (Pic: Reuters)

The reaction to the Nyanya bomb blast has been more visceral due to its proximity to the capital city; not because this is the first time that we have had terrible attacks on ordinary citizens on such a scale. During the country’s centenary celebrations in February, 43 children were killed in a school in Yobe. Twenty young girls were kidnapped in Borno State during this month. On Sunday, the day before the Nyanya bus park disaster, 68 people were killed in two villages just outside of Maiduguri. Before this attack, Boko Haram hadn’t attacked Abuja in two years. From reading the testimonies of survivors on the Testimonial Archive Project, it is obvious that the people most impacted by the violence are just ordinary Nigerians whose only sin was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The woman who lost her house to an aerial bombardment and the man who lost his two brothers the day they went to register for a session of school are just as human as those who died in Nyanya. But what happened yesterday hit closer to home than these previous incidences. Our colleagues almost lost their lives. Our drivers were calling in late. This particular attack left us with calls to make to our staff and our friends, families and loved ones.

Bystanders react as victims arrive at the Asokoro General Hospital in Abuja. (Pic: Reuters)

The official death toll from the bomb blast is 71, although a lot of journalist friends who went to Nyanya told me that at least 200 people have lost their lives. This discrepancy hints at the difficulty the media has faced in reporting the violence that has seized the country over the past few years. Unfortunately, the media’s difficulty in reporting, together with the fact that the attacks have been concentrated in the more remote states in the Muslim-predominant north, has added to the ethno-religious taint of the violence. Victims become “Muslims” and “Christians”, not “Nigerians”. Human beings are rendered as numbers. Politicians have used the deaths as cudgels with which to score points, and not one of us has stopped them. It has been easy to say that “those people” have just been “killing themselves”. This resignation and willful distance we have put between ourselves and the killings has allowed President Goodluck Jonathan his lukewarm response to the violence with only the most muted protests.

But perhaps the reason our response is so muted is because we know not to expect answers. We do not know any more about Boko Haram’s funders and supporters now than we did last year or the year before. Those of us who believed that Boko Haram are after Christians are not so sure anymore. A few hours after the bomb blasts, Jonathan issued a statement at the site of the bomb blasts, condoling with the victims. One could not help but notice that beleaguered Interior Minister Abba Moro, who just a month before had presided over a mass recruitment exercise that was so badly managed it caused stampedes in several locations, was there with him along with the Senate president, David Mark. Several hours later, Jonathan’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) issued a statement through its press secretary, blaming the opposition, All Progressives Congress (APC), for the bomb blasts. That the country’s leaders choose politics over somber, urgent leadership is the strongest indication we have that the answers we seek will not come from these people. And as the 2015 elections loom, what answers we need to make sense of the senseless killings will be even fewer and farther between.

The sun shone outside my office window, but the mood never did lift. Throughout the day, family and friends from Lagos and elsewhere called to see if we were alright. We followed the news for information on casualties and deaths, where to donate blood, what little we could do to help. I left the office at 5pm and said goodbye to our office driver, another colleague who lives near Nyanya.

“Are you going home?” I asked him. He laughed.

“My sister, what choice do I have? Whatever it is, we have nowhere else to go. They know where we are and we don’t have any choice. If they come, they will meet us here.”

Saratu Abiola is a writer and blogger based in Abuja. Connect with her on Twitter or on her blog.

10 years ago

Alice and Emmanuel: A story of reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda

Emotional scenes played out in Rwanda this week as the country commemorated 20 years since the genocide that left close to a million people dead.

April 1994 is a long time ago, but physical and emotional scars remain fresh.

One wonders, every time the word Rwanda is mentioned, how the country managed to pull itself out of one of the darkest periods in the history of human existence.

Even more astounding is how people in Rwanda managed to find each other, forgive and bridge the gap that was left by the ethnic cleansing that happened 20 years ago.

Other nations are still struggling to find themselves almost a century after wars.

But Rwanda’s is a miracle of unimaginable scale. I know this because I walked the roads the killers walked and visited the sites of mass murders, where only skulls and bloodied garments now bear testimony to the gruesome events that began in April 1994.

