How is it possible that we know the correct behaviour or the healthiest practice and yet we don’t follow it? Is it human nature or just a lack of discipline?
I’m guilty of this when it comes to my weight. No amount of knowledge I acquire or books I read can help me get off my roller-coaster ride of weight gain and loss.
I see teenage pregnancy in South Africa in the same light. Having loads of information about it is not enough to change our behaviour. One would think that young people today have enough tools to avoid unwanted pregnancy: contraception is available and sexual health information is a fingertip or a cell phone away. But many girls still fall pregnant before finishing high school. In 2009 alone, more than 49 000 schoolgirls, mostly black and poor, gave birth in South Africa, according to the United Nations Population Fund. This not only endangers their education and their future, it also places a huge burden on their families.
(Pic: AFP)
That number of 49 000 pregnant schoolgirls means that as many boys and men impregnated them. Hey, it takes two to tango.
Why does this happen? What perpetuates this cycle?
An insightful 2009 study by researchers Jewkes, Morrell and Christofides aptly summed it up: “Teenage pregnancy is not just an issue of reproductive health and young women’s bodies but, rather, one of its causes and consequences, rooted in women’s gendered social environment.”
Sad but true. Our environment influences young women hugely. In some South African communities, young women are pressured to prove their fertility at a young age, and so they fall pregnant, simultaneously risking contracting sexually transmitted infections and HIV.
And if that’s not enough, they are often left to raise the babies alone because the father is “unknown” – meaning he is either married, or not ready to assume this responsibility, or does not want a child, or is still too young so he gets to continue with his education – while she (the expecting mother) likely drops out of school to care for the baby.
In addition, young women have to wrestle with the societal expectations that they must be conservative and passive.
We are also expected to prove our social status – to look a certain way, wear certain clothes, and be seen possessing certain material things. Dating someone older to provide these status symbols or necessities seems the easier route – no matter the cost.
However, experience has taught me otherwise: nothing is ever for mahala, meaning there are no freebies in life. What you do today will determine your future.
Among teenagers, girls have eight times the HIV infection rate than their male peers.
Girls aged 15-19 are more likely than boys the same age to have sex, and sex with older men.
Condom use has dropped significantly among young people.
To change this gut-wrenching reality, we must ask some hard questions:
Can we honestly see progress in South Africa when so many girls still fall pregnant and/or contract HIV daily?
Can we not take advantage of the booming social networks and other creative platforms to create safe spaces for dialogue around the real reasons why young black girls are falling pregnant today?
We should change our way of dealing with this sensitive social issue. Let us be less prescriptive about the young girls’ behaviour and meet them where they are.
Hearing their voices when messages and programmes are designed will help us address the real issues behind teenage pregnancy in South Africa.
To walk the talk, I am developing an interactive session for a group of high school students aged 14-17 in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. We use applied drama and theatre methods to build a platform for dialogue around teenage pregnancy. I’ll keep you posted.
Zandi Mqwathi is a confident, innovative young leader and a former radio personality with a zeal and drive to use her craft and experiences to educate and empower other young women. She writes for Countdown to Zero, a Unicef/Inter Press Service project.
Methodist church reverend Canaan Banana (left) and his wife Janet share a moment with then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe (centre) and his wife Sally five days before independence celebrations. (Pic: STF)
I wake up on election day in April 1980. Black Zimbabweans are learning to vote for the first time. It’s early in the morning. With no experience of voting, I reflect on the risk of spoiling the ballot paper. I feel like a child going to school for the first time. No one I know can give me an idea of what a ballot paper will look like.
Triangle Sugar Estate in south-eastern Zimbabwe can be a lonely place. It is just you and a few familiar faces, fellow teachers and cane cutters who are usually covered in black soot from the burning sugar cane.
When they cut cane, they don’t talk. Layers of black ash cover their faces. Perhaps they feel humiliated by their appearance. It is better to meet them in their clean states, not in sugar cane cutting gear. You just wave at them and leave them to meet their daily tonnage of harvested sugar cane. The stacks of cane they cut decide their earnings. There is no monthly salary. It is hard labour.
My friends and I have asked the company for permission to campaign for the Patriotic Front. It is granted, but on one condition: if the party of “terrorists” loses, we will all lose our jobs. We take the risk, print party T-shirts with party slogans for sale, and raise enough money for our fragile campaign.
In our small cars, we go from section to section, campaigning, making house visits and small speeches. No rallies. We walk and whisper the new political wind of change into all ears.
Then the day of the rally comes, and the big men arrive: Dzingai Mutumbuka, Dzikamai Mavhaire, Nolan Makombe, Basopo-Moyo, Nelson Mawema and other previously banned politicians.
A new destiny
There are speeches, and more speeches, and promises. Then there is spontaneous dancing and singing, men and women in a frenzy at the possibility of freedom, a new destiny.
With our poverty haunting us, hiring buses is a luxury out of our reach. People walk long distances to Gibo Stadium. That is the first rally of the “terrorists”, as the sugar company calls them. Thousands pack the stadium, singing and dancing. It is a joyous occasion.
