Hustle on a Mile is a short film by Bemigho Awala that presents a foray into life at the popular Mile 12 Market in Lagos.
Through the eyes of Sanni, a young secondary school leaver who picks soft tomatoes for sale, we experience the daily hustle in this bustling city market.
The movie touches on soft thematic strands like the dignity of labour, primordial survival instincts, and the pursuit of happiness.
Dynamic Africa is a multimedia curated 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.
Charismatic churches are on the rise in Botswana, with pastors promising miracles in the forms of successful marriages, work promotions, financial freedom, children for the barren – the list is endless. However, the government of Botswana has come out strongly against these “wolves in sheep’s clothing“, threatening to deport them for their antics.
The country is currently considering a new policy that will give foreign pastors 30-day permits reserved for visitors and tourists instead of the usual 5-year permits allocated to them. In cases where foreign pastors apply for licences to operate their churches, they must have more than 250 listed congregants.
As reported in the Midweek Sun, former minister of labour and home affairs Peter Siele and Ntlo ya Dikgosi deputy chairperson Kgosi Lotlamoreng II started a campaign to curtail foreign pastors in 2010 and 2011 over concerns that they are are defrauding Batswana of their hard-earned money.
Some pastors have been accused of drug dealing, sponging money off locals, power struggles within their churches, failure to submit annual tax returns and preaching ill about President Ian Khama, which is akin to a crime in Botswana – you just don’t speak badly about the president!
Nigerian Prophet Peter Bollaward who was the helm of the Glory of the Latter Ministries in Gaborone was deported on February 8 after the ministry of labour and home affairs declared him a ‘prohibited immigrant’. He was reportedly detained for a few days before his deportation and questioned about the several millions in his ministry’s account and the fleet of expensive cars he drove.
In 2011 the flamboyant Pastor Frances Sakufiwa of Zambia, who ran the New Seasons Ministries and lived in Botswana for 15 years, was deported under a presidential order. He was surrounded by controversy, mostly related to his roving eye. It’s alleged that the handsome, charming and married pastor was a womaniser who changed women as often as one changes underwear. A few days after he was booted out of the country, a group of women reportedly pleaded with the president to reverse his decision and allow Sakufiwa back into Botswana, claiming he was “highly anointed”.
However, other sources claim the pastor was sent packing from Botswana because of his politically inclined prophesies. Apparently the Khama government became increasingly nervous about his prophesies and the huge media attention they were attracting.
In an interview with the Midweek Sun last year, director of immigration Mabuse Pule stopped short of proclaiming that government would not tolerate foreign pastors. “They come here to abuse our people and push personal agendas. The pastors group themselves and see our own pastors as outcasts in their own country,” he said. He used the biblical analogy in Matthew 7:15 which likens such folk to wolves in sheep’s clothing. “God does not bring crooks here. We will not allow anyone to deceive our people using His name,” Pule said.
In Botswana, the title of pastor is synonymous with wealth and social prestige. Congregants pay tithes and purchase miracle water and other religious memorabilia from the church. Pastors also receive ‘gifts’ from congregants in the form of money, clothes and even vehicles for their blessings and help.
Many Batswana have deserted Methodist, UCCSA, Anglican, Roman Catholic and ZCC churches in favour of the charismatic churches that have sprung up. The latter are characterised by loud music, singing and dancing, vigorous preaching, promises of miracles, and exorcising of “devil spirits”.
An acquaintance was involved in a horrific car accident that left her bound to a wheelchair for a few months. Now a congregant at the Universal Church, she can walk with a slight limp and vehemently believes that God used the pastor to heal her through the Holy Spirit. As a self-proclaimed agnostic, I’m never sure how to digest this except by pointing out how commercialised faith and God have become.
On the few occasions that I visited the Universal Church and New Seasons, I was struck by the high turnout of congregants, particularly the youth, who are dressed to kill and are enthusiastically dancing, singing and chanting praises. Church is the new “cool” in this country; a big social club. This is a choice many Batswana have made, and it’s clear that charismatic churches will continue to thrive despite government’s attempts to stop them. The people will believe who and what they want to believe.
Keletso Thobega is a copy editor and features writer based in Gaborone, Botswana.
