Year: 2014

Rape: A weapon on the battlefields and in the suburbs

Women take part in a campaign at the hospital ‘Heal Africa’ which advocates an end to sexual violence and rape against women, and complications which arrive from this, in Goma, DRC. (Pic: AFP)

American actress Angelina Jolie and British Foreign Secretary William Hague hosted a War Zone Rape Summit in London last month. Officially named ‘the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict’, it sought to highlight and combat the use of sexual violence against women and children within war zones.

The event was the biggest of its kind and brought together thought leaders, policy makers and change makers from around the world. The issues raised were especially relevant, given the current Boko Haram situation. Around two hundred Nigerian school girls who were abducted by the Islamist group on April 22 are yet to be found.

One of the key points of the summit was that during conflict it is not just guns causing destruction, but the penis. In times of war women are raped at an alarming rate as ‘all laws are suspended’ and anything goes.

Africa delegates featured prominently and many of the cases highlighted were from the region. African Union Commission chairperson Nkosozana Dlamini Zuma, speaking on one of the panels, stated that there must be zero tolerance of sexual assault within battle zones.

As part of its #ENDViolence campaign, Unicef has shared some statistics on sexual violence against women and children: in the Democratic Republic of Congo an average of 36 women and children are raped every day. In Somalia, 34% of rape survivors are children under the age of 12. And in war zones these statistics are sketchy at best as hordes go unreported because the channels to report are often destroyed in conflict.

It is well documented that women in Sierra Leone and Uganda have been subjected to rape, sexual slavery, and other forms of sexual abuse as well. There is a clear mandate to speak out on this. It has reached a point where sexual assault in countries such as Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire are posing a threat to justice, with this form of violence being a ‘characterising feature of war’.

But why is the brutality of rape only highlighted during war when the act is no less brutal on a Saturday night in a peaceful suburb? Why are you an animal in the combat zone and a man asserting himself in the city?

Rape: present during war and peace
At the summit, Nobel laureate Leymah Gbowee said that ‘Sexual violence in war is directly related to sexual violence in peace’ .

The problem is as prevalent across the continent, although it doesn’t receive an equal amount of attention in all countries. Take Kenya, which has had to deal with a legacy of British troops raping women over a period of 30 years. This institutionally imposed silence was broken by Amnesty International in 2003 when it emerged that over 650 women had been raped by British soldiers as long ago as 1965 and as recently as 2001.

The majority of these cases were gang rapes perpetrated by men during training sessions, not during times of war.

Sexual violence as a societal weapon
Sexual violence as a weapon is not only something confined to the battlefield and understanding this could go a long way towards reconceptualising the prevalent idea of ‘victim blame’. If someone pulls a knife on you people will not automatically look at what you did to ‘deserve’ it; the same should hold true of sexual violence, and not only during war.

Most people are aware that rape is never about the sexual act (the need for sex per se), but about asserting dominance. Men have supposedly romanticised the idea of rape, equating it to notions of ‘machismo’. This is in no way to excuse rape, humans after all separate ourselves from being beasts by resisting and restraining destructive primal urges.

Within the private realm sex is seen as a weapon, a tool that speaks to a balance of power and is seen more as a power struggle between two people and not as serious attack. Often cases involving sexual assault either fall to the wayside or the perpetrators receive ridiculously inadequate punishments, such as cutting grass.

In the home there are certain power dynamics that take place in terms of sexual relations between spouses. For one, to be married to another is to essentially lose the ability to state when and where sexual relations take place. This power struggle in the home can be embodied in the phrase: ‘There is no such thing as marital rape’. This is a view infamously held by the Chief Justice of South Africa Mogoeng Mogoeng, who came under fire for downplaying domestic violence in his judgments.

The idea of sexual assault as a weapon extends to sexuality as well.

Corrective rape in South Africa is rife. This act is based on the premise that a man can change the sexuality of a lesbian woman through the act of forcibly sleeping with her thus making her ‘see the light’. The idea that one can be changed or altered through a forced sexual act is again using sex as a weapon.