I saw this miracle in the eyes of Alice Mukarurinda when she spoke of her boyfriend, Emmanuel Ndayisaba. Theirs is a tale of post-genocide forgiveness.

I met the two in June 2012 when I was a guest of the Rwandan president during the closure of the Gacaca courts – a locally-brewed justice system where trials where held publicly and community members, including women, were elected as judges. It was modelled on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission but had better results.

During 2001 until they closed in June 2012, the Gacaca courts heard over two million cases and in the process healed the wounds of many. Even at the closing function, more Rwandans were still wishing it would remain operational.

Locals from the Kigali’s Gikondo District One attend a session of the Gacaca grassroots tribunal on March 28 2004. (Pic: AFP)

Although criticised by few human rights organisations for not subscribing to minimum legal standards, the courts not only heard many cases which would have taken a conventional court years to finish, but they was far cheaper to maintain. Compare it to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which in 2012 had cost $1.7-billion to run, having only tried 60 suspects in its 17 years of existence.

Most of the people I spoke to in Rwanda in 2012, both victims and perpetrators, were happy with the Gacaca tribunal process thus far. This was despite the fact that many families still didn’t know how their family members were killed or where they were buried.

Mass graves were still being discovered in June 2012, which disputes the 800 000 fixed figure of those killed.

In Nyamwata, at a church in which hundreds were killed as they sought safety from the Hutus, families were still coming through to clean the recently exhumed bones in bags which they believe belong to their loved ones.

I asked how they knew the bones belonged to their families members, and they said just by cleaning the bones, it gave them some kind of closure. They felt they had paid their last respects to those they loved, those they will never see again.

But it was how forgiveness brought people from tribal divides together that fascinated me.

I met Alice at one of the functions held to bring down the curtain on these special courts in 2012. Alice still bears machete scars on her head, cheek and neck, and only has half of her arm. The other half was cut off. All this happened one day in April 1994 when Hutu militia came to her village and went on a killing spree of anyone who was slimmer and taller – an indication that they were Tutsis.

Within a few minutes, 33 members of her family were killed in front of her, including her nine-month-old daughter.

During the killing spree, one bearded Hutu man unleashed a machete several times on Alice’s head, and blood gushed onto her face. He tried to finish her, but she managed to use her right arm to block the machete. Her arm got cut, severed just above the wrist. The bearded man sliced her face. His colleague pierced a spear through her left shoulder.

She fainted. The men thought she was dead, and left. She was found alive three days later.

The bearded man who severed Alice’s arm with a machete is Emmanuel Ndayisaba. He is her boyfriend now. The two met during one of the Gacaca court sessions. They were standing on opposing sides – Emmanuel, a genocide perpetrator and Alice, the victim who needed answers.

Emmanuel Ndayisaba and Alice Mukarurinda sit in Alice’s home in Nyamata, Rwanda. (Pic: AP Exchange)

That day, he confessed to the court what he did to Alice and her family. In fact he was surprised to see her alive. She remembered him because of his beard, the same beard he had when he killed her family members, and the same beard that always came to mind when someone asked her about the killings.

Alice told me at first that it was difficult to forgive Emmanuel. She cried until she had no more tears. But she forgave Emmanuel and today the two are very close. “I have learnt to forgive, even the one who tried to kill me,” she told me.

Alice and Emmanuel continue to spread the message of forgiveness at forums where they talk about reconciliation. They hope that this will help heal the wounds of the past atrocities. They have become an inspiration for those who believe in the impossibility of reconciliation after brutal ethnic conflict such as the one that happened in Rwanda.

While theirs is an extraordinary story of reconciliation and forgiveness, it remains to be seen if this will inspire the nation to put its past behind it. Two decades later, many hope that Rwandan leaders and residents will give meaning to the messages of “Never Again” and chart the country to extraordinary healing and hope. To me, that is what is there for Rwanda to celebrate as it commemorates 20 years.

Isaac Masilo Mangena is a communicator/activist. He has spent much of the past decade in newsrooms around Africa, and visited Rwanda as a journalist in 2012. He believes that the African dream will not die.