It is the arrival of our dignity, freedom, a new self, a new nation, a fresh map of our destiny written in our own ink, even if that ink might be our blood.
Soon after that, on a Tuesday morning, I am at the garage to get my car fixed. The young white lady serving me has a small radio on her desk. She is slow to serve me. It is news time.
She fiddles frantically with the radio knob to get the best reception to listen to the election results before attending to me. She tells me that “Bishop” Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa is going to win. “Such a holy and gentle man,” she says.
But, in a few minutes, the British election official belts out the results.
The woman breaks down, crying. I try to help her up, to console her, as she shouts: “Terrorists! Terrorists! The British have let us down! Terrorists! I am leaving! Terrorists!” As I try to calm her down, her boss enters and takes her away. He thinks I have offended her. I tell him it was the election results. He nods and makes out my receipt. I pay and get my car keys.
A few days later, on April 18, the party does not seem to have come to an end. Far off, in Harare, Bob Marley graces the independence celebrations overseen by Robert Mugabe and Prince Charles. It’s an event of two Bobs and the Wailers.
My friends and I are no longer enemies of the sugar company. We are the new heroes. The threats of dismissal are rescinded.
We are invited to all the formerly prohibited venues for celebration. The sugar company buys all the chickens available from local butcheries. Cows and bulls are donated to the festivities. And the party goes on for what seems like eternity.
The dancing! Oh, the dancing! The eating. The music! The orderly chaos! One man, a Mr Chikanga, challenges anyone to a chicken-eating contest. He devours five large roasted birds in a few minutes.
Another man, primary school teacher Mr Chidhumo, the father of infamous convicted murderer and robber Stephen Chidhumo, dances until he breaks his leg. He ignores the pain until we call an ambulance and he is forced to abandon the party for the hospital.
He insists on taking his whisky glass with him to the hospital, but the ambulance driver will have none of it. The driver grabs the glass and drinks it himself. It is celebration time, and no one wants to be left out. All is forgiven.
April 18, the day a new national flower was born, still lingers in my imagination.
It was a day of hope and pride, the arrival of a new self, a new being, a fresh flower of our human dignity. Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s “swords-to-ploughshares” speech enkindles our hope further.
Like the Bulawayo statue, we “look to the future” with an incisive sense of aspiration in our hearts.
The birds of hope have deposited new eggs in our hearts of hope, a new destiny is possible, we say to our silent but smiling hearts.
I wake up on election day in April 1980. Black Zimbabweans are learning to vote for the first time. It’s early in the morning. With no experience of voting, I reflect on the risk of spoiling the ballot paper. I feel like a child going to school for the first time. No one I know can give me an idea of what a ballot paper will look like.
Triangle Sugar Estate in south-eastern Zimbabwe can be a lonely place. It is just you and a few familiar faces, fellow teachers and cane cutters who are usually covered in black soot from the burning sugar cane.
When they cut cane, they don’t talk. Layers of black ash cover their faces. Perhaps they feel humiliated by their appearance. It is better to meet them in their clean states, not in sugar cane cutting gear. You just wave at them and leave them to meet their daily tonnage of harvested sugar cane. The stacks of cane they cut decide their earnings. There is no monthly salary. It is hard labour.
My friends and I have asked the company for permission to campaign for the Patriotic Front. It is granted, but on one condition: if the party of “terrorists” loses, we will all lose our jobs. We take the risk, print party T-shirts with party slogans for sale, and raise enough money for our fragile campaign.
In our small cars, we go from section to section, campaigning, making house visits and small speeches. No rallies. We walk and whisper the new political wind of change into all ears.
Then the day of the rally comes, and the big men arrive: Dzingai Mutumbuka, Dzikamai Mavhaire, Nolan Makombe, Basopo-Moyo, Nelson Mawema and other previously banned politicians.
A new destiny
There are speeches, and more speeches, and promises. Then there is spontaneous dancing and singing, men and women in a frenzy at the possibility of freedom, a new destiny.
With our poverty haunting us, hiring buses is a luxury out of our reach. People walk long distances to Gibo Stadium. That is the first rally of the “terrorists”, as the sugar company calls them. Thousands pack the stadium, singing and dancing. It is a joyous occasion.
It is the arrival of our dignity, freedom, a new self, a new nation, a fresh map of our destiny written in our own ink, even if that ink might be our blood.
Soon after that, on a Tuesday morning, I am at the garage to get my car fixed. The young white lady serving me has a small radio on her desk. She is slow to serve me. It is news time.
She fiddles frantically with the radio knob to get the best reception to listen to the election results before attending to me. She tells me that “Bishop” Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa is going to win. “Such a holy and gentle man,” she says.
But, in a few minutes, the British election official belts out the results.
