Category: Perspective

Kenya’s women fight for justice as rapists are sentenced to cut the grass

Funerals can be lengthy affairs in western Kenya, and Liz, a 16-year-old schoolgirl, was out late at a wake for her grandfather that had stretched into the evening. She was on her way home when she recognised some familiar and unfriendly faces in the darkness. She knew instantly that the six men in front of her meant her harm. A tall girl, she tried to run. When they caught up with her, she tried to fight. Her attackers, thought to be aged between 16 and 20, began by punching and kicking her. After she was hurt too badly to resist, they took it in turns to rape her. The problem was that the teenager would not submit quietly: she kept screaming.

When they had finished with the girl, they dragged her to a deep pit-latrine nearby and threw her inside. But despite her horrendous injuries and a fall of nearly 3.6 metres, Liz managed to find the earthen steps used by the workers who dug the latrine to get out. As she pulled her broken body up the steps, villagers who had heard her cries found her.

They quickly raised a mob to give chase. The schoolgirl knew some of the men who had raped her and started shouting their names. The villagers managed to find three of Liz’s attackers and frogmarched them to the police outpost in the village of Tingolo, in Kenya’s north-western county of Busia. The officers arrested the trio for assault and promised the girl’s angry neighbours that the men would be punished. At daybreak, the rapists were handed curved machetes, known as “slashers”, and told to cut grass in the police compound. Duly punished, they were sent home.

The morning after the attack, Liz (not her real name) was taken to a dispensary, a rudimentary pharmacy that is the closest much of rural Kenya gets to a clinic, where she was given antibiotics and paracetamol. It was only when she found that she still could not walk, a week later, that her mother sold their chickens – the family’s only source of income – and took her to a medical clinic in the nearest town. The doctor ignored the fact that she was doubly incontinent and told her she needed physiotherapy. Her condition worsened and her mother leased the family’s land for about £60 – effectively mortgaging their home – to get her to the nearest big town, Kakamega, where she was eventually diagnosed with a fistula and damage to her spinal cord.

‘One of many’
This appalling, tragic tale would never have reached the outside world had it not been for the outrage of Jared Momanyi, the director of one of a handful of Kenyan clinics that specialise in the treatment of victims of sexual violence, to which Liz was eventually referred. He called a young reporter at the Daily Nation in the capital, Nairobi, who had previously written a story about the facility in Eldoret, a town perched on the western side of Kenya’s Great Rift Valley. “It troubled me so much I needed to take it head on and tell the world,” he said. “This was an attempted murder and it’s not an isolated case; it’s one among many.”

When the Nation’s Njeri Rugene visited Liz more than three months after the 26 June gang rape, she found a broken, traumatised girl in a wheelchair. The story Rugene wrote helped raise £4,000 to pay for an operation to repair Liz’s internal injuries, the first of two procedures the girl will need to have any chance of controlling her bladder and bowels or walking again.

What has made the teenager’s trauma even worse is that her assailants are still free. “She can’t understand why people keep coming to ask questions but those men don’t get arrested,” said Rugene.

Three of those who raped Liz are pupils at schools near her own and police have had the names of all six attackers since 27 June. After stories appeared in local newspapers, officers were finally sent to arrest those still in school. Teachers at one of the schools asked if the arrests could be postponed to allow them to take part in exams. The request was granted and police claimed afterwards that they were “tricked” by the teachers, who helped the pupils go into hiding.

Mary Mahoka, a social worker with a local child protection organisation, said cases such as Liz’s were the product of entrenched chauvinism in her home area of Busia, an impoverished county close to the shore of Lake Victoria.

Polygamy was widely practised and girls were not valued by the community, she said. When she first started to work with rape victims in 1998, she found that perpetrators would pay for their crime by handing over a goat or a bag of maize to the girl’s parents.

Last week, Mahoka was helping a six-year-old girl who had been sexually assaulted by a man in his 20s. “It’s happening every day, but often it’s not reported,” she said.

Mahoka, whose organisation is partly funded by UK aid, has to disguise the nature of her group’s work, calling it “rural education and economic enhancement” so as not to provoke hostility among traditionalists in the community.

She has investigated the gang rape and says it was not a chance occurrence: “Liz had rejected advances from one of the boys, so he brought his friends to discipline her.”