A move away from victim blame
The call for empowerment of women is tied extremely tightly to the notion that rape is not the fault of the person who is assaulted, that they need not carry that burden. Sexual assault needs to be seen in light of any form of physical assault. No one questions someone who has been shot, and one shouldn’t be questioned as to the ‘role you played’ in your rape.

Summits such as this one highlight the aggressive nature of sexual assault and show it in a new light and context: as something outside the sexual realm and akin to a stabbing or even a shooting. It highlights the violence behind the act.

The call for a global shift from that of impunity (especially in the case of those involved in sexual assault within conflict zones) speaks to the severity of the situation. Sexual assault is not just about sex, one person wanting it and one person not. It has a far more vicious element to it which is often left out of the global rhetoric on the subject.

Sexual violence is violence, not just on the battlefield. It is not asking for it in one place and a weapon of mass destruction in another. Seeing it in the context of conflict shows the severity and brutality of the situation, a lens that should be applied across all cases, not just ones in which the man doing the raping is carrying an AK-47.

Kagure Mugo is a freelance writer and co-founder and curator of holaafrica.org, a Pan-Africanist queer women’s collective which engages in activism and awareness-building around issues of African women’sidentity, experiences and sexuality. Connect with her on Twitter: @tiffmugo

11 years ago

French winemaker Castel bottles its first Ethiopian wine

The grape names – merlot, syrah, cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay – are distinctly French, but the label on the Rift Valley wines is surprising: made in Ethiopia.

The French beverage giant Castel, one of the world’s biggest producers of wines and beers, is raising a glass to its first production of 1.2-million bottles of Ethiopian Rift Valley wine.

The African state’s former president Meles Zenawi, who died in 2012, encouraged Castel to develop vineyards in Ethiopia, one of Africa’s poorest countries, as a way of improving its image.

Half of the bottles are destined for domestic consumption and half for export to countries where the Ethiopian diaspora have settled, though 26 000 have already been snapped up by a Chinese buyer.

Lab equipment for testing wine is pictured at the Castel winery outside the town of Ziway, central Ethiopia. (Pic: AFP)

Although Castel does not expect its Ethiopian wine business to make a profit until 2016, it hopes to more than double production to 3-million bottles a year. Though Ethiopia is better known for its production of another drink, coffee, Castel says the African country has the potential to rival the continent’s main wine producer, South Africa.

“It’s not that difficult because the climate is good and it’s not too hot,” Castel’s Ethiopia site manager, Olivier Spillebout, told Agence France-Presse. “Exports are small now, but year after year they will grow.”

The company has produced a better quality wine called Rift Valley, selling in Ethiopia for the equivalent of €7 (£5.50) and a grape-mix wine called Acacia, retailing at the equivalent of €5.

It is not the first wine to be commercially produced in Ethiopia. Vineyards established near Addis Ababa and in the south-east by Italian troops who occupied part of the country from 1936 to 1941 were later nationalised, then privatised, and are now run by Awash Winery, which boasts Live Aid founder Bob Geldof as a director.

Landscape perfect for grape growing
Wine experts say parts of Ethiopia’s diverse landscape, which include high plateaux and verdant valleys as well as six climatic zones, are perfect for grape growing.

Pierre Castel, the billionaire founder of the family-run group, could see the potential in the sandy Ethiopian soil, the short rainy season, cheap land and equally cheap and abundant labour for wine production. The Castel company had been producing beer in Ethiopia since 1998 after buying the state-owned brewery called St-Georges.

After striking a deal with the Ethiopian government in 2007, Castel immediately dispatched the company’s best French experts who spent seven months looking for areas for the vineyards.

They finally chose a site 160km to the south of the capital, near the town of Ziway, where 750 000 vines, brought from Bordeaux, were planted over 125 hectares by 750 local workers. Merlot, syrah and cabernet sauvignon grapes were chosen for the reds that make up 90% of Castel’s Rift Valley production, and chardonnay grapes for the white wines.

Women pick grapes at the vineyard of the Castel winery outside the town of Ziway, central Ethiopia. (Pic: AFP)

A member of the Castel team, who did not want to be named, told the Guardian the aim of the company’s “considerable investment” in the Ethiopian vineyards was to produce a wine of international quality.

