Category: Perspective

Girls, football and politics in Zimbabwe

I recently visited a primary school in my neighbourhood to run an errand. It was break time when I arrived and the chorus of children’s excited voices had reached its crescendo. As I made my way to the office that I was looking for, I was confronted by emotions that I have become used to feeling each time I enter a government institution: shock at the levels of dilapidation of infrastructure and frustration at the seeming lack of interest in improving it.

As I walked down the concrete pathway, I looked over to the school’s sports field where thick clouds of dust erupted continuously as hoards of children played football.

There used to be a green and fertile lawn on those grounds once.

A Cabinet of three women
Upon stopping to spectate, I began to notice a few other things about this match. Firstly, it wasn’t an 11-a-side affair – most informal games aren’t. In fact, I don’t believe there were even sides to begin with, seeing as there were at least 40 children on the turf scrambling for the ball. But secondly, and this more interesting to me, there was a sizeable group of girls sitting in the bleachers half watching the encounter and half engaged in their own conversations.

There were no boys in the bleachers, just as there were no girls on the pitch.

Again, there isn’t much that’s new about this scenario; it plays itself out in schools everywhere. But I began to think about it from a more pointed perspective.

A few weeks ago, Zimbabwe’s Cabinet was announced. Of the 26 ministers appointed, only three are women. This represents an 11.5% female proportion – a figure significantly lower than the 50/50 threshold aspired for by 2015 through the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development. Furthermore, the announcement came at a time when Senegal had just elected feminist leader Aminata Touré as Prime Minister and Rwanda’s Parliament had recorded an unprecedented 64% representation for women in the Chamber of Deputies. While the main focus of Zimbabwe’s new Cabinet has largely been the reinstatement of an old Zanu-PF guard (with the MDC no longer a part of power-sharing), the retrogression of female political participation calls for some expedient action and analysis.

Aminata Touré was appointed prime minister of Senegal on September 1 2013. (Pic: AFP)

As women took to social media to protest, there was a very clear voice from the men – “Well, who did you want them to put?” – as if a defence of turf and territory had erupted within them.

In many ways, I feel that the soccer field scenario yields some of the answers to Zimbabwe’s present female leadership and participation dilemma.

‘Rough’ pursuits are for the boys
Why do the little girls not play football with the boys?

My first response is to say that they – just as the boys who do play – have been socialised to believe that football and other ‘rough’ pursuits are for boys. Girls are supposed to be dainty and pristine in a system that is preparing them for marriage and motherhood.

There is nothing new in this analysis and we know that it generally means that the little girl who wants to play football – or the little boy who wants to sit and talk – each face an incredible amount of pressure to conform to prescribed gendered roles and expectations. Their peers will tease them if they do not; even their teachers and parents might join in.

And with crazed amounts of homophobia in Zimbabwe, anything that sits outside the bounds of ‘normality’ is deeply chastised. I recall once overhearing a father tell his son not to touch or play with his sister’s pink teddy bear because he would “become gay”. The boy, just five, was obviously puzzled. But therein had begun his socialisation around the colour pink, teddy bears and sexuality.

But I also began to look at the football scene from a practical perspective. The playground was dusty and the boys’ uniforms were getting filthy. While already an accepted consequence of ‘playing rough’, there is another layer to the matter.

From what I have observed, most boys do not do their own laundry; a maid or mother or sister or aunt takes care of this chore, leaving the male child free to soil and damage his clothes as much as wants to. Someone else will take care of the mess.

But the same is not usually so for the girls who, in efforts towards entrenching domesticity (or is it independence?), are washing their own clothes long before puberty hits. So playing football with the boys has a few more ramifications than mere social stigma; playing football means getting dirty, and then having to clean the mess up yourself. Put simply, it means extra work. Even if the girls did start to play, they might play with a bit more caution and attention to dirtiness.

So what could, or would, happen if the school I visited decided to invest in growing back its lawn? Could a change in at least some of the girls’ behaviour be seen? Could such a structural modification challenge the socially driven aspects of their action, or inaction?

Supporters of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe listen to his televised speech during the official opening ceremony of the first session of Zimbabwe’s Parliament in Harare on September 17 2013. (Pic: AFP)

If we change the arena, we may draw a few parallels. Just like football, politics is a dirty game. And the dirtier a woman gets, the more she has to ‘clean herself up’ while facing social stigma for her stance. Furthermore, if a girl is not opened up to the possibility of parity and full participation in her childhood, we shouldn’t expect to magically see this manifest in her when she’s a woman. Even the portfolios that Zimbabwe’s female ministers hold are telling of the positions that are deemed appropriate for a woman: Women’s Affairs (Oppah Muchinguri), Small and Medium Enterprises (Sithembiso Nyoni), Higher and Tertiary Education (Olivia Muchena). Unlike finance or ICT portfolios, these are women’s ‘normalised’ roles, like sitting in the bleachers.

I do not write this to exonerate President Robert Mugabe from blame for his heavily imbalanced Cabinet. But I do write it to make clear to the men who have dismissed women’s protests that they do so from a privileged position in society where all arenas, no matter how dirty, are normalised to their needs and aspirations.