‘Silent epidemic’
After reading about Liz’s ordeal, Nebila Abdulmelik, a women’s rights activist in Nairobi, launched an online petition with the international campaign group Avaaz that has attracted more than 660 000 signatures. “Letting rapists walk free after making them cut grass has to be the world’s worst punishment for rape,” she said. “There is a silent epidemic in Kenya. It’s not as loud as in Congo or South Africa, but the statistics are high.”

People walk past a poster bearing a message against rape on a street in Nairobi on November 24 2005. (Pic: AFP)

As many as eight out of 10 Kenyan women have experienced physical violence and/or abuse during childhood. A report from Kenya’s national commission on human rights in 2006 found that a girl or woman is raped every 30 minutes.

Orchestrating rape is also among the charges facing Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, who goes on trial on 12 November at the international criminal court accused of organising the violence that killed at least 1,300 people after a 2007 disputed election.

Abdulmelik notes that, under Kenya’s Sexual Offences Act, Liz’s assailants should face prison sentences of not less than 15 years. The same legislation stipulates that the expenses incurred by victims of such attacks, including surgery and counselling, should be borne by the state. “This is the government’s responsibility,” she said. “There is impunity from top to bottom, and meanwhile our president takes an entourage to the Hague at taxpayers’ expense.”

Avaaz and the African Women’s Development and Communication Network (Femnet), of which Abdulmelik is a member, plan to picket the ministry of justice and police headquarters in Nairobi on Wednesday, where volunteers will cut the grass in protest at the handling of Liz’s case.

The outcry over the fate of the 16-year-old last week prompted Kenya’s director of public prosecutions, Keriako Tobiko, to order the arrest of the six suspects and promise an inquiry into police failures. However, the investigating officer in Busia, Shadrack Bundi, said he had received no such directive and could not take any further action.

Rasna Warah, a Kenyan commentator, said women were being failed by the country’s leaders, male and female, who often left it to foreign-funded NGOs to raise awareness. “The Busia rape case is symptomatic of our society’s attitudes towards women. Violence against women has become so normalised it almost constitutes a sort of ‘femicide’.

Daniel Howden for the Guardian

12 years ago

Praying for rain in Botswana

When a few drops of rain spluttered on the ground on Sunday, my son and his friends, who a few minutes before had been running around shirtless, ran across the yard excitedly screeching, “Pula, Pula!” (Rain! Rain!). Although I warned them that they would catch a cold, even I couldn’t resist the joy in the moment as I stepped out for a few minutes to feel the slithering cold drops on my skin. Perhaps the gods had finally answered our continued prayers?

Last month, during a series of kgotla (an open court area where members of the public convene) meetings, President Ian Khama encouraged Batswana to come together to seek divine intervention and collectively pray for rain. He declared September a month of prayer for rain. Many religious entities heeded his call. Various churches converged at the Gaborone Dam for prayers. In the midst of song, dance and chants, the men and women in attendance broke into loud heartfelt prayers, hands raised to the skies, begging the Lord above for the heavens to open.

Botswana’s President Ian Khama. (Pic: AFP)

The water level of the Gaborone Dam, which is the main water supplier for the south of the district, currently stands at 19%, the lowest it has been in history. According to the Water Utilities chief executive officer Godfrey Mudanga, at that capacity and without rain, the dam can only supply the nation with water for the next eight months. Although grey skies frequently tease Botswana with the promise of downpours, we only ever get drizzles which soon make way for the scorching sun. It has rained very little in the past four consecutive years, particularly in the southern districts. The past year’s rainy season (November to March) was recorded as the worst by the local meteorological services.

The country is already experiencing dire water shortages, particularly in the southern districts. The Bokaa Dam in the west of Gaborone stands at 10%, while Nnywane Dam, situated to the south of the city, dried up in March. The South Africa Water Authority has agreed to supply 22-million cubic litres per day to Botswana; but only if the water level in its Molatedi Dam rises higher than 26%.

The long dry spells have frustrated crop farmers, who rely on the rains for their livelihoods. Although Batswana and the meteorological services are hopeful that it will rain again, the dry grass, sullen soil, brown trees, thin cows and dried up rivers don’t paint a positive picture. And if we do enjoy some much-needed downpours, it’s uncertain whether this will be enough to fill up the drying rivers and dams.