While there had been several grape harvests since 2007, this was the first time the company had bottled the wine produced.

“We have used the same savoir faire we used on our French vineyards and as we do on those in Morocco and Tunisia, to produce this Ethiopian wine,” he said. “Our objective is to produce a wine worthy of international standards so we preferred to have multiple trials before engaging in the process of commercialising the wine.”

He said the wine produced was “aromatic and fruity”, with a pleasant, middle-of-the-road taste.

A delighted Ahmed Abtew, the Ethiopian industry minister, said in a recent interview: “People who live outside Ethiopia remember the drought a decade ago, but when they see a wine labelled ‘Made in Ethiopia’ … their whole attitude immediately changes.”

Growing grapes in the Horn of Africa is not, however, without its hazards and French winemakers lament their vines being devastated by disease and a series of catastrophic hailstorms.

Castel’s Ethiopian vineyards are also surrounded by a two-metre-wide trench to deter pythons, hippopotamuses and hyenas.

11 years ago

Open letter to the anti-TV brigade and my Nollywood people

A black 4 x4 rolls down a driveway to the sound of D’banj’s Oliver Twist and stops outside the palatial triple storey residence. The cast’s names unfold: Desmond Eliott. Rita Dominic. Mike Ezuruonye. The driver turns off the engine. As he opens the car door, D’banj declares:

I have a confession
See, I like Beyonce!
I like Rihanna, she dey mek me go gaga
I like Omotola, cos people like her….
…Oliver, Oliver Twist!

The young man — played by Mike Ezuruonye — steps out of the car. With calculated chill, he adjusts his trendy aviator sunglasses. The camera zooms in on the Gucci logo, then lingers on the trendy haircut that would get a nod of approval from the Kinshasa’s sapeurs; those gentlemen whose renowned stylishness is encoded in their very name: Societe des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elegantes (Society of Ambience-Makers and Elegant People). A beautiful young woman in impossibly high heels emerges from the passenger side, as D’banj declares his liking for Genevieve. Her makeup alone is worthy of a Vogue magazine cover. The man puts his hand around her waist, and looks into her eyes with a loving enchantment that would be perfect for a John Legend video. The couple walks into the opulent lounge, boasting the requisite plush lounge suite, thick carpets, huge flat-screen TV, and artworks on the walls. Seated alone is a well-dressed older woman, her turquoise head-wrap intricately folded like an origami. “Good-morning mama,” the young man greets cheerfully, arm still around his lover. The camera zooms in on the origami head, as she gives him ‘The Look.’ We sit back and wait, knowing what is coming seconds before it is delivered: the multi-syllabic Nolly-sneer….

* * *

Hi. My name is Grace and I own a TV.

As a lapsed Catholic, I know a thing or two about confessions. You know what they say: Catholic guilt, like Catholic marriage, is truly a for-better-or-worse situation. You can take the Catholic out of mass but you cannot take the guilt out of the Catholic. So, like D’Banj, I have a confession to make: I watch the news and sports, but my main TV viewing diet is soapies and Nollyflicks. Yes, including 7 de Laan, Rhythm City and Nollyflicks with titles like Adam’s Apples and Daughters of Eve. I realise this is a dangerous confession for a wannabe Kleva Black, because we are supposed to have our noses perpetually buried in Slavoj Žižek’s or Cornel West’s latest thoughts, as fantastic jazz plays in the background. Naturally, we are not supposed to know who Sarkodie is; never mind the latest ghetto kids’ choreography of Ugandan hitmaker Eddy Kenzo’s Jambolee. And we definitely aren’t supposed to be pondering how to transcribe that trademark Nollywood sneer-and-click combo, which has inspired an entire range of memes.

Look, in my defence, in between trying out these Jambolee moves and Nollywood sneer-clicks, I read books and listen to jazz, in the interests of keeping peace with the jazz snobs and literati in my life. I am currently bonding with Ahmad Jamal and reading Kenyan Caine Prize winner Yvonne Owuor’s Dust. But I remain guilty of owning and watching a TV. This is a serious indiscretion, which might explain why a few second dates never materialised in my dating past. Perhaps I should not have betrayed such enthusiastic knowledge of Jason Malinga’s marital problems on Generations, or such passionate irritation at Gita McGregor’s perpetual scheming on 7 de Laan. Or maybe it was my sincere puzzlement at the murder mystery in Thathe, implicating the Great Warthog of Luonde, He-Who-Says-Die-and-I-Perish.