Zimbabwean society needs a social and structural shakeup for women and girls to begin to get somewhere. And this starts with the seemingly small acts that take place during tea and lunch breaks in school yards. Those girls in the bleachers hold some of the solution, as do we, their mothers, sisters, aunts and elders.

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.

This post was first published on Her Zimbabwe.

12 years ago

From ‘Zulu’ to the ‘White Widow’, why do all African stories need a white face?

This is a true story. Somewhere in Bujumbura, the capital of the small African nation of Burundi, a colonel is building his house. He has laid the foundations, put up a staircase and the exterior walls, now he is fixing a roof. The economy in Burundi, like much of the African continent, is growing, and the price of land is on the rise. But people like our colonel, employed by the public sector, don’t always share in the spoils. In his case, the reward for years of distinguished service in the country’s military is only a few hundred dollars a month.

But the colonel also serves on the African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom), the UN-backed peacekeeping mission. For this he is much better-paid – earning a few thousand dollars per month. Peacekeeping in Somalia is not for the faint-hearted. Since the country descended into a more or less continuing state of anarchy in 1991, it has harboured fighting clans, factions and terrorists. Amisom forces regularly clash with al-Shabab, the al-Qaeda-inspired group behind last month’s deadly attack on Kenya.

Al-Shabab are now the main cause of instability in Somalia, and instability in Somalia means instability in the whole region. Our colonel – like most people who care about security in Burundi and the rest of East Africa – is concerned about the state of Somalia. “I would like to see peace in Somalia,” the colonel says. “But not yet. Not until I’ve finished building my house.”

The truth is that instability in Somalia has costs and it has benefits. The fact that al-Shabab is able to use large parts of the country as a terrorist training ground presents a horrific cost. Not least the death of 67 innocent people at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi when members laid siege, gunning down families as they sat at cafes and shopped at the supermarket.

The benefits, however, are financial, immediate and far-reaching. One senior Kenyan politician told me that Somalia is a “free-for-all”, giving foreign powers the legitimacy to maintain a military presence in the country and control over the lucrative trade in commodities such as charcoal – once a major source of income for al-Shabab.

And so there was little protest when European donors meeting in Brussels last month decided that the time was right to pledge an extra £1.5-billion for “rebuilding the nation”, despite the fact that, according to a UN group of experts, 80% of withdrawals from Somalia’s central bank are known to be used for private purposes and not for the running of government.

Former Conservative party leader Michael Howard has just spearheaded Somalia’s first new oil deal, despite the widely held view that chaos still reigns in its natural resource sector. Howard, who is non-executive chairperson of new company Soma Oil and Gas, signed the deal in Mogadishu in August, months after the Somali government said the fragile state was not yet ready for oil exploration, and the UN warned such deals could “threaten peace and security”.

The US has recommended the arms embargo on Somalia be lifted despite the fact that Somalia has no proper warehousing, chain of custody or management system for weapons. Recommendations that the UN conduct systematic asset-freezing of senior al-Shabab figures at the heart of the murky trade and transactions in and out of significant parts of Somalia have been largely ignored.

Into this fray steps a woman – originally from the United Kingdom – whose story as told in the British press is such an enthralling mix of the exotic, the horrific and the familiar that the ensuing intrigue can almost single-handedly power the Twittersphere. Enter Samantha Lewthwaite, aka the “white widow”, a British convert to Islam whose husband Germaine Lindsay killed 22 in the London 7/7 bomb attacks. She fascinates in the way that white women who wear hijab generally do – I’ve seen them stared at on the tube in London – and because we still don’t believe that women can be terrorists.

A photo of a fake South African passport of Samantha Lewthwaite released by Kenyan police in December 2011. (Pic: AFP/Kenyan police)

Lewthwaite has caught the imagination of the Kenyan press for some time, since police disrupted an alleged terrorist ring she was financing, but somehow allowed Lewthwaite to escape, believing she was an innocent tourist.

But far from being anything so straightforward, Lewthwaite is a series of apparent contradictions. Born in Northern Ireland, her father fought against the IRA, yet the cause she has chosen is jihadism. When Lindsay blew himself up on the Piccadilly line, she described the attack as “horrific”, but it seems what she actually believes is that his act of terrorism was a sacrifice which meant that for her, “the hereafter promised to be sweeter”.

The ratings appeal of a character such as Lewthwaite is obvious. You only have to look as far as Homeland – an entire series based around our fascination with western-born, white jihadist terrorists, which returns to UK screens this weekend – to find evidence of this. One character in the hit US show, which centers on a US marine who turns into a would-be suicide bomber, is Aileen Morgan, an American woman who plays a key role in a terrorist plot.

“She has the face of an angel, but she’s a killer,” the US press cooed, presumably referring to the fact that actress Marin Ireland, who plays Morgan, is blonde-haired and blue-eyed, which is not how terrorists are supposed to look.

There are plenty of Somali-Brits, Somali-Canadian and other Somali dual citizens suspected of involvement with al-Shabab, but they are black and Somali-looking, and therefore their capacity for violence is apparently less surprising.

Nor is it just the fact that Lewthwaite is a woman that makes her story so unique. On the FBI’s most wanted list of terrorists is also Assata Shakur, a 65-year-old grandmother who has been hiding in Cