Lessons from Rwanda’s female-run institutions

An MP listens to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon speak at the Rwandan Parliament building on January 29 2008, in Kigali. (Pic: AFP)
An MP listens to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon speak at the Rwandan Parliament building on January 29 2008, in Kigali. (Pic: AFP)

Friday 4 July: Independence Day. There will be speeches, celebrations and fireworks. But these celebrations will be taking place on the other side of the world from the US, because on Friday, the central African country of Rwanda will mark its own Liberation Day.

It is 20 years since the end of the genocide that saw the deaths of more than 800 000 people. Since 1994, Rwanda has worked hard to create a peaceful state and among those enjoying the fireworks will be female parliamentarians from around the world, who are meeting in Rwanda this week to discuss how to get more women into every country’s Parliament.

For this is Rwanda’s big success story. It has the distinction of being the only country in the world with more female MPs than male ones, a statistic that has attracted a good deal of international attention, not least from the Zurich-based Women in Parliaments organisation, set up last year, which this week is holding its summer summit in the Rwandan capital, Kigali.

Not surprisingly, many of those attending the conference are keen to find out how Rwanda has managed to reach the figure of 64% women in its Parliament, which is unheard-of everywhere else. Worldwide, women still represent under a quarter (21.9%) of all elected parliamentary seats, but in Rwanda the post-genocide situation, in which 70% of the country’s remaining population was female, and the introduction of quotas requiring 30% of political and government candidates to be women, have brought about real change, in national and local politics and across public positions. Half the country’s 14 supreme court justices are women, for instance. Boys and girls now attend compulsory primary and secondary school in equal numbers, and new laws enable women to own and inherit property.

But this is not just about numbers. The rebuilding of Rwanda’s public bodies was driven by a number of senior women determined that women’s gains in senior positions would not be lost as the gender balance gradually began to adjust. They include Donatille Mukabalisa, the speaker of the Rwandan chamber of deputies, who has been pushing reform over the past two decades. Mukabalisa, whose keynote speech opened the conference on Tuesday, has said that while the quota system clearly helped speed up women’s participation in politics, women appointed and elected to a whole range of public positions have been so successful in making a positive difference that the country may reach a point where quotas are unnecessary.

There are other lessons to be learned from the country’s rebuilding process. One of those is about handling disputes, and the need to increase the participation of women in post-conflict societies.

The middle day of the conference has been set aside for field trips, to see more about the real lives of women other than society’s leaders. It’s an astute move, for behind the headlines is anxiety about the reality of life for ordinary women in the country. One Rwandan women’s rights campaigner has described the female parliamentarians in Rwanda as like a “lovely vase of flowers in a living room” – decorative but not a huge amount of use.

There are concerns about violence: the government’s own figures from 2010 show that two in five women reported suffering physical violence at least once since the age of 15. And many public services in the country are sparse. Rwanda’s first state speech and language therapy service was set up only this year at the Rwanda Military Hospital, with support from a volunteer UK speech and language therapist.

But Rwanda certainly provides a useful lesson for UK politicians. The Conservative party, which has failed to increase the number of female MPs in the party from a dismal 16%, is now seriously considering all-women shortlists. The Liberal Democrats, with an even worse figure of just 13% female MPs, and even the Labour party, with 33% female MPs, might also want to take note.

• Jane Dudman is chairing a session on the impact of female parliamentarians on the UN’s post-2015 millennium development goals at the Women in Parliaments’ summer summit in Kigali.

Sex in African literature: More, please

jalada

Every once in a while, stories come along that surprise critics and readers who claim to know African literature. Jalada’s recent compilation about sex strikes me as that kind of work.

Jalada Africa is a literary collective committed to reshaping the way writing is published and circulated within the continent.

Their recent collection titled Sext Me Poems and Stories proves their open and risk-taking approach to literary projects. I spent the last few days browsing through the collection, floored by how delightfully raw and honest most of the pieces are.