While we are at it, what’s the deal with the duplication of stories across South African soapies? I see now the missing Malaysian plane that first resurfaced on Rhythm City with Siyabonga Twala’s stylish character, DH Radebe’s private jet disappearing, has now reappeared and disappeared again on Isidingo. Yes, it is another stylish black businessman’s private jet: Vusi Kunene as Jefferson Sibeko, disappeared somewhere off the Angolan coastline. I am guessing the scriptwriters don’t know this, but some of us are equal-opportunity viewers (to borrow a phrase from my friend who once defended his polyamorous tendencies by explaining that he always made it clear to the women in his life that he was an equal-opportunity lover). Unlike my bank which recently demanded financial monogamy from me, by declaring they wouldn’t handle some of my transactions unless I stopped ‘seeing’ my other bank; some of us have dispensed with LSM monogamy, and we are now equal-opportunity viewers who gallivant across SABC and DStv’s audience Bantustans. And I can tell you this much: when you start on an amnesia and stolen identity story-line in Diepkloof at 18h30, by the time you get to the Thathe flavour of this amnesia on Muvhango at 21h20, you have just about had it with the amnesia angle, in all its manifestations. While we are at it, I am this close to organising a Red October campaign in protest against Paula van der Lecq’s (Diaan Lawrenson) use of the word ‘phantasmagoris’ on 7 de Laan, and KK Mulaudzi’s trying-too-hard-to-be-hardcore robotic laughter on Muvhango.

But I must distance myself from The Bold and the Beautiful. There is a way in which if you started watching The Bold from episode one, when you were six sizes smaller, the sight of Brooke Logan Jones Forrester (x7) walking down the aisle with her daughter’s husband’s father for the umpteenth time is harmful to your health. It is not so much the many tribes of primary, secondary and tertiary incest involved, but the deep shame that you ever nursed a committed teenage crush on Ridge Forester. As did half your school. The other half was busy ogling the NBA’s Dennis Rodman and his peroxide-blond head. I wasn’t a Rodman fan, but I supported the San Antonio Spurs with the same passion I now dedicate to the Super Eagles of Nigeria, the Ghana Black Stars, the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon, the Desert Foxes of Algeria and the Elephants of Côte d’Ivoire. What? Too many teams? No, friend. When it comes to soccer, I am an equal-opportunity Pan-African. Sure, I got that memo about all my Foxes, Eagles, Elephants, Lions and Stars being whipped out of Brazil before they even finished unpacking. This, despite the fact that many of Europe’s soccer leagues would have a crisis of SA platinum-belt proportions if all their players of African descent decided to go on a prolonged strike. Like all matters Pan-African, supporting African soccer is not for part-time Africans. It takes the loyalty of an Arsenal or Bafana fan, and the patience of biblical Job.

So, you can see why I have no energy for an anti-TV brigade which has somehow convinced itself that not having a TV makes it a special breed of really clever, studious, intellectual people. I am generally able to ignore this lot with the same indifference I reserve for those who think my Christianity is questionable because their limited imagination cannot process the idea of a dedicated Christian who does not go to church and is partial to Windhoek lager. What I can’t ignore though, are people who build careers studying popular culture or producing content for these platforms while simultaneously holding TV, radio, and magazines in such contempt. What brand of dishonest schizophrenia is this?

But I digress. The moral of this open letter is really an appeal to my people in Nollywood. Listen: That situation of sunglasses indoors? E no fine oo. E shady. Abeg, mek we stop this nah.

Sincerely,

A TV-owning equal-opportunity Nolly-fan

Grace A. Musila is a Kenyan who studied in South Africa.