Due to long periods of no rain, water levels in the Gaborone Dam and other dams across the country are alarmingly low. (Pic: Flickr / Al Green)

This is not the first time Botswana, a semi-arid country, has experienced drought. The country has endured spates of dry spells in the past two decades. However, with climate change looming, it’s anticipated that conditions are likely to worsen. With so little rain, water shortages are common and government has had to enforce water rations for domestic and industrial usage.

Government has spearheaded the North-South water pipeline to address national development constraints and to transport water to the south, which is the industrial and economic hub of the country. The pipeline begins at Letsibogo Dam in the north and runs for approximately 360km, with pumping stations in Palapye, Marolane and Serorame Valley in the central south of the country. The first phase of this project was completed in 2000; the second phase is expected to be completed early next year.

Meanwhile, a traditional doctor named Monthusi Sekonopo has claimed the country is experiencing water shortages because President Khama, who is also the chief of the Bangwato, has not heeded his powers as a “rainmaker”. Sekonopo, who is also president of the Botswana Traditional doctors Association, told a local newspaper, the Midweek Sun, that this was revealed to him in a series of dreams. He asserted that on September 1 every year at 4am, Khama should be at the kgotla in Serowe Village, summoning the rains and declaring the beginning of the plough season. The traditional doctor also said that the president was a born chief and therefore has other duties beyond politics that he needs to see to.

His wild claims aside, the fact remains that rain continues to be scarce across the country. When the heavens do open for us, it’s no exaggeration that the whole country will be filled with the same euphoria that envelopes us when the national soccer team wins a game.

Keletso Thobega is a copy editor and features writer based in Gaborone, Botswana.

12 years ago

Plant clinics take root in Uganda

Using a sharp kitchen knife, “plant doctor” Daniel Lyazi sets to work dissecting a slime-covered cabbage at a farmers’ market in Mukono, central Uganda, where the devastating cassava brown streak disease was first identified in 2004.

“There’s a small caterpillar which is eating the cabbage and according to me it’s a diamond-back moth,” he tells the group of farmers who crowd around his table.

He advises the cabbage grower to switch to a different pesticide and in the next season inter-plant with onions (as an additional repellent to moths), and fills out a form with this prescription before turning to the next “patient”, an under-sized cassava tuber.

“Plant clinics” like this one, free of charge and open to all, were piloted in Mukono from 2006 and in the past year have been scaled out to 45 (out of 112) of Uganda’s local government districts, according to the UK-based Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience (Cabi).

Plant doctor is not an official title; the term has been adopted by Cabi for the 1 000 agricultural extension workers it has helped to train as part of its Plantwise programme. Since 2010 Plantwise has set up plant clinics in 24 countries, (three in West Africa and nine in East Africa). In August it opened 13 in Zambia.

A plant health clinic in Machakos, Kenya. (Pic: IRIN / Cabi)

Plant pests and diseases are major threats to food security and livelihoods in most developing countries. Cabi cites research suggesting that worldwide, 40% of the value of plants for food is lost to pests and diseases – (15% to insects and 13% each to weeds and pathogens) – before they can be harvested by farmers.

That research dates from 1994 and did not cover some staple crops, such as cassava, for which the losses to brown streak disease alone have been 30% to 70% in the Great Lakes region, according to the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA).

Crop scientist Eric Boa, who pioneered plant clinics for Cabi, says: “The variety of pests and diseases [in eastern and central Africa] is daunting. Clinic data reveal the farmers present problems on over 30 crops, and plant doctors have to consider over 60 different pests and diseases.”

Farmers’ need for advice was evident at Lyazi’s clinic in Mukono. During a three-hour session, consultations were non-stop and 17 farmers were given detailed recommendations, both verbally and on “prescription” sheets.

Asked if they had been benefitting from the clinics, Erifazi Mayanja, the head of a local farmers’ group, said: “Of course. That’s why we have come in great number today, because of the good advice we are getting.”

Plant clinics versus extension workers
The co-ordinator of the Plantwise programme in Uganda and Zambia, Joseph Mulema, says plant clinics are a far more effective model for getting advice to farmers than the traditional one where extension workers, in theory, visit farms.

“Plant clinics can help so many farmers in a short time,” he says. “In fact, more farmers are seen in a session, if good mobilisation is done, than an extension officer can look at in an entire month. Even if the clinic only runs twice a month, with good mobilisation you can see hundreds of farmers.”

Data collected by researchers in Uganda suggest that normally a plant clinic session provides written recommendations to about a dozen enquiries on average.

However, enquiries may not result in a written prescription, and evidence from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where extension services are hard to find, suggests plant clinics can attract up to 1 000 people per session.

There is also an “exponential” effect of farmers receiving advice at a clinic, passing on the information to neighbours with the same problem, says Misaki Okotel, Uganda co-ordinator for the international NGO Self Help Africa, a partner with Cabi in the Plantwise programme.

There is wide agreement that extension services in countries like Uganda, which has only a few thousand extension officers – (4,300 in 1997, according to research by Nygard et al), needed a new approach to small farmers.

The government has a programme to empower farmers “to demand, pay for and benefit from extension”, but smallholders do not have this capacity, Okotel says.

Government crop protection officer Robert Karyeija suggests an additional reason why the extension services needed help from the Plantwise programme.

“We have thousands of extension workers, but previously farmers would not know where a “plant doctor” was, or whom they could ask for plant health advice,” he explained.

“The extension workers were there, we have agricultural officers in each of Uganda’s 1 100 sub-counties, but the problem [was] they would be general agriculturalists who knew agronomy but didn’t know much about pests and diseases.”

Farmers tend newly planted trees Kimahuri, Kenya. (AFP)

Impact
Little research has been done on the effects of plant clinics. Perhaps the most detailed was a study in Bolivia, summarised in a paper which found clinics “can make large contributions to farmers’ earnings”.

The authors looked at changes in farmers’ incomes in the year after visiting a clinic, minus additional crop protection costs in that year. On the assumption that the difference was down to plant doctors’ advice plus any training, they found the average income gain in one year for those farmers who merely visited plant clinics was US$392, while for those who also had additional training the average gain was $991.

Those figures may overstate the potential income gains for the average farmer (given that visitors to plant clinics may have experienced above average losses to diseases) but they also leave out of account collective benefits from the disease surveillance and wider diffusion of knowledge encouraged by the system.

The authors acknowledge the “survey may lack the statistical certainty of a rigorous impact assessment” since there was no control group, and other factors could have accounted for some of the income gains.

Nevertheless, they conclude that “the clinics have a high positive impact”, one reason being that “the clients come to them, looking for a specific answer; thus they are especially receptive to the advice given”.

The most detailed study of plant clinics in Africa does not attempt to calculate income gains. Instead it looks at the quality of diagnoses and recommendations given by clinics at Mukono and two other locations.

The researchers had only the data on plant doctors’ prescriptions to go by, and were trying to judge its consistency. They assessed 82% of the recommendations as “partially effective” but only 10% as best practice and 8% as ineffective.

The researchers note that soil fertility problems seemed to be neglected by plant doctors and that they seldom mentioned biological remedies.

As for the diagnoses, they could “completely or partially validate”” only 44% of these. This did not mean that 56% of plant doctors’ diagnoses were wrong, but most were ambiguous.

The authors say the results should caution against unrealistic expectations of plant doctors. They point out that very few samples were sent to laboratories, suggesting perhaps that plant doctors prefer not to admit to ignorance.

But given that the extension workers concerned had received only a three-day course from Cabi before being labelled “plant doctors” the results can hardly be taken as invalidating the plant clinic initiative, they suggest.

Plantwise reports that so far its doctors have advised 200 000 farmers, and they aim to reach 800 000 in 31 countries by 2014.

In Uganda, Joseph Mulema told IRIN, donors spent about $290 000 on the programme last year, setting up clinics and links with universities. In the process coverage has expanded from 45 clinics in 18 local districts to 115 in 45 districts.

Local government in Uganda is keen to go ahead with plant clinic expansion, says Boa.

