Sure, Will Smith repurposed Bill Withers’ classic Just the Two of Us as an ode to his son Trey. And yes, even more recently, Jay Z included both the heartbeat and cries of his baby daughter Blue Ivy Carter on the track Glory, released a few days after she was born. But do both these acts of fatherly Hollywood magnanimity and largesse not fade into insignificance when compared with the actions of one American father, who “claimed” an African “kingdom” so his daughter could be a “princess”?
You read that right. A Virginia father, Jeremiah Heaton, flew to Africa for the express purpose of claiming the 800 square miles that make up Bir Tawil, a desert territory that falls between the borders of Egypt and Sudan. Heaton travelled for 14 hours in a caravan in order to plant the flag (designed by his children) on the soil of Bir Tawil, an act that he reckons makes his claim more legitimate than previous attempts made online. The children have decided to name it the “Kingdom of North Sudan”. His daughter, “Princess” Emily, seven, has said she wants to ensure children in the region have enough food (Bir Tawil itself is uninhabited).
The immediate question for the rest of us has to be: “Are white people still allowed to do this kind of stuff in 2014?” Heaton has said: “I feel confident in the claim we’ve made. That’s the exact same process that has been done for thousands of years. The exception is this nation was claimed for love.”
If ever there were a deed that exemplified the term “white privilege”, surely this is it. It is almost as if Heaton and his children have never watched the Disney classic Pocahontas, in which the Native American princess sings to would-be coloniser John Smith: “You think you own whatever land you land on.
But if you want to make your child feel special and loved – as Heaton wanted to do – surely a princess makeover would suffice. When did the phrase “daddy’s little princess” pass from vaguely creepy societal saying into a literal thing? It also begs the question: where next for Emily Heaton? What can you get a child after you’ve “given” them a country of their own? A Build-a-Bear party with six of her friends will not slake her inevitable thirst for power now. Nothing will. There is nowhere else to go on the gift-giving scale. What have ye wrought, Jeremiah Heaton?
Refugees from South Sudan wait to board trucks to the Nyumanzi Resettlement Camp in Uganda on January 26 2014. (Pic: AFP)
When a team from Oxford University’s Humanitarian Innovation Project set out to explore what work refugees and asylum seekers in Uganda had managed to find, they were struck by the breadth and scale of businesses they were engaged in – from being café owners to vegetable sellers, to farmers growing maize on a commercial scale, millers, restaurateurs, transporters and traders in fabrics and jewellery.
With the number of the world’s displaced having now passed the 50-million mark and rising, debates are intensifying over how this many people can be supported. Alexander Betts and his team wanted to see whether it was realistic, and politically acceptable, to encourage refugees to be more self-sufficient.
Uganda has a relatively liberal policy towards its 387 000 refugees and asylum-seekers, most of whom have fled conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan. Uganda does not have refugee camps as such, but most live in designated refugee settlements where there are allocated plots of land to farm. They can, however, get permission to live outside these settlements if they think they can support themselves, and Kampala in particular has a sizeable refugee population.
Betts told Irin: “Uganda is a relatively positive case in that it allows the right to work and a significant degree of freedom of movement. That isn’t to say that it’s perfect, but it’s definitely towards the positive end of the spectrum. The reason we chose it is that it shows what’s possible when refugees are given basic economic freedoms.”
His team spoke to more than 1 500 households in Kampala and in two rural settlements – Nakivale in the south, and Kyangwali on the DRC border. The families were registered with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) as refugees, but that did not mean that they all received humanitarian assistance. In Kampala 78% of refugee households receive no assistance at all from UNHCR or any other agency. Even in the refugee settlements, 17% of households receive no assistance, and even where families do get help they are unlikely to be fully dependent on aid, since UNHCR gives food rations for a maximum of five years, unless the refugees are designated as vulnerable.
So what do they do instead? They farm, certainly, in and around the rural settlements. Around half the Congolese, Rwandan and South Sudanese refugees the researchers talked to there had plots of their own, and others worked as farm labourers. Only the Somalis showed little or no interest in farming.