11 years ago

Dear White People

A ‘satire about being a black face in a white place’, Dear White People follows a group of African American students as they navigate campus life and relationships in a predominantly white college. Written, directed and produced by Justin Simien, it won the Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Talent at the Sundance Film Festival.

“Seeming to draw equal measures of inspiration from Whit Stillman and Spike Lee, but with his own tart, elegant sensibility very much in control, Simien evokes familiar campus stereotypes only to smash them and rearrange the pieces,” a review in the New York Times reads.

Dear White People will be released on October 17.

11 years ago

Ethiopia’s child brides see marriage as key to jobs abroad – study

Ethiopian immigrants returning from Saudi Arabia arrive at Addis Ababa’s Bole International Airport on December 10 2013. Each year, thousands of Ethiopians facing harsh economic realities at home seek work in the Middle East, but many face abuse, low pay and discrimination. (Pic: AFP)

Up a bumpy, winding dirt track in the mountains of northern Ethiopia, past two bulls chewing pasture and a rondavel built from sticks and cow dung, is the modest home of Lubaba Abdella, its mudbrick walls reinforced by eucalyptus bark and topped by a corrugated roof.

Abdella has lived a lifetime, yet she is still in her teens. She dropped out of school, married, divorced three months later and emigrated illegally so she could cook and clean for a family in Saudi Arabia, earning money to support her parents and eight siblings. Now she is home and back to square one.

Three-quarters of girls in the Ethiopian region of Amhara become child brides like Abdella, according to the London-based Overseas Development Institute. Many also join the so-called “maid trade”: up to 1 500 girls and women leave the east African country each day to become domestic workers in the Middle East. A study has shown for the first time how these pernicious trends feed off each other.

In Ethiopia’s Muslim communities it is often deeply shameful or “sinful” for girls to remain unmarried after they begin menstruating, notes the ODI. But once girls are married and sexually initiated, parents consider their social and religious obligations complete.

The thinktank’s researchers in Amhara found it was therefore becoming common for parents to insist on marriage followed by a swift divorce so that their daughter was free to migrate and send her earnings home to her parents, not her husband. The fact a girl had already been “deflowered” meant she was seen as less likely to be disgraced by foreign men. “It’s a question of virtue and virginity,” one local researcher said. “Better to lose it in a dignified way.”

Girl Summit
The findings are being released ahead of the first Girl Summit, hosted by the British government and Unicef on Tuesday with the stated aim of ending female genital mutilation and child marriage within a generation. The ODI will warn that parents who see their daughters as commodities are pushing record numbers of girls into abusive early marriages. Some 39 000 child brides marry every day – 14 million a year – often against their will. Amhara has Ethiopia’s lowest average marriage age – 14.7 years – and one of its highest illiteracy rates.

Abdella, now 19, illustrates the constrained choices and warped pragmatism that many here face. She was 16 when she dropped out of school for an arranged marriage to a 22-year-old. It lasted only three months. “He used to hit her,” said Abdella’s mother, Zeyneba Seid. “They didn’t like each other so divorce was inevitable.”

It was hastened when Abdella’s husband wanted to seek work abroad. Speaking Amharic through an interpreter, she recalled: “If a man migrates alone to the Middle East, he will cheat on you. But it’s difficult to migrate with your husband and still support your family. That’s why I wanted a divorce.”

Nevertheless, Abdella believed even her short-lived marriage would be an advantage overseas. “I was told I’m young and it’s better if I know what marriage is before migrating. People in the Middle East might force us to sleep with them. If a girl has been married and goes to Saudi and is raped, it’s not as bad as for one who’s single. If she’s single and bears a child, it’s really difficult to come back here. But if she’s been married, it’s OK.”

The ODI found that some girls also choose to migrate, against their parents’ wishes, out of a sense of filial piety that tends to be weaker in boys. Abdella says it was her own decision because her family was in poverty, farming just one hectare of land. Notably she has an elder brother who is still at school. “He was asked to migrate but he wanted to continue his education, so I had to go and earn. I wanted my family to be better off.”