12 years ago

Kenya’s self-styled Prophet David Owuor

His website’s name is Repent and Prepare the Way; his radio station is called Jesus is Lord Radio. He claims humanity is on the brink of the apocalypse and must be ready for the second coming of Jesus. He also claims to have the gift of prophesy and healing, and draws thousands to his “Revivals” and “Crusades” at the three main centres of Christianity in Kenya: Kisumu, at Lake Victoria; Nakuru, in the great Rift Valley, and the capital Nairobi.

His name is Dr David Owuor but he’s also called “The Luo Prophet” by some (he’s from the Luo tribe in Kenya), the “Man of God” and “Prophet of Jehovah” by his followers, and a sham by others. Like many other celebrity pastors, he has flamboyant style – he rides in a Benz and wears long-tailed white suits. Owuor is overtly critical of the Church, orthodox or otherwise, for its corruption and money-making concerns. In turn, religious leaders have raised questions about his “activities”, called for him to be investigated and dubbed him the “prophet of doom”.

President Uhuru Kenyatta (L) and Raila Odinga (C), attend a prayer meeting on February 24 2013 led by David Owuor (R). (Pic: AFP)

Videos of him on YouTube include prophesies, made at distant locations about distant locations. He’s been hosted in Venezuela, South Korea, Oslo and Paris.

In July 2009 he reportedly had a vision at OR Tambo International Airport of the Pale Horse coming to earth, thus breaking the Fourth Seal of the Apocalypse.

A year and a half later, on February 8 2011, as Egyptian demonstrators were crossing the bridge to Tahrir Square, something strange seemed to appear in the news footage of the day – a phantom horse. Owuor saw it and hailed it as his prophecy fulfilled.

His other self-proclaimed successes include summoning rain on June 5 2005 in front of a stadium crowd (video here) and predicting, back in 2004, the full scale and extent of Kenya’s post-election violence that occurred three years later.

While I am not a practising Christian myself, I am wont to believe that prophesies can come true, that miracles do indeed happen. So I thought it might be interesting to interview the man and see what he had to say about prophesy, healing and celebrity.

I tried to reach him on the numbers listed on his website and filled out a few ‘contact us’ forms, but received no reply. I dialled a number that a well-connected friend got for me. My calls were cut. Eventually I managed to get a separate email address for the ‘Repentance Office’ and sent my request there again.

The next day, I received this reply:

Blessings Brian,
The Man Of GOD The Mighty Prophet Of JEHOVAH has just returned from THE ITALY NATIONAL CONFERENCE, and HE has ACCEPTED to set time for your interview. However, please get in touch with the ARCHBISHOP Dr. PAUL ONJORO who schedules THE MAN OF GOD’S MEETINGS, that a date my be localized for you. This is very important because THE MAN OF GOD will soon go into a seclusion of prayers and Total Dry Fast for the upcoming HEALING SERVICE and as the guests pastors from abroad begin to arrive, HE will be really tied up timewise.

Pastor Muthoni
Repentance Office

Sent from my iPhone

I replied immediately via email, asking for the Archbishop’s contact details. No response. My repeated SMSs to the number I had already went unanswered. I gave up.

A few days later, I received a call saying that I could indeed interview The Prophet in a few hours, just before he left Nairobi for his Nakuru ‘miracle healing crusade’ held on 9 – 12 August. As I got ready to meet him, I received a text message cancelling our appointment.

I ended up watching most of the first day of Owuor’s event on television. I saw people claiming to have been healed of various diseases, including HIV. A ‘medical expert’ was on hand to testify to the HIV cures. He was holding what I assume were medical records so it’s not clear whether these miracles happened at Nakuru or before. Another man claimed to be healed of his blindness. He reported seeing “a blue sky with bits of white” for the first time. A woman in a new and impeccable suit had already removed her tatty back harness by time she got onto the stage. She jumped and down in joy, saying that previously she couldn’t even sit. She sat now, beaming. There were others who gave testimony too during that first day and each of them were rewarded with a bottle of Fanta, handed out by The Prophet himself.

The three-day event made the headlines not only for this, but because two people died while waiting to be healed. Whatever the case, about this incident and other things, it’s clear that the good doctor and his people don’t want to answer any questions.

Brian Rath was born and raised in Cape Town. He now lives and writes in Kenya, and recently had a novel published.