Life is rough for women with cervical cancer in Kenya. Some of those attending the country’s only public treatment facility sleep on benches and concrete floors outside the hospital to save money for their treatment. Others never make it to the capital for assistance because they cannot afford the bus journey. Now, a vaccination programme has been rolled out, offering hope for future generations.
“Cervical cancer vaccine now available for girls in primary school free of charge!” reads the turquoise poster outside the office of Christina Mavindu, senior nursing officer at the Kitui district hospital. Mavindu is two-thirds of the way through implementing Kenya’s first public cervical cancer vaccination campaign in Kitui county. The third and final jabs will be administered in the next few weeks.
The campaign has been challenging. The number of children wanting the vaccine has exceeded the doses available and, at a cost of more than $50 per vaccine, many people have been unable to pay for it privately. “It should be for everybody,” says Mavindu. Gavi (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) supported the trial to enable Kenya to demonstrate that it has the necessary infrastructure and capacity to vaccinate nine- to 13-year-olds on a national scale.
Vaccination is needed urgently; cervical cancer is a growing cause of morbidity among women in Africa, and a rising concern. The disease is nearly six times more prevalent in Kenya than in western Europe, according to WHO data. It is also the cancer that kills most women in Kenya, whose neighbour Rwanda became the first low-income African country to achieve nationwide access to the vaccine.
The treatment for cervical cancer is inadequate: nearly half of the women who were being treated in Kenya “disappeared” from their programmes, according to the results of a recent survey published in the journal Plos One of patients at the only public cancer treatment centre. “Most likely they could not afford treatment,” says Dr Ian Hampson, head of gynaecological oncology at the University of Manchester, who oversaw the research. Just 7% of women received “optimal treatment”, while 41% dropped out.
(Pic: Reuters)
From screening to diagnosis and treatment, best practice in Kenya is impeded at every stage. Beatrice Ngomo, a nurse in Kitui district hospital’s maternal and child health clinic, has a hard time persuading women to get screened. Many cannot afford medical care so do not want to know if they are ill, she explains. Others do not like invasive procedures, she says, and are scared.
Even when a woman starts experiencing symptoms, she will often not seek treatment, Ngomo explains. Some women think cervical cancer is a result of witchcraft so they prefer to see traditional medical practitioners. “They lose a lot of time while they’re doing that,” Ngomo says. Or they go to witchdoctors because they are more affordable than modern medical care. As a result, 80% of cases at the hospital are late stage cancer, according to doctors’ estimates.
Ngomo has diagnosed two women with cervical cancer this year. She recalls that at first the women assumed that the cancer would kill them. Ngomo told them that treatment was poshsible and referred them to the Kenyatta national hospital in Nairobi. “But there the problems really start,” she says. In Kitui, most people are farmers and the average daily wage is less than $2. Women cannot afford to travel to the capital, let alone buy high-cost drugs, she adds. Sometimes they reappear at the hospital in Kitui months after referral, having never made it to Nairobi.
The next problem is that the waiting time for a first appointment at Kenyatta national hospital can be up to six months, according to Dr Orora Maranga, who conducted the Manchester research and is now practising in Kenya. “The cancer is not waiting,” he says. In six months, it can grow from stage two to stage four, drastically reducing the chance of survival.
Once patients receive an appointment, they are faced with the costs of treatment. Elizabeth Mumbua Njeru, 35, sits on a step outside the casualty ward hugging her handbag to her chest. Njeru has a cancerous tumour in her cervix and is two months into a course of radiation and chemotherapy. Njeru, from Embu, 120km to the north, is unable to afford accommodation in the capital. She has been a resident of the casualty ward for two months and is sometimes forced to sleep on this outside. But she is determined not to become another women who “disappears”.
Her malnourished body is struggling to cope with the treatment regime. Her nails have turned brown, she suffers from nausea and diarrhoea, and her immune system has been severely compromised by daily injections of cytotoxins. Njeru knows the emergency department is no place for her; it is a hub of infectious diseases which she might catch at any moment. But she has no option.
Maranga’s study found that just 7% of patients at Kenyatta national hospital were receiving optimum treatment. But it is not just the cost that prevents them getting the correct treatment. The hospital lacks one crucial piece of equipment: the brachytherapy machine.