For the residents of Hara, a remote mountain village where the air fills with birdsong, cocks crowing and the Muslim call to prayer, and the streets with bajajs (motorised three-wheeled rickshaws), camels and boys herding goats, Saudi Arabia offers an alluring promise of riches just as America once did to Europe’s huddled masses. The results can be seen in a series of neat concrete houses with colourful paintwork, barred windows and a sprinkling of satellite dishes that have sprung up in the past five years, funded by wages from the east. Owning a corrugated roof is a status symbol here. For those still living in older houses made from mud and thatch there is the perpetual struggle of keeping up with the Joneses.

“Seeing the houses that were built makes you wish you’d migrated,” said Abdella, who sleeps with her family on the floor of two cramped rooms. “We have a lot of needs: clothes, shoes. Most of the time we cannot afford them, whereas people in Saudi had money.”

Working in Saudi Arabia
It is now illegal under Ethiopian law for anyone under 18 to migrate to work but Abdella, like thousands of others, got a passport by using a fake ID and lying to the authorities that she was 27. The entire process cost 15 000 birr (£445). She cooked, cleaned and washed clothes for a Saudi couple and their three children and was paid 800 riyals (£125) a month, paying off the debt and earning enough for her family to be connected to electricity and water and cover food bills.

The job came to an end after 20 months when Saudi Arabia carried out a mass deportation of illegal foreign workers. “I’m doing nothing at the moment,” sighed Abdella as two chickens scampered across the house’s dirt floor. “Seeing my family suffering here, I don’t want to remarry, I just want to support my family. I want to go back to the Middle East. There’s no other option because the wage is really low here.

“My younger sister, who’s 15, is planning to go. I advise her to because she can earn more and do whatever she wants. But she would have to marry first – it’s our custom.”

The pattern of marriage and divorce is becoming increasingly common. Aesha Mohammed (16) recently married a man six years her senior, only to divorce after two months because she refused to quit school. Her elder sister also married and divorced, then migrated to work in Saudi Arabia. Mohammed, who wants to become a doctor, said: “Sometimes when I joke with her, ‘I want to drop out of school and come to Saudi’, she says no, stay in school because it’s hard there. There is a lot of work and it’s a burden.”

The journey to get there can also be treacherous. For some it involves more than a week on foot to Djibouti, then a six-hour boat ride to Yemen after dark, followed by 15 to 20 days travelling by road to Saudi Arabia. Habtam Yiman (24) who married aged 12 and has married twice since, said she was detained in Yemen because officials did not believe she had a sponsor. “They check your blood type and take some of it for the hospital,” she said. “I saw a man whose blood was completely drained out of him and he was left to die.”

Yet still thousands are pouring in for the sake of their families. The ODI, which hosted a field visit by the Guardian last week, reports that some girls go because they “feel inferiority” and have been “seduced by the glamorous stories” told by illegal brokers. The fate that awaits them can include overwork, non-payment, social isolation and abuse.

When Zemzem Damene set off to work in Kuwait, she was a normal girl who wanted to earn money and be like her friends. Today she is confused, withdrawn and virtually mute, a stranger to her own family. Something happened to Damene in Kuwait and no one knows exactly what.

As the 20-year-old peered nervously from under her veil and picked at her hand, her mother, Engocha Sete, recalled: “She wanted to go and I couldn’t stop her. She said her friends went to the Middle East and brought home shiny objects. She wanted that and she had to have what she wished for.”

Her father, Damene Alemu, added: “I was sad she wanted to go. I asked her to marry here but she said, ‘You don’t have a lot of money to marry me off, it’s not logical.’ Marriage is an expensive thing for the father, with buying clothes, organising a party, paying two months of utilities. She said it’s best that she go off to the Middle East.”

But the plan backfired and Damene actually lost more money than she made, forcing the family to sell cattle. According to Alemu, his daughter’s first employer took all the money she had and even the clothes she brought from home, and that was the start of her decline. “She went to a hospital in Addis Ababa but they didn’t tell us what the problem was, only that it’s a mental illness.”

Damene’s mother added pensively: “She doesn’t do anything now. She doesn’t speak much. Most of the time she sleeps. Now she’s sick, there’s nobody wants to marry her. If she gets better, we’d like her to get married. But because she’s lost so much, the only thing she talks about is money.”