The project is also a small but bold step towards filling a gaping hole in African literary culture. To the annoyance of readers like myself, African authors are not always keen on what their characters do in the bedroom. Under pressure to write about things of world historical importance like colonialism and poverty, African writers have always made short shrift of sex. Sex is perceived as indulgent.

But a projects such as Jalada’s Sext Me Poems and Stories tells us why sex is not superfluous in narrative.

Sex is the true story of the body told from a place of pleasure, pain, and radical uncertainty. Sex is about putting the body in a place where traditional ideas about gender, shame, violence, and loss are interrogated.

Besides, this collection is not just about sex. It’s about how Africans do sex.

Scrolling through the collection is like walking through a sex-toy shop, dazed by the sheer inventiveness put into assembling a world built on pushing the limits of sexual pleasure.

Akati Khasiani’s Coming Down and Aisha Ali’s The First Time are vignettes sketching out a scene of female masturbation. Both stories put the female body up on display, but as something capable of generating the most profound experience of pleasure, entirely on its own.

The language in both pieces is as raw as it is lyrical. Sex in these two stories is not about conquest or consuming bodies but about exploration and discovery. Ali’s character speaks of the vagina as “that small wet place” that the “fingers” go “searching, exploring, looking for answers.” Pretty intense and exciting stuff.

The first of two parts closes off with Orem Ochiel’s Miss Fucking You. Odd, but the title does not prepare you for the obscene goodness of the story. It’s framed as a man asking a woman, pleading more like, to have another go with him. To make his case, he recounts all the impassioned and kinky sexual encounters they’ve had without sparing the dirty details. Every other word in the story is “fuck” or “fucking.” Don’t click on the story while you’re in church!

The Oink in Doinker by Tuelo Gabonewe is a comical tale about a “half-widow,” Haroldette, who encounters a penis cut off from its owner.  She takes it in, bathes its, feeds it, and names it Phineas McPhallus. Unlike many of the other stories in the collection, this one is not strictly an erotica. It is something you’d imagine Gogol or Kafka would write. In fact, I couldn’t help noting the striking resemblance between Gabonewe’s story and Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s Runaway Fingers.

Sext Me by Aleya and Dorothy Kigen’s Inbox (1) are fun at the level of form. Aleya’s piece is entirely a dialogue that takes place via text messaging. A man and a woman set the stage for their sexual encounter by expressing what they imagine the encounter would be like – a textual foreplay as it were. People complain that it’s hard to convey complex emotional states via emails. Not so for Kigen’s character who details her illicit sexual experiences in an email message.

Sext Me Poems and Stories is titillating storytelling. Read the collection here.

Brittle Paper is an African literary blog featuring book reviews, news, interviews, original work and in-depth coverage of the African literary scene. It is curated by Ainehi Edoro and was recently named a ‘go-to book blog’ by Publisher’s Weekly. 

Exploring the West’s fascination with ‘saving’ Africa

FRAMED trailer from Cassandra Herrman on Vimeo.

Framed, a new documentary in the making, takes a critical look at activism in Africa and the representation of aid recipients as victims. It investigates the West’s relationship to Africa and questions why it doesn’t focus its aid efforts on local communities in the US.

The documentary features Kenyan photojournalist Boniface Mwangi, Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina and South African-born educator Zine Magubane, who ask a range of questions about the “selling of suffering”.

Directed by Cassandra Herrman, the team behind the project are raising funds on Kickstarter to complete it. In their words: “We’re making this film because we believe it’s about something that should matter to all of us.  ‘Framed’ examines the western relationship to Africa and Africans but it’s also about how we create difference, how we unconsciously make some people more powerful and others weaker, and how it’s often easier to do that than to take a hard look at ourselves. We want this film to spark conversation and debate among students, educators, families, friends and colleagues.”

 

Sending money to Somalia: The remittance economy

(Pic: Flickr)
(Pic: Flickr)

Some of my oldest memories as a child are of sunny weekend mornings eating canjeero, staring wide-eyed at my parents as they yelled into the receiver. That’s how you knew they were talking to relatives back home. The amplitudes of their voices would let us know right away they were on a long distance call. My brothers and I would always laugh at the faces they made when the connection was particularly bad. They winced and yelled and repeated the same sentences over and over and we, being nothing but the goofy children we were, found their facial expressions, their repetitions hilarious.

