Year: 2014

Culture clash over tribal wife-swapping in Namibia

Wife-swapping among Namibia’s nomadic tribes has been practised for generations but a legislator’s call to enshrine it in law has stirred debate about women’s rights and tradition in modern society.

The practice is more of a gentlemen’s agreement where friends can have sex with each others’ wives with no strings attached.

Swinging with an African tribal touch? Or “rape”, as some critics see it.

The wives have little say in the matter, according to those who denounce the custom as both abusive and risky in a country with one of the world’s highest HIV and Aids rates.

But the Ovahimba and Ovazemba tribes, based mainly in this southern African country’s arid north, contend their age-old custom strengthens friendships and prevents promiscuity.

“It’s a culture that gives us unity and friendship,” said Kazeongere Tjeundo, a lawmaker and deputy president of the opposition Democratic Turnhalle Alliance of Namibia.

“It’s up to you to choose (among) your mates who you like the most … to allow him to sleep with your wife,” said Tjeundo, a member of the Ovahimba ethnic group.

Concerned that HIV and Aids could be used as an excuse to stop the ancient tradition, he and others are suggesting regulations be adopted to ensure “good practice”.

Tjeundo said he plans to propose a wife-swapping law, following a November legislative poll when he is tipped for re-election.

Known as “okujepisa omukazendu” – which loosely means “offering a wife to a guest” – the practice is little known outside these reclusive communities, whose population is estimated at 86 000.

Mainly found in the northwestern Kunene region near the Angolan border, the tribes are largely isolated from the rest of the country. They have resisted the trappings of modern life, keep livestock, live off the land and practice ancestral worship.

A woman from the Ovahimba tribe. (Pic: Flickr / Martha de Jong-Lantink)

Many still reside in pole-and-mud huts and both men and women go bare-chested.

The women wear short skirts of goat skin, carved iron and cowshell jewellery and cover their braided locks in thick red ochre paste, which they also rub on their skin as a sun screen.

Unlike any modern-day swinging, tribal members make no random draw to pair couples. They meet in their own homes, while the husband or wife of the other party is banished to a separate hut during the exchange.

‘Not benefiting women’
Women cannot object to sleeping with a man chosen by their husbands, a point that angers rights activists like Rosa Namises who says the custom is tantamount to rape and “rape is illegal”.

“That practice is not benefiting women but men who want to control their partners,” said Namises, a former lawmaker who heads a non-governmental organisation called Woman Solidarity Namibia.

Other groups like Namibia’s Legal Assistance Centre (LAC), a public interest law firm that vows to protect the rights of all Namibians, have challenged its continued existence in a country where 18.2% of the 2.1-million residents have HIV, according to national statistics.

“It’s a practice that puts women at health risk,” said Amon Ngavetene, who is in charge of LAC’s Aids project. He contends that most women are opposed to the practice and would want it abolished.

But 40-year-old Kambapira Mutumbo is completely comfortable with the custom and has been asked to sleep with her husband’s friends.

“I did it this year,” she said, and “I have no problem with the arrangement.”

“It’s good because its part of our culture, why should we change it?” she added.

Cloudina Venaani, programme analyst with the United Nations Development Programme office in Namibia, is adamant that women only tolerate it because they are afraid of defying their husbands.

Traditionalists, however, insist the custom does not violate the rights of women, noting that women are also free to choose partners for their husbands – even if this rarely happens in practice.

Like opposition lawmaker Tjeundohe, Uziruapi Tjavara, chief of the Otjikaoko Traditional Authority in the Kunene region, wants the custom to continue but paired with education on HIV.

Details, however, are still vague.

“We just need to research more on how the practice can be regulated,” said Tjeundohe.

Shinovene Immanuel for AFP

11 years ago

Growing up in war – the DRC’s child soldiers

When he was seven Dikembe Muamba* became a soldier on the orders of his uncle, a chief in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) North Kivu Province.

“I stole my first gun, when I was 10. It was a flintlock. By the time I became a captain at 14, I had many guns. I led 50 people, both children and adults. There were about 30 children in the unit. The youngest was 10,” Muamba, now 17, told IRIN.

When IRIN met him at one of the “half-way houses” for former child soldiers in the town of Kiwanja in Rutshuru Territory, Muamba was enjoying his first month of “comfort” in a basic brick and mortar house after a decade of bush living.

“I am still angry with my uncle. Those 10 years feel like a waste of a life,” he said. “It was very difficult. There was no school. I had only completed two years of schooling [before being forced into child soldiering].”

The “half-way house” – which provides counselling, parental tracing services and tutoring in preparation for a return to school – is run by mother-of-nine Afiya Rehema*. Her own children are aged 7-19 and in the past nine years she has cared for more than 50 former child soldiers.

This boy was 11-years-old when he became a child soldier with an armed group. (Pic: IRIN / Guy Oliver)

“At the moment there are children from Mai-Mai Nyatura, FDLR [Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda] and Pareco [Alliance of Resistant Congolese Patriots] staying here. When they arrive some can be disrespectful, but they soon become like other children. There has never been any violence towards me,” she said. “Only one ever stole, and then left.”

“I do get some financial support [from local NGO Union pour la paix et la promotion des droits de l’enfant au Congo (Updeco)]. But I do this as a parent. Maybe one of my kids will be taken by an army. And if that happens I hope another parent will be there to look after my child [if he/she escapes from an armed group].”

Muamba spent his first few years as his uncle’s bodyguard before being enlisted into Pareco, which emerged in 2007 from a variety of diverse North Kivu communities, including Hunde, Hutu, Nande, Nyanga, and Tembo.

With a barely discernable pencil moustache indicating the onset of adulthood, he knows exactly how many battles he has fought and replies without hesitation: “It was 45, but I don’t know how many people I killed… The youngest was a girl about six. She was shooting at me.”

Muamba was wounded twice during his decade as a child soldier.

“The first battle I fought in was against the FDLR [an anti-Rwandan armed group that had an informal alliance with Pareco]. I fought against ADF-Nalu [Allied Democratic Forces – an Islamist armed group opposed to the neighbouring Ugandan government] in Beni, and M23 [23 March Movement, an alleged Rwandan proxy armed group].”

In the end, it was his rank and a chance meeting with members of a local child activist NGO that allowed him to walk away from soldiering.

“As a captain, I was free to go where ever I wanted. By chance in Lubero, I met people from Updeco. They told me they could give me demobilisation papers and then I could leave Pareco forever,” he said.

A girl sergeant’s testimony
Eshe Makemba* (17) rose to the rank of sergeant in the FDLR, but enjoyed no such freedom of movement. Being “discriminated” against for being a Congolese national by the FDLR’s Rwandan officers prompted her desertion, she says. “I could not speak out as they told me Congolese were no good.”

After seven years as a soldier for the armed group she ran for two days through the forest evading a search party, which she says would have executed her had she been caught.

She was 10 when she and four other girls were kidnapped near Kisharo, in Rutshuru Territory, by the FDLR. She was the youngest of the captives and the only one to survive a river crossing shortly after her abduction. She then did three months of military training.

“I stole and killed people for nothing… killing people was my way of saving my life,” she told IRIN. She was involved in operations against Ntabo Ntaberi Sheka’s Ndumba Defence of Congo (NDC) and M23. At other times she was raiding farms and homesteads.

Four months after her escape and dressed in her only set of clothes, the former child soldier said she did not think about her time with the FDLR, but acknowledged that the gun she carried gave her access to “material [plundered goods]”.

“I felt OK after the battle. I enjoyed the battle because I knew that afterwards there would be clothes, money and food,” Makemba said.

“One day I was with a group [of FDLR soldiers] that raped a woman. But I did nothing. I did not fear being raped as I had a gun and I could defend myself. But I could not do anything to stop the rape [of the woman],”she said.

Call for effective prosecutions
An October 2013 report by the UN Stabilisation Mission in the DRC (Monusco) entitled Child Recruitment by Armed Groups in DRC From January 2012 to August 2013, said in the past five years about 10 000 children had been separated from armed groups, but in the period under review nearly a 1 000 more were recruited and the use of children by more than 25 armed groups remained “systemic”.

Three armed groups, the FDLR, Nyatura and M23 accounted for about half of the child recruitment in the review period.

The International Criminal Court’s 2012 conviction of Union des Patriotes Congolais (UPC) militia leader Thomas Lubanga for conscripting child soldiers in northeastern DRC’s Ituri region between 2002 and 2003 “is important, because it sends a strong signal that those who recruit and use children will be held accountable,” Richard Clarke, director of London-based NGO Child Soldiers International, told IRIN.

“But it needs to be complemented with effective investigations and prosecutions at the national level in order to address impunity for these crimes,” he said.

Clarke said other strategies to prevent the practice included “clear military orders” prohibiting recruitment of children; “strengthening recruitment procedures through the development of age verification methods; training members of the armed forces on child rights and child protection principles; establishing child protection structures inside the military [and] allowing child protection agencies to visit military sites to verify that no children have been unlawfully enlisted.”

Patrice Munga*, a civil society activist based in Tongo, in Rutshuru Territory, told IRIN the FDLR recently began recruiting “really young [under 15] children”.

He said the FDLR were not forcing the children into its ranks, but conducting “sensitisation” at schools in the village “telling them the FDLR is good”, and about 20 volunteered for the armed group between November and December 2013.

He said the boys returned after a few weeks to Tongo with AK-47 assault rifles. He saw one of the child soldiers “showing other children [in the village] how to use his gun and an FARDC soldier walked by them and said ‘So you are a soldier too.'”

Zeka Kabongo* (13) has the body size of a seven-year-old. During the interview he constantly brushes the wooden arm of a chair, his legs curled beneath him.

Abducted with three other boys at noon in Lubero by four gunmen he spent two years as a bodyguard to Kise, the secretary to General Kakule Sikula Lafontaine’s Union des Patriotes Congolais pour la Paix (UPCP).

Kabongo said Lafontaine “told us we were fighting for our part of the country, which the government was refusing to give us”.

He says he “only killed one person” during his time with the armed group and that was during a raid on a homestead by five of the UPCP’s children in search of food.

“We entered the home and asked the wife where her husband was. But the wife would not say. So we got together and decided to kill her [with knives]. When we got back to the group we told Lafontaine what we had done. He told us we ‘had done a good thing’.”

*Not their real names

11 years ago

Zimbabwe: State paternalism and the policing of women’s bodies

Recently, a Kenyan friend and I had a long conversation about the objectification of women’s bodies in our respective countries, and the role of popular culture therein. As with all cultural industries, there are many avenues for such sexist expressions. But we eventually got stuck on the music sector, and two offerings in particular.

Hers was a song, Fundamentals, by a Kenyan musician known as Ken wa Maria. In the song, he points at the woman he is cuddling up to – even pointing to her nether regions at some point – and states quite authoritatively:

“These are the things,

These are my things,

These are your things,

These are the fundamentals.”

Apparently her body and its composite elements are “the things”, and these things are his before they are hers, or anyone else’s. These are the fundamentals!

In turn, I shared a Zimbabwean song from the late 90s. Called Special Meat (need I really say more?!), the singer engages in Job-like wailing as he exhorts the listener to help him with locating some ‘special meat’. Yes, special meat, like the kind you go into a butchery to buy.

There is a hilarity about these songs. As we watched and shared them online, we couldn’t help but laugh; the sort of laugh that finds these artefacts ridiculous and incomprehensible, and yet pervasively and dangerously catchy.

I am thinking of this interaction for a few reasons. Chief among them being an equally ridiculous and incomprehensible public notice featured in one of Zimbabwe’s main newspapers last week.

Nestled on the last page of the business section of The Herald of Wednesday March 26 is a notice – from the Registrar General – which advises that there are “… some foreigners particularly Asians who masquerade as Zimbabweans whilst holding fraudulently acquired Zimbabwean documents…” and that “Some of them contract marriages with our local women.” Members of the public are therefore duly advised to “thoroughly scrutinize documents of all foreigners who are intending to marry Zimbabwean women”. Chiefs and village heads are also called upon to be “extremely vigilant”.

(Pic: Fungai Machirori)

The xenophobic sentiment is enough to rile one up. But the authority of possession in referring to Zimbabwe’s women as a commodity of the state is disparaging and infuriating, to say the least.

The same Registrar General’s office, with Tobaiwa Mudede at its helm, has been the cause of much consternation to Zimbabwean mothers. The Guardianship of Minors Act, a piece of legislation granting guardianship rights and decision-making authority to a child’s father, has seen many mothers struggle to get basic documentation, such as passports, for their children owing to the fact that the Registrar General and his office have been known to make demands that the child’s father be physically present to sign accompanying forms on behalf of the child. A mother’s authority has not been deemed adequate.

The adoption of Zimbabwe’s new Constitution, however, now prohibits discrimination between men and women in terms of guardianship of children. Ironically, voting in this constitutional process took place a year ago in March. And yet a year later, we have notices from the same Registrar’s office reminding us that women are incapable of decision-making of any sort and are in desperate need of monitoring and surveillance; for our own good, of course.

This is not new, however. Zimbabwe’s Legal Age of Majority Act, passed into law in 1982, meant that for two years after Zimbabwe’s independence, women over the age of 18 were regarded as minors in issues such voting and ownership of property. In the same era, an operation to clear the streets of the capital city, Harare, of sex workers and vagrants was brought into force by the state. During this period, the government invoked emergency powers to detain women deemed to be ‘suspicious’’ At that time, over 6 000 women, many of whom were not part of the target group (for example, teachers, nurses and domestic workers), are thought to have been detained and/or arrested.

Walking in the suburb of the Avenues, sometimes nicknamed the red light district of Harare, after dark often still earns a woman an encounter with the police. And walking through town in a mini skirt – or any other form of clothing deemed inappropriate – still leads to women being publicly undressed and heckled.

State control is still set to full volume regardless of the raft of laws that seem to suggest otherwise.

Landmark ruling
The second reason I think of my interaction with my Kenyan friend is Mildred Mapingure who, in a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe last week, has had her appeal for compensation for a 2006 rape – that resulted in the birth of a child – partially allowed.

Mapingure is said to have sought emergency contraception within 72 hours of the rape to prevent pregnancy. The police, however, delayed her application. Furthermore, the doctor overseeing the rape case is reported to have been unclear about the difference between a termination of pregnancy and emergency contraception.

While Mapingure’s pregnancy could have been avoided altogether, continual mishandling of her case meant that she was unable to have a medical abortion which is supposed to be provided for victims of rape as per the nation’s Termination of Pregnancy Act.

Indeed, Mapingure’s case is a watershed in the fight for justice, but it is also a chilling reminder of how the state continues to fail women. Whatever peace Mapingure may have made with the ordeal she has had to endure, the fact remains that the state’s lack of urgency and professionalism deprived this women governance over her body, and her future.

With international women’s month coming to an end yesterday, I am angered by the state’s continuing inability to handle women’s issues with the respect and fairness that they deserve.

These instances show a lack of confidence in women’s abilities to make reasoned decisions about their lives and aspirations, orienting our role in society to that of children. From the state and its paternalism to the sexist but body-jolting music we listen to, women are continually relegated to being viewed as objects and subjects.

April dawns today. On April 18, Zimbabwe clocks another year of independence.

Whose independence it is not, though, remains quite clear.

Fungai Machirori is a blogger, editor, poet and researcher. She runs Zimbabwe’s first web-based platform for women, Her Zimbabwe, and is an advocate for using social media for consciousness-building among Zimbabweans. Connect with her on Twitter.

11 years ago

Egypt’s pork farmers get their sizzle back

The overthrow of Mohamed Morsi last year did little to help Egypt’s economy. But for the butchers and pig breeders of the slums around Cairo, it has been an unexpected fillip.

Five months ago, pork was so scarce in Cairo that a butcher like Bishoy Samir sold pig meat just twice a month. Now Samir reckons he sells an entire pig’s worth of pork every day.

Five years ago, the Egyptian government culled most of Egypt’s pig population, leaving Samir’s family with nothing to serve. “It was very rare to find something to cook,” Samir says. “We used to work one week on, one week off.” But five months ago things started to pick up, and “now we’re preparing one pig a day – and others are doing two or three.”

Pork’s comeback began slowly after the 2011 revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak, when some farmers began to breed tiny herds of pigs again and hid them in their basements. But the revival was limited until the fall of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood last July. Pig farming is still illegal, but here and there smaller-scale breeders say they are now more brazenly rebuilding a process that was decimated in 2009.

“Under Morsi, everyone was afraid – people hid the fact we had pigs as they feared the government would come to kill them,” says Sayeed, another pork butcher in Cairo, who rears a now-expanding herd on the roof of his house in the east Cairo slum of Manshiyet Nasr.

“But after Morsi left, that was that – it was freedom,” says Sayeed. “Now the government is happy acting like they don’t know there are pigs here.”

Pigs piled up in the back of a truck before getting culled and buried on the outskirts of Cairo on May 14 2009. (Pic: AFP)

Today, there are 50 000 to 80 000 pigs in Manshiyet Nasr, estimates Ezzat Naem, the head of the local workers’ union – far fewer than the 350 000 in 2009, but double or triple last year’s figure. A year ago, Samir’s family was one of just two or three butchers who secretly grilled pork in Manshiyet Nasr, known internationally as Garbage City. Now locals say there are a dozen or so, as more residents again turn parts of their homes into makeshift pig sties. Outside space is limited, so the swine live on the roof, or in converted bedrooms.

In 2009, government workers killed Egypt’s pigs in brutal fashion – many of them buried alive in the desert, and covered in acid. Ostensibly, it was to ward off swine flu, then considered a major threat. But World Health Organisation officials said the pigs had nothing to do with the spread of the disease, leading many of Egypt’s Coptic Christians – who form about 10% of the population and who run the pork industry – to view the cull as another bid to marginalise their minority.

They felt victimised for economic as well as social reasons. The Christians of Manshiyet Nasr and half-a-dozen other Cairo slums are collectively known as the Zabaleen, or “garbage people”. They collect and recycle about two-thirds of the 15 000 tonnes of rubbish that Cairo generates daily – and once fed the organic waste to their pigs. But that ended with the cull.

“It was revenge on the Christians of Egypt,” claims Father Barsoum Barsoum, a Coptic priest. This feeling of alienation rose under Morsi, when policemen and vigilantes besieged Egypt’s largest cathedral and fired teargas over the walls.

It was felt the president had done little to condemn the violence. “Morsi didn’t care about the country – he just cared about his group,” argues Abu John, who used to own one of the largest pig herds in Manshiyet Nasr, as well as a chain of butchers. “As Christians, we felt like we couldn’t live in Egypt.”

Now Abu John feels more at ease and is breeding more pigs again – 10 times more than last year, he says.

The local price of pork reflects this rise. A kilogram of pork at a nearby butchers costs about 50 Egyptian pounds (£4.30) down from E£70 last year (though still higher than the £20 it would have cost five years ago). “In the past four to six months, people have realised that it’s more profitable again,” says Ezzat Naem, the union leader and head of the Spirit of Youth, a local non-governmental organisation.

But for the moment, the renaissance remains limited to subsistence farmers in districts such as Manshiyet Nasr, where the influence of the government is weak. Egypt’s two pig slaughterhouses remain closed, and the men who once bred the country’s largest herds of pigs have refused to reopen their farms – and thereby spark a larger revival – while the practice is still illegal.

“If the government want to check on anyone, we’re the first on the list – so we don’t want to take the risk,” says Ihab Israil, whose family once owned Egypt’s largest pork business, but who are now reduced to importing mortadella. “I’m not going to start unless I get official documentation from the government. What we need is the slaughterhouses back.”

In other Zabaleen slums people are reluctant to talk about the pigs’ return. “No one here is slaughtering pigs,” says Barsoum, whose parish is on the other side of Cairo. “And of course I miss it. There’s nothing like barbecued pork.”

Patrick Kingsley for the Guardian

11 years ago

I am an African first

(Pic: Flickr / Pali_Nalu)

“Hi my name is Keith and I am African.”

This is how I choose to identify myself. Although I am Zimbabwean, Shona, black and Christian, I am an African first. I see myself as an intersecting set inside a Venn diagram. I am too diverse to be an isolated set.

As people, we have an innate desire to belong. First we belong to our families, then our friends, our religion for some, our tribes, and our countries. When Africa was first colonised it was divided and land was shared like pieces of cake. A people who had been living together without any borders were now separated. They were separated in an attempt to keep them from communicating and standing together against the coloniser. Today, after decades of claiming our independence, we still cling on to the physical and superficial boundaries that were meant to divide and conquer our ancestors.

The colonisers did not only divide us by physical boundaries, they separated us with anything that made us different. The Rwandese were separated by skin complexion, the Zimbabweans by language, the Kenyans by tribe, and the Nigerians by religion. Our differences were used against us as a method of oppressing us. We focused on identifying with our tribes and took pride in our own language. Because of that we did not have time to stand as one and say, “Hey brother, let’s kick out the oppressor!”

I fear is that my generation has not broken free of the chains of the oppressor. If a Nigerian and Kenyan are having a conversation in which the Kenyan says he likes to swim and the Nigerian asks if the Kenyan likes to run as well, the conversation tends to end with an air of animosity. People take offence or suddenly feel the urge to stand up and be patriotic when another African comments about stereotypes related to their country. We feel we have to represent our people.

I recently asked one of my Kenyan friends: “Would you be offended if I commented about the tribal violence that occurred during the post-election period?” He said yes – without even hearing my comment. However, if a non-Zimbabwean had asked me about Robert Mugabe and the situation in Zimbabwe, I would have reacted with equal hostility. But why? Are we all not Africans? Do we not all go through difficulties? Why would I feel a sense of hostility towards someone who wanted to share their opinion with a fellow African? I smiled and realised that our underlying problem as a community and as a people in society is that we want to hang on to the very things that hold us captive.

When I meet someone from Africa, they must tell me what country they come from. I would rather meet you and know your name and that you are African. The rest is irrelevant because by being African I know you understand how our parents will not hesitate to scold us, I know you understand the value of storytelling and vibrant African music. I know you understand the rot of corruption. Because you are African we become one. We are like puzzle pieces – different yet complementary.

I really hope people let go of mental barriers and borders because we will honestly never reach where we aspire to be if we keep reciting our passport nationalities. Tribes, languages and religions should not separate us. Instead, as Africans we should unite behind our diversity.

The more we keep fighting among ourselves the more easily those from outside can come and loot.

After reading Kwame Nkrumah’s Africa Must Unite, I believe his message showed true Pan-Africanism. Although his plan could have been improved, his fundamental aim of unity was nothing short of visionary. I was surprised when I heard my peers say how they hated the idea of a borderless Africa. The very people who wanted to change Africa and make a positive impact did not want free travel and trade in Africa. If we think as Tunisians, South Africans and Ivoirians then we will never be completely free. The day the white man convinced us that him being of a fairer skin meant that he was superior is the day black people became slaves.

We need to realise that by virtue of us being African, we ride in the same boat. GDPs may be different but as far as I know all countries on the African continent are developing countries. If we worked and traded more among ourselves maybe we would stop being beggars of aid, maybe we could actually put together our resources and pay our debts. The issue is that we have fallen into the trap of a ‘crab bucket mentality’.

Crabs are caught from the sea alive and put into buckets by fishermen. The fishermen do not bother closing the buckets or killing the crabs because if one crab tries to climb to the top and escape, the other crabs will pull it back in. Africans are like crabs in a bucket. We will forever be in a perpetual cycle of poverty if we keep pulling each other back instead of lifting each other up.

The economists and the realists will then step in and say that if we focus on improving ourselves we will inevitably improve the continent as a whole. Improving ourselves does not mean keeping what is ours tightly clenched in our fists, because ultimately we complement each other. I am proud of being a Zimbabwean, but I am African first. My roots stretch from Cape to Cairo.

Keith Tinotenda Simbarashe Mundangepfupfu is a student at the African Leadership Academy. He blogs at theblogwithnopurpose.wordpress.com. Connect with him on Twitter: @whiplash16