As Njeru sits in the hospital canteen enjoying a rare plate of fried chicken, she is joined by her friend, Rhonda Waeni Ndundua, who also has cervical cancer. Ndundua has also spent two months sleeping rough in the hospital grounds. Rhonda has received good news – she has been discharged. Scribbled on her patient records was one word: “brachytherapy”. Rhonda is free to go home, but has to return to see the doctor in two months. Then, she will be told that she needs to have brachytherapy, radiotherapy delivered internally, in order to receive the recommended treatment.
Hampson describes Kenyatta national hospital’s brachytherapy unit as having been “in a state of disrepair for several years”. Patients like Ndundua must travel to either Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania, or to Kampala in Uganda. There, they pay 30 000 Kenyan shillings ($360) for the brachytherapy; food, accommodation and transport are additional.
This may go some way towards explaining why just 7% of women in the Manchester study received optimal treatment. Hampson suggests there is no money, and therefore no political will from the government to repair the brachytherapy machine.
Rights campaigners and health professionals have condemned Uganda’s president after he said he would approve controversial anti-homosexuality laws based on the advice of “medical experts”.
President Yoweri Museveni told members of his governing party he would sign the Bill – prescribing life imprisonment for “aggravated homosexuality” – that was passed by Parliament late last year, dashing activists’ hopes he might veto it.
Ofwono Opondo, a government spokesperson, tweeted on Friday that “this comes after 14 medical experts presented a report that homosexuality is not genetic but a social behaviour”.
The MPs, attending a party conference chaired by Museveni, “welcomed the development as a measure to protect Ugandans from social deviants”, Opondo added.
When Twitter users from around the world then criticised the announcement, Opondo responded: “Hey guys supporting homosexuals take it easy Uganda is a sovereign country #you challange [sic] the law in the courts.”
Under existing colonial-era law in Uganda, anyone found guilty of “carnal knowledge against the order of nature” can already face sentences up to life imprisonment. But the new Bill represents a dramatic broadening of penalties. It bans the promotion of homosexuality, makes it a crime punishable by prison not to report gay people to the authorities and enables life sentences to be imposed for various same-sex acts, including touching in public.
When the Bill was abruptly passed by MPs just before Christmas, Museveni came under pressure to ratify it both within his own party and from Christian clerics who see it as necessary to deter western homosexuals from “recruiting” Ugandan children.
‘Scientifically correct’ position on homosexuality The president, who has been in power for 28 years, said he wanted his governing National Resistance Movement (NRM) to reach what he called a “scientifically correct” position on homosexuality. A medical report was prepared by more than a dozen scientists from Uganda’s health ministry, officials said. They told Museveni that there is no gene for homosexuality and it is “not a disease but merely an abnormal behaviour which may be learned through experiences in life”. Dr Richard Tushemereirwe, presidential adviser on science, said: “Homosexuality has serious public health consequences and should therefore not be tolerated”.
Anite Evelyn, spokesperson for the NRM conference, said: “[Museveni] declared that he would sign the Bill since the question of whether one can be born a homosexual or not had been answered. The president emphasised that promoters, exhibitionists and those who practise homosexuality for mercenary reasons will not be tolerated and will therefore be dealt with harshly.”
The Bill is popular in Uganda, one of 37 countries in Africa where homosexuality is illegal. Ugandan gay activists have accused some of their country’s political and religious leaders of being influenced by American evangelicals.
Frank Mugisha, who heads Sexual Minorities Uganda, said: “President Museveni knows that this Bill is unconstitutional and that we shall challenge it after he signs it, although I still think he will not sign this particular Bill the way it is. But his political remarks about signing will only increase violence and hatred towards LGBT persons in Uganda.”
The findings by Museveni’s medical experts were disputed in an open letter by more than 50 of the world’s top public health scientists and researchers. “Homosexuality is not a pathology, an abnormality, a mental disorder or an illness: It is a variant of sexual behaviour found in people around the world,” they wrote. “Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are normal.”
They warned that the laws could undermine the fight against HIV by driving these groups away from public health services because of “fear of arrest, intimidation, violence and discrimination”.
Robyn Lieberman of the watchdog group Human Rights First said: “There should be no doubt that Museveni’s latest words on the subject have been influenced by the reaction to similar legislation in Nigeria, Russia and elsewhere.”
A new law mandating across-the-board rent reductions in Senegal is a double-blessing for real estate agent Abdul Aziz Sylla. Along with paying 14% less each month for his family’s three-bedroom Dakar apartment, the 36-year-old has been busy brokering deals on behalf of clients flush with newfound purchasing power – and cashing in on a flurry of commissions.
“Everyone is happy about this,” Sylla said this week while standing outside his subdivided villa in Dakar’s Liberte 6 neighborhood, where he also markets property. “Apartments that were just a little bit too expensive, people can suddenly afford them.”
Two years after successfully running on a campaign to lower living costs, President Macky Sall has received wide praise for the law from residents frustrated with the city’s pricey housing stock.
Critics of the rent reduction, however, note that it can distort the market, potentially discouraging the construction of new property or the leasing of existing housing. There are several new housing units currently being constructed, indicating that builders have not yet been discouraged by the reduction, which has been debated for years.
Enforcement will be tricky, and could determine whether the measure becomes a model for other regional governments, said Robert Tashima, Africa regional editor for Oxford Business Group.
“It goes without saying that the key to this legislation is enforcement, which has long been an Achilles’ heel for other rent control and tenancy rights ordinances elsewhere in Africa,” Tashima said.
Landlords will be able to increase rents once current leaseholders leave. Also a black market could emerge where sub-letters pay higher rents.
(Pic: Flickr / hownowdesign)
While rents have climbed throughout West Africa over the past 20 years, Dakar’s increase has been especially dramatic as Senegal cemented its reputation as the most stable country in an unstable region, attracting organisations seeking to move their regional staff from bases in politically turbulent Côte d’Ivoire.
High-end buyers from countries like Nigeria have also increasingly seen Dakar, located on a peninsula that is Africa’s westernmost point, as “a reliable market” for second homes, Tashima said.
Today, rental housing in Dakar’s downtown Plateau district can be double that found in the central business district of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire’s commercial capital, and often rivals prices seen in large European cities, he said.
Benefits for low-income renters The situation got so bad that in 2010 Senegal’s National Assembly launched an investigation. The new law, enacted last month, is scaled to benefit low-income renters most: Those paying less than 150 000 West African francs (roughly $310) in rent each month receive reductions of 29%. For apartments with rents between 150 000 and 500 000 francs, the reduction is 14%, and for units priced at more than 500 000 francs the reduction is 4%.
Just over half of Dakar’s roughly 1-million residents are renters, according to Senegal’s national statistics agency. The law does not apply to business property.
Dakar resident Cherif Gassama said the move is politically shrewd, as living costs are a top concern for Senegalese. After getting married last June, the 32-year-old spent six months scouring the city for a new apartment, finally hitting on a fourth-floor walk-up priced three times higher than the unit he leased when he moved to Dakar a decade ago.
Under the new law, his monthly rent decreased from around $300 to about $255, freeing up money he expects to spend on gasoline and staple foods like rice.
“To be frank, this is the first thing that Macky Sall has done to help us,” said Gassama, who described himself as a long-time Sall supporter.
His wife, Rokhaya Diagne, agreed. “When he was first elected two years ago, he was not so focused on fixing things,” she said of Sall. “He was more focused on corruption cases from the past. Now that he’s actually trying to fix things people are changing their minds about him, for the better.”
But like other Dakar residents, she urged Sall to consider similar measures to lower food and energy costs. “He can’t just do this. He needs to do more. This is just a first step for him,” she said.
Meanwhile, it is unclear whether the rent law will benefit everyone that it’s supposed to. Landlords who refuse to comply face up to six months in prison and fines of up to $3 100, but Tashima with Oxford Business Group said the government needs to ensure there are “sufficient resources to oversee the rental market and adjudicate disputes.”
Some landlords have openly said they will defy the law, among them Diarra Sarr, who manages property in the HLM neighborhood.
“I can’t apply this measure. The state doesn’t know all the work we’ve done to construct our houses,” he said. “The government cannot impose these lower rents on us. If they want to lower rent, they need to construct social housing for the population.” – Sapa-AP