The woman breaks down, crying. I try to help her up, to console her, as she shouts: “Terrorists! Terrorists! The British have let us down! Terrorists! I am leaving! Terrorists!” As I try to calm her down, her boss enters and takes her away. He thinks I have offended her. I tell him it was the election results. He nods and makes out my receipt. I pay and get my car keys.
A few days later, on April 18, the party does not seem to have come to an end. Far off, in Harare, Bob Marley graces the independence celebrations overseen by Robert Mugabe and Prince Charles. It’s an event of two Bobs and the Wailers.
My friends and I are no longer enemies of the sugar company. We are the new heroes. The threats of dismissal are rescinded.
We are invited to all the formerly prohibited venues for celebration. The sugar company buys all the chickens available from local butcheries. Cows and bulls are donated to the festivities. And the party goes on for what seems like eternity.
The dancing! Oh, the dancing! The eating. The music! The orderly chaos! One man, a Mr Chikanga, challenges anyone to a chicken-eating contest. He devours five large roasted birds in a few minutes.
Another man, primary school teacher Mr Chidhumo, the father of infamous convicted murderer and robber Stephen Chidhumo, dances until he breaks his leg. He ignores the pain until we call an ambulance and he is forced to abandon the party for the hospital.
He insists on taking his whisky glass with him to the hospital, but the ambulance driver will have none of it. The driver grabs the glass and drinks it himself. It is celebration time, and no one wants to be left out. All is forgiven.
April 18, the day a new national flower was born, still lingers in my imagination.
It was a day of hope and pride, the arrival of a new self, a new being, a fresh flower of our human dignity. Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s “swords-to-ploughshares” speech enkindles our hope further.
Like the Bulawayo statue, we “look to the future” with an incisive sense of aspiration in our hearts.
The birds of hope have deposited new eggs in our hearts of hope, a new destiny is possible, we say to our silent but smiling hearts.
Chenjerai Hove is a Zimbabwean writer living in exile in Europe. This piece was first published in the Mail & Guardian’s Zimbabwe edition.
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.
Inspired by the scenes in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver where the protagonist, played by Robert DeNiro, drives around the seedy and unforgiving streets of New York City, Nigerian artist Siji takes us through his country’s former capital city where the hustle is real and the bustle never stops.
This is Lagos in all its glory, accompanied by Siji’s narrative of a city that both thrives and thirsts at the same. This Afrobeat ode to one of Africa’s most electric cities (not literally, of course) reminds me of Fela Kuti’s Monday Morning in Lagos.
Siji’s forthcoming album ‘Home Grown’ is currently scheduled for release in spring of 2014. It’s been two and a half years in the making – a journey that’s been chronicled in the video below.
Dynamic Africa is a curated multimedia blog focused on all facets of African cultures, African history, and the lives and experiences of Africans on the continent and in the diaspora – past and present. Visit the blog and connect with the curator, Funke Makinwa, on Twitter.
On Egyptian streets Abdel Fatah al-Sisi – the top general who ousted ex-president Mohamed Morsi last summer – reached superhuman status months ago. Now the digital world has caught up: developers have released a Sisi-themed arcade-style game for Android users, billing the strongman as an Egyptian superhero.
Super Sisi sees a two-dimensional version of Egypt’s likely next president fly through a cartoon Cairo, attempting to save the country. In real life, Sisi’s picture looms over most main roads in Cairo, with many seeing his leadership as the answer to three years of political instability. In the game, Sisi’s avatar flies over the pyramids and the river Nile dodging bombs and explosives – a plotline that might remind some of a real-life wave of militant attacks aimed at soldiers and policemen.
Super Sisi is available in the Android App store. (Screenshot)
The game is the latest in a string of unlikely memorabilia aimed at cashing in on Sisi’s cult status. Elsewhere, Sisi’s face adorns tat ranging from underpants, fast-food packaging and, most famously, chocolates – at least until police raided the patissiers who made them last month.
But popular culture has not all been favourable to the man many expect to be elected Egypt’s next president in late May. In late March hundreds of thousands took to social media to express disgust at the general. Using the slogan “vote for the pimp”, it was a reminder that many Egyptians revile Sisi for his role in a crackdown that has seen at least 16 000 political dissidents arrested since regime change last July, and thousands killed.
After months of speculation as to whether he would stand for the presidency, Sisi resigned from the military in March, paving the way for a return to strongman leadership for Egypt.
Sisi had been spoken of as a potential head of state after he removed Morsi last July, following days of mass protests against the Islamist-slanted government.
A poll from late March by Egypt’s leading pollsters, Baseera, suggested that 39% of Egyptians would vote for Sisi in an election. This dwarfs support for the two other well-known candidates currently in the race – the rightwing football club chairman Mortada Mansour and leftist Hamdeen Sabbahi, who moulds himself in the image of Egypt’s 60s autocrat, Gamal Abdel Nasser. But it is a marked drop from Baseera’s February poll, which gave Sisi 51%. Most voters say they are yet to decide, but their choice is already limited by the withdrawal of two leading candidates who say that the race will be neither free nor fair.