Not just subsistence farming
Ugandan crop buyers come regularly to the settlements, and take truckloads of produce from Kyangwali to the market town of Hoima. The researchers spoke to a trader in Hoima who said he bought around 500 tonnes of maize and beans from the refugee farmers last year, some 60% of his stock. He sold the maize on to other parts of Uganda, but also further afield, to Tanzania and South Sudan.
Now the farmers in Kyangwali are trying to cut out the middlemen and take their crops directly to market, through a co-operative with more than 500 members, including some Ugandan farmers from local villages. Kyangwali Progressive Farmers is registered as a limited company, and has started getting contracts to supply produce directly to manufacturers.
Kagoma weekly market in the Kyangwali refugee settlement in Uganda. (Pic: IRIN/RSC)
The research uncovered another substantial trading network with refugees at its centre – in this case Congolese refugees who were doing business in jewellery and printed cloth, known as bitenge. They buy from Ugandan wholesalers in Kampala, and sell, not just in the refugee settlements but also to Ugandan customers in nearby towns. Some also engage in cross-border trade, taking their wares into Kenya and South Sudan.
The picture which emerges is of a very “connected” economy, with refugees using their networks of contacts among fellow refugees and in their countries of origin to do business. But they also trade with their Ugandan neighbours, work in Ugandan enterprises and – when they prosper – create employment both for their countrymen and members of the host community.
A lesson for other countries?
The picture is a generally positive one, but not every country chooses to allow its refugees such economic freedom. Governments worry that if they are making a good living where they are, they will never go home, although Betts points out that when the time does come to leave, it is a lot easier to repatriate someone who has been busy and active and developed their skills, than someone who has spent years surviving on food rations in a refugee camp.
Successful refugees can also generate resentment in local populations. Uganda has remained generally tolerant, unlike neighbouring Kenya, where there has been a backlash against Somali refugees following a series of al-Shabab attacks. Uganda has also suffered terrorist attacks, but says Betts, “for some reason, unlike Kenya, they haven’t been connected to refugees in the same way, perhaps because in Kenya politicians have started to use the refugee issue for political gain”.
So the situation in Uganda does very much depend on its local context. Even so, Betts and his team are convinced that their study has implications for refugee policy elsewhere, particularly for the new crisis in the Middle East. “The traditional response is to create camps,” he told Irin, “but we can’t afford to do this in places like Lebanon. The cost – the human cost in terms of the waste of potential, and the possibility of developing resentment and frustration – is just too high.
“We have to realise what refugees can contribute, and not just warehouse them in camps. We should start by recognising that long-term encampment is not an option, and that when they are allowed, human beings can do a lot for themselves.”
On a recent Friday night, I was watching He’s Just Not That Into You. It’s a sweet love story of a girl chasing love and taking advice from a boy she was falling for, while, unknown to them both, he felt the same about her. Of course they end up together at the end, Hollywood-style.
In one of the early scenes, groups of friends from different parts of the world take turns comforting each other as they share their relationship troubles. When an African girl complained about her boyfriend not being in touch, her friend’s response was: “Maybe he forgot your hut number.” Another quickly added: “Or he got eaten by a lion.”
I found it very offensive that in 2009, Africa was still being portrayed in such a manner. How many times are these ‘jokes’ at our expense going to be told? But here we are in 2014, and Africa is still being portrayed in that manner. It led me to thinking about the stereotypes that follow us around in our daily lives, not just on-screen. I asked my friends – from Cape Verde to Somalia, from Cape Town to Tunis and Nigeria – about the stereotypes they most often encountered, whether it was about religion, culture, tribe or country. Unsurprisingly, many of the responses were similar.
Nigerians will juju you.
Tunisians are terrorists.
Arabs are not Africans.
Igbo people love money.
A Senegalese person’s complexion is several shades darker than the complexion of an average sub-Saharan African.
All Kenyans are fast runners.
Hausa people don’t speak good English
Africans are poor.
Nigerians are scammers and must not be trusted.
Muslims are terrorists.
All Africans are black.
All South Africans have Aids.
Yoruba girls are ugly.
Nigerians are all thieves.
Nigerians are all drug dealers.
Nigerians are obnoxious.
“Do you speak African?”
“Do you people live with lions?”
“Do you know Mugabe?”
All Hausa people are stinking rich or terribly poor.
Africa, in general, is a dangerous place.
“Do you live on trees?”
“Do you own cars?”
All Africans are violent and/or terrorists.
Light-skinned and attractive Africans are more successful.
“Do you have internet in Africa?”
Africa is a homogenous country.
Africans are less intellectually gifted than other people.
You get more opportunities because you are African, especially with college applications.
Egyptians go to school on camels.
Rwandans kill themselves (the genocide of 1994).
East Africans have large foreheads.
Zulu people are hot-tempered.
The South Sudanese all have a delinquent and miscreant mindset.
All Egyptians are Muslims.
“Do you live in a pyramid?”
Sub-Saharan Africans cannot have long hair – it just doesn’t grow.
Nigerians are kidnappers.
Nigerians will ‘hook’ you to drugs.
Xhosa women are all gold-diggers.
People from the Maasai tribe eat blood.
Africans speak “Lion-King” language.
Africans hate white people.
Africans do not wear clothes.
All African countries are corrupt.
I’m sure there are countless others we can add to the list. If, during colonialism, Europeans thought Africans did not wear clothes and spoke “Lion-King” language, I could perhaps forgive that. But I cannot accept the ignorance of people of my generation. Instead of laughing it off – as we are expected to – we should call them out on it.
Khadija Sanusi is a first-year student at the African Leadership Academy.
An MP listens to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon speak at the Rwandan Parliament building on January 29 2008, in Kigali. (Pic: AFP)
Friday 4 July: Independence Day. There will be speeches, celebrations and fireworks. But these celebrations will be taking place on the other side of the world from the US, because on Friday, the central African country of Rwanda will mark its own Liberation Day.
It is 20 years since the end of the genocide that saw the deaths of more than 800 000 people. Since 1994, Rwanda has worked hard to create a peaceful state and among those enjoying the fireworks will be female parliamentarians from around the world, who are meeting in Rwanda this week to discuss how to get more women into every country’s Parliament.
Not surprisingly, many of those attending the conference are keen to find out how Rwanda has managed to reach the figure of 64% women in its Parliament, which is unheard-of everywhere else. Worldwide, women still represent under a quarter (21.9%) of all elected parliamentary seats, but in Rwanda the post-genocide situation, in which 70% of the country’s remaining population was female, and the introduction of quotas requiring 30% of political and government candidates to be women, have brought about real change, in national and local politics and across public positions. Half the country’s 14 supreme court justices are women, for instance. Boys and girls now attend compulsory primary and secondary school in equal numbers, and new laws enable women to own and inherit property.
But this is not just about numbers. The rebuilding of Rwanda’s public bodies was driven by a number of senior women determined that women’s gains in senior positions would not be lost as the gender balance gradually began to adjust. They include Donatille Mukabalisa, the speaker of the Rwandan chamber of deputies, who has been pushing reform over the past two decades. Mukabalisa, whose keynote speech opened the conference on Tuesday, has said that while the quota system clearly helped speed up women’s participation in politics, women appointed and elected to a whole range of public positions have been so successful in making a positive difference that the country may reach a point where quotas are unnecessary.
There are other lessons to be learned from the country’s rebuilding process. One of those is about handling disputes, and the need to increase the participation of women in post-conflict societies.
The middle day of the conference has been set aside for field trips, to see more about the real lives of women other than society’s leaders. It’s an astute move, for behind the headlines is anxiety about the reality of life for ordinary women in the country. One Rwandan women’s rights campaigner has described the female parliamentarians in Rwanda as like a “lovely vase of flowers in a living room” – decorative but not a huge amount of use.