They would ask so-and-so if they had received their money, would inform their siblings or cousins how much would go to whom. Some was intended for so-and-so’s schooling, this part would go to grandmother, and this fraction to another aunt or uncle. Education was paid for, healthcare, rent, you name it. I still watch them go through the same routine.

I remember walking to Western Union with my father as a child; the Ghanaian clerk still works there. It is not a Western Union anymore, the banners changed more than once the past few years but if one thing stays the same, it was going to that office and getting that money transferred. The companies changed but the people stay; bills still need to get paid.

I remember telling my father he had to introduce me to the relatives I had yet to meet, by phone now and in person eventually. I remember looking up at him and saying, in that serious manner children adopt when they believe what they are saying is of utmost importance: “If you die, I will have to send them that money, but how would I know who to send it to?”

I hardly remember his exact words, but I recall his loud laugh, his hand on my head and him telling me that there are no ‘ifs’ but ‘whens’; that I would meet everyone eventually; and that I needed to worry about that French homework in front of me, not the bills of my incalculable number of relatives.

Every now and then there’s a new name. some are feeling the effects of the drought; a relative living in an affected area is calling right this moment.

It is a 20 minute drive to the place. For years now my parents have been dealing with the same Somali woman and the money transfer company she works for. Money exchanges hands, a text message is sent, a phone call is made. A day or two later a call to relatives; a confirmation.

This reality is not ours alone. I am 20 now and realising how, for the past two decades, Somalia has heavily relied on remittances in order to sustain herself. That with conflict and political instability, money transfers from the diaspora directly to the intended recipients has become more reliable than incomes garnered from economic institutions on ground; and remittance money has not only become the main source of individual/household sustenance, but also contributes to investment.

A post on the World Bank blog asked if Somalia could survive without its remittance. For most people, when they think of the country, the images that come to mind are of pirates or face-covered al-Shabab fighters brandishing automatic weapons and a black flag, or of malnourished victims of drought and poverty.

That however, is not a full picture. Other than livestock, Somalia’s (albeit largely informal) economy is based on remittances and telecommunications. Until very recently Somalia lacked a central bank and even now it isn’t as strong an institution as it should be. What kept the country together after the outbreak of the civil war, in terms of effective monetary management, are those many remittance transferring companies, which have been and still are the main financial industry relied upon.

The country is slowly rebuilding. infrastructures are popping up; in some areas expats are moving back; the government has regained control of regions which had been for a long time under the grip of extremist fighters. And this doesn’t mean that remittance money has been dwindling; rather it has been and still is financing the latest developments the private sector has been undertaking.

According to Ifad (the UN’s International Funds for Agricultural Development), remittances flowing into the African continent reach close to $40 US billion. When it comes to the Somali diaspora, about $1.6-billion is sent yearly to the country, and contributes to various vital fields, from education to healthcare to basic necessities such as food and shelter.

However, it all isn’t picture perfect. Recently, as more light was shed on the exorbitant fees imposed on remittance money sent to Africa, “leading money transfer companies” have come under scrutiny.  Many are realising, and talking about, the fact that “the African Diaspora is being charged twice the global average” to send money home. The Somali central bank is now in its fifth year of existence after its destruction and optimists might say that once it gets on its feet, it could in the future set policies and regulations which would eventually lead to the establishment of reliable banks.

Sumaya Ugas is an undergraduate student at McGill University. She studies International Development and Political Sciences. A lover of words, she is constantly carrying a novel (or three) and writing. This post was first published on 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

Amid chaos, African teams make history at the World Cup

Stephen Keshi had just finished repelling yet another query about the Nigeria player bonus payment issue when he wiped his brow, leaned forward and posed a rhetorical question.

“Can I ask if you work with the CIA?” the Nigeria coach said, sparking muffled laughter all around.

When it comes to African teams at the World Cup, the focus on football has sometimes taken a back seat to other distractions in Brazil.