10 years ago

‘How can you be a vegetarian and an African?’

(Pic: Flickr / itsokaystay_calm)

I have observed that many Africans, specifically West Africans, share this idea that there is a checklist of things one must do in order to be a “real African”. Some things on that list may include eating jollof, azonto-ing and reading Things Fall Apart. I most recently found out that eating meat is also on that list. Being a vegetarian, my African pass, as I jokingly say, was called into question when I revealed I don’t eat meat to many of my African associates.

“You are a vegetarian and you are African?” I often hear. “How can you be a vegetarian and an African? That is unnatural.”

My decision to become a vegetarian is a part of my African identity and not separate although many have argued that, “I am not a real African because real Africans eat meat.” My decision had nothing to do with animals or the environment. It really had nothing to do with health either, as I’ve always been conscious of the food I eat even when they included meat. I became a vegetarian because of my views on immigration reform, the meatpacking industry and how it directly relates to Africans. About 3% of all undocumented immigrants in the United States are from Africa. Almost a quarter of the workers who butcher and process meat, poultry and fish are undocumented. We always hear the stories of those Africans who immigrated to the United States and worked their way to the “American dream”, but what about the others whose voices we never hear?

I became a vegetarian because I disagree with the exploitation of immigrant workers in the meatpacking industry. I disagree with the cruel work environments. According to a report by the US Bureau of Labour Statistics, the meatpacking industry has a rate of 7.5 cases per 100 full-time workers when it comes to injuries. This may not seem high, but in fact, it is about 21% higher than the food manufacturing industry as a whole and 50% higher than the manufacturing industry as a whole. Furthermore, almost none of these immigrant workers have health insurance to treat their injuries due to the cost. Besides a poor work environment, they are paid wages that anyone would find ludicrous. Wages are based on the judgment of those in charge and can range from $2 an hour to $9 an hour. Undocumented workers are unable to assert their rights and have no protection of labour laws. They are faced with abuse and discrimination.

Being a vegetarian is a personal choice I made due to my views on this social and human rights issue. Just as I do not wear diamonds due to the conflict, I do not eat meat. These are not decisions that I would force on anyone, but I find it disheartening when my African identity is put into question because my eating habit is considered “unnatural” for an African.

My question to this thinking is simply, why? Why is it unnatural for an African to not eat meat? Africa is a continent compromised of 54 countries. Fifty four countries bursting with tribes, traditions, languages and eating habits. Of those 54 countries, are you telling me that all of its citizens have the same diet? From the North to the South to the East to the West, are we really all meat eaters?

For those who believe it is unnatural because “it is a part of our culture”, who creates culture? Is it not the people? Furthermore, seeing that Africans are dispersed all around the world due to voluntary migration and the trading of enslaved people, can we really box what African culture is? Who determines what culture is for an African on the continent and an African in South America?

I am an African woman. I am a vegetarian. There is no “and” because those two identities aren’t independent of each other. My Africanness led to my decision to become a vegetarian.

*Immigration statistics sourced from migrationpolicy.org.

Bilphena Yahwon is a Liberian artist, writer, womanist, social justice activist and student currently pursuing a BS in Information Systems/Business Administration. She is editor of Rise Africa, a blog written by a group of individuals who seek to create an atmosphere that encourages conversation between Africans on the continent and in the diaspora. Connect with them on Twitter: @riseafrica

10 years ago

The legacy of the Rwandan genocide

I went back to Rwanda last month for the first time in almost 20 years. I was head of mission for Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) during and after the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The experience changed me completely; my innocence died there.

In April and May 1994, I was working just across the border in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), receiving refugees fleeing the violence. But very few managed to escape the horrors. Eight hundred thousand people died in 100 days. The rivers were full of mutilated bodies. Most of the corpses were headless, except for those victims who had paid a dollar to be murdered with a bullet.

Photographs of people who were killed during the 1994 genocide are seen inside the Kigali Genocide Memorial Museum. (Pic: Reuters)

I remember some Rwandan boys who came across the border and told me what had happened in their village. While they hid in the bushes, they saw their mother raped and murdered, their sisters killed and their father taken away. Then they ran and ran for days until they reached the border. One of the boys had badly injured his arm – it was barely attached. His little brother had died in his arms.