There are concerns about violence: the government’s own figures from 2010 show that two in five women reported suffering physical violence at least once since the age of 15. And many public services in the country are sparse. Rwanda’s first state speech and language therapy service was set up only this year at the Rwanda Military Hospital, with support from a volunteer UK speech and language therapist.
But Rwanda certainly provides a useful lesson for UK politicians. The Conservative party, which has failed to increase the number of female MPs in the party from a dismal 16%, is now seriously considering all-women shortlists. The Liberal Democrats, with an even worse figure of just 13% female MPs, and even the Labour party, with 33% female MPs, might also want to take note.
Every once in a while, stories come along that surprise critics and readers who claim to know African literature. Jalada’s recent compilation about sex strikes me as that kind of work.
Jalada Africa is a literary collective committed to reshaping the way writing is published and circulated within the continent.
Their recent collection titled Sext Me Poems and Stories proves their open and risk-taking approach to literary projects. I spent the last few days browsing through the collection, floored by how delightfully raw and honest most of the pieces are.
The project is also a small but bold step towards filling a gaping hole in African literary culture. To the annoyance of readers like myself, African authors are not always keen on what their characters do in the bedroom. Under pressure to write about things of world historical importance like colonialism and poverty, African writers have always made short shrift of sex. Sex is perceived as indulgent.
But a projects such as Jalada’s Sext Me Poems and Stories tells us why sex is not superfluous in narrative.
Sex is the true story of the body told from a place of pleasure, pain, and radical uncertainty. Sex is about putting the body in a place where traditional ideas about gender, shame, violence, and loss are interrogated.
Besides, this collection is not just about sex. It’s about how Africans do sex.
Scrolling through the collection is like walking through a sex-toy shop, dazed by the sheer inventiveness put into assembling a world built on pushing the limits of sexual pleasure.
Akati Khasiani’s Coming Down and Aisha Ali’s The First Time are vignettes sketching out a scene of female masturbation. Both stories put the female body up on display, but as something capable of generating the most profound experience of pleasure, entirely on its own.
The language in both pieces is as raw as it is lyrical. Sex in these two stories is not about conquest or consuming bodies but about exploration and discovery. Ali’s character speaks of the vagina as “that small wet place” that the “fingers” go “searching, exploring, looking for answers.” Pretty intense and exciting stuff.
The first of two parts closes off with Orem Ochiel’s Miss Fucking You. Odd, but the title does not prepare you for the obscene goodness of the story. It’s framed as a man asking a woman, pleading more like, to have another go with him. To make his case, he recounts all the impassioned and kinky sexual encounters they’ve had without sparing the dirty details. Every other word in the story is “fuck” or “fucking.” Don’t click on the story while you’re in church!
The Oink in Doinker by Tuelo Gabonewe is a comical tale about a “half-widow,” Haroldette, who encounters a penis cut off from its owner. She takes it in, bathes its, feeds it, and names it Phineas McPhallus. Unlike many of the other stories in the collection, this one is not strictly an erotica. It is something you’d imagine Gogol or Kafka would write. In fact, I couldn’t help noting the striking resemblance between Gabonewe’s story and Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s Runaway Fingers.
Sext Me by Aleya and Dorothy Kigen’s Inbox (1) are fun at the level of form. Aleya’s piece is entirely a dialogue that takes place via text messaging. A man and a woman set the stage for their sexual encounter by expressing what they imagine the encounter would be like – a textual foreplay as it were. People complain that it’s hard to convey complex emotional states via emails. Not so for Kigen’s character who details her illicit sexual experiences in an email message.
Sext Me Poems and Stories is titillating storytelling. Read the collection here.
Brittle Paper is an African literary blog featuring book reviews, news, interviews, original work and in-depth coverage of the African literary scene. It is curated by Ainehi Edoro and was recently named a ‘go-to book blog’ by Publisher’s Weekly.