Strike threats. Pay disputes. Bomb blasts back home. Presidential interventions. That’s on top of several unsavoury incidents on the field, with a Cameroon player head-butting his teammate and high-profile Ghana players getting suspended for physical and verbal attacks in training.

Yet somehow, through the turmoil, it has been the best World Cup for African teams in a way: for the first time, more than one of the continent’s representatives advanced to the knockout stage.

And if Nigeria and Algeria win their round-of-16 matches on Monday, they would play each other to guarantee Africa’s first semifinalist on football’s biggest stage.

“I hope Nigeria and Algeria can continue to make Africa proud,” Keshi said. “That would be a great World Cup.”

The Nigerian team sing their national anthem before taking on Iran in a Group F match on June 16. (Pic: AFP)
The Nigerian team sing their national anthem before taking on Iran in a Group F match on June 16. (Pic: AFP)

Many have reacted with a shrug to the off-pitch shenanigans that have blighted African teams’ World Cup campaigns. Just ask France coach Didier Deschamps, who is preparing his team to take on Nigeria in Brasilia.

“For them, I don’t think it is a very unusual situation,” he said. “I’m not saying it is part of the culture, but it has happened before this World Cup.”

Bonuses
Player disgruntlement over unpaid bonuses has followed the African teams around Brazil. Ghana’s president had to fly reportedly millions in cash to Brazil to ensure the team didn’t boycott a pivotal group game against Portugal.

Cameroon refused to travel to the tournament until a dispute over appearance fees was resolved. Most recently, Nigeria players’ concerns over bonus payments contributed to a training session being cancelled on Thursday and the country’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, having to intervene from long distance.

Hence the barrage of questions to Keshi on Sunday.

“There was not a major issue about the monetary aspect of it,” Keshi said. “It was just something we wanted to highlight.”

Nigeria is thriving on the pitch, despite tragedy back home. A day after its first group game, a bomb blast at a World Cup viewing site in Damaturu, northeast Nigeria, and killed 14 people. Last week, a bomb went off at a shopping mall in Abuja, the capital in central Nigeria, killing 24 people.

“It’s been quite a tragedy, but we are here – we have a job to do,” Nigeria midfielder John Obi Mikel said. “Things that happen back home, we shouldn’t let it affect us. Football unites everyone back in Nigeria.”

For Ghana, Cameroon and Côte d’Ivoire, the misery has been confined to the field of play.

The Ivorians were seen as Africa’s top hope but they again failed on the big stage, tumbling out after conceding an injury-time penalty that was converted by Greece in their final Group C match. It was seen as the last chance for the so-called “golden generation” of Didier Drogba, the Toure brothers and Didier Zokora at the highest level. The failure led to coach Sabri Lamouchi stepping down.

“There will no renewal,” Lamouchi said. “The reasons why are obvious.”

Investigations
The presidents of Cameroon and Ghana have called for investigations following disappointing World Cup performances.

State media said Cameroon President Paul Biya has given his prime minister one month to submit a report on the Indomitable Lions’ “inglorious campaign,” with a statement from his office urging “a profound and deep restructuring of Cameroonian football.”

Cameroon lost all three games, scored just one goal and was shamed when defender Benoit Assou-Ekotto thrust his head into the face of teammate Benjamin Moukandjo against Croatia.

Since reaching the quarterfinals in 1990, Cameroon has won just one of 15 games at the World Cup.

Ghana’s campaign ended in disgrace, too, with Sulley Muntari and Kevin-Prince Boateng thrown out of the squad on the morning of the match against Portugal for disciplinary reasons.

A 2-1 loss in that game meant Ghana failed to advance to the knockout rounds for the first time in three World Cups. It wasn’t long before Ghana President John Mahama also ordered an investigation, as well as replacing both the country’s sports minister and his deputy.

Nigeria, which takes on France in Brasilia, and Algeria, which takes on Germany in Porto Alegre, are flying the flag not just for their own countries but for a whole continent on Monday. – Steve Douglas for Sapa-AP