Return to Rwanda
These were the images that I brought back with me. But on arriving in Kigali, the capital, I found a prosperous African city full of cars, commerce and people living their lives. My memories of a post-apocalyptic ghost town, of bullets, blood and hastily dug mass graves, the air heavy with death and fear, seemed a lifetime ago.

The former MSF hospital in Ruhengeri, northwest of Kigali, is now a beautiful, bustling referral facility, treating a normal range of human ailments. No more patients with war wounds and landmine injuries, like those who came to us in the days and weeks following the genocide. Only people’s mental trauma persists as evidence of the horror they suffered.

Simple memorials and mass grave sites testify to the great evil that sucked up this tiny country. I stopped in Butare to pay my respects to the hundreds of Rwandan MSF aid workers who were slaughtered in April and May 1994. A mass grave has been constructed on the grounds of the University of Butare opposite the hospital – a simple memorial, with photos of the dead. It was here, in this quiet and lovely spot that I was finally able to cry.

Crossing the border
There could not have been a greater contrast between the peace and calm of Rwanda and what I found when I crossed the border into DRC. Goma, previously a small town, has become a bustling city of one million inhabitants sprawled along the shore of Lake Kivu.

More than 100 international humanitarian organisations help fuel a booming economy. It is hot and dusty, dirty and chaotic. The black volcanic rock everywhere reminds you that the city lives in the shadow of active volcanoes that erupted in 2002.

Just outside Goma, terrible roads took us past camps for displaced people that litter the hills and roadsides. The improvised shacks in these camps are home to hundreds of thousands of people, about 80 per cent of them displaced by the armed conflict and violence in Masisi Territory, a beautiful mountainous region north of Goma.

I had last been in Masisi in 1996, but this was not the same place I remembered. Back then the war was just beginning; the Masisi of today is soaked in violence, the people experienced at fleeing conflict.

Driving past a police station, we heard the sounds of a man being beaten inside. Outside, children laughed at his screams of pain and anger. They are part of a new generation of Congolese children who have only known violence, displacement and deprivation.

Struggle to reach care
We reached the MSF hospital in Masisi town. In the emergency room, a baby lay motionless, breathing hard. Medical staff had started treating his severe pneumonia. He got sick while hiding in the forest with his mother and six brothers and sisters, as they fled the battles raging in their small village.

His mother explained that after a year of living in a camp for displaced people, she had recently returned home with her young family. Then the fighting resumed and they had to flee yet again. They had no food, no shelter, no medical care and no protection from the voracious mosquitoes and heavy rains. After four days they turned back, preferring to die at home rather than in the forest.

Her baby became increasingly sick, and there was no medical care in the village; the MSF health centre had been looted, the medicines stolen. She decided to make the long walk to Masisi hospital with her small children in tow. Fortunately an MSF ambulance spotted her on the road. After another day of walking in the heavy rain, it might have been too late for her baby.

The everyday emergency in the DRC
This family is among the 1.7 million people displaced by violent conflict in eastern DRC. You don’t hear much about the Congolese people who have fled their homes and lost what little they have not once, but multiple times over the past 20 years. We have been working in eastern DRC since 1992 providing emergency medical care to this forgotten population.

The people of eastern DRC live in a state of everyday emergency. Our teams routinely respond to outbreaks of measles and cholera; just last week a typhoid epidemic claimed many lives. Local health facilities do not function and the medical situation is desperate.

As we remember the Rwandan genocide of 20 years ago, my hope is that we will look to DRC and the everyday emergency that is bringing a people to its knees. Every day in Congo armed men are pillaging towns and villages and forcing people to flee. Every day children are dying from preventable diseases like pneumonia. Every day mothers are dying in childbirth and every day women are victims of sexual abuse. These people deserve our help.

Rachel Kiddell-Monroe is a Canadian doctor who served as emergency co-ordinator and later head of mission in the DRC (then Zaire) for MSF/Doctors Without Borders from 1993 to the end of 1996.