12 years ago

In appreciation of Fela Kuti

One day in February 1977, the military government had had enough of Fela Kuti and ordered that soldiers raid his self-declared independent ‘nation’, the Kalakuta Republic. They burned down the houses of the commune. They beat up the activist and musician severely and raped many women, including his wives. They threw Fela’s mother Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, an activist and political figure who fought for women’s rights and democracy, through a window. She died months later as a result of her injuries. Fela, carried along by a wave of loss and sadness, later decided to lead a group of his followers to the residence of the head of state at Dodan Barracks with the coffin of his dead mother. His message to the Nigerian government of the day was clear: take what you have made of my home, my country, and give us back what is ours.

Felabration, the annual two-day festival celebrating the now-late Fela Kuti, was held in Lagos this week at a time when Nigeria is in the most peculiar of situations. The country is in bad shape, to be sure, but its ruins are not the same in every home. Some of us have not had our entire worlds yanked from beneath our feet. Some among us have children who do not know a time when our walls saw a coat of paint. Others merely see the worst of pervasive lack on the streets while riding in air-conditioned cars. Our Africa is indeed rising, but with a tide that has lifted some boats and sunk many others. That so many of us are buoyed while most are sinking can distort our urgency, but it is at this time that Nigerians must find the eyes to see the bleeding body that has been dropped at our front door.

With a wildly popular Broadway musical and a movie currently being made of his life, Fela Kuti’s image and music have seen quite the resurgence in the past decade, but I do not think enough has been said about what he tells us about restoring Nigeria. He was defiantly, stubbornly, wholly himself. All parts of himself – Yoruba, Nigerian, African, black, man – coexisted in way that it simply does not for so many of us here, our language heavily-accented by the Western world that influences us. And it’s not like Fela Kuti did not have his musical influences from beyond Nigeria, like Ornette Coleman and Sun-Ra. It’s not like he was not part British himself, with a mother who was by no means conventional.

Fela Kuti. (Pic: AFP)

In an era where so much of our literature is besotted with culturally uncomfortable people like me whose indigenous language is clunky as metal on our tongues, Nigeria’s ever-expanding gap between the rich and poor means that, even if you did speak your language, you still may not be able to easily relate to the majority of the people around you. These are the lines that are drawn that undergird the politics of our time.

This assuredness in his identity freed Fela in a way that mine does not for me, ridding him of any longing to effect change in a nation while casting himself aside in technocratic detachment, striving to be immune to its politics. If you’re sure of who you are, sure of the strength of your core beliefs and values, then you need not fear what your environment may do to you. Best of all, you would not fear being political, and Fela was unabashedly political. He started a political party, Movement of the People. His Kalakuta Republic was an unabashedly political statement. Remarkably, through his music he was able to convey everything from observations on Cold War geopolitics and Nigeria’s military dictatorship (listen to Beasts of No Nation and Unknown Soldier) to heartbreaking storytelling (Coffin for Head of State) and reflective observations on urban life (Monday Morning in Lagos is one of my favourites).

We live in a more global world than Fela did, and I pride myself on not being bound by my Nigerianness. You’d understand, then, my hesitance at the idea that Nigeria is worth dying for. I am an educated self-sufficient young Nigerian who, by accident of family, class and network, can afford a life that a lot of people would be fortunate to have. I’m not filthy rich, mind: the cost of phone calls and internet connectivity still make me cringe; I do not own a generator set so I’m on my own when there are outages; I do not own a car so the cost of transportation in Lagos is a major reason why I hardly ever visit my hometown and adds to the cost of my grocery list every week here in Abuja. Still, I survive – even flourish – in a way a lot of fellow Nigerians do not. I get angry, but I also get tired of being angry. I simply cannot summon the reserve from which to draw on to continue to lash out over and over again.

I often envision Fela in awe, fighting back tears as he led a procession to Dodan Barracks with a coffin containing his dead mother, his steps heavy as he approached the front gate. He must have known that he would end up in prison for a long time at best or be killed at worse, and I do not know where his strength, his faith, his rage, his patriotism came from. I do know that we have to find it and give back this mangled body of a nation for what is truly ours. Just as with Fela, the worst that could happen is that our efforts fail.

Saratu Abiola is a writer and blogger based in Abuja. Connect with her on Twitter or on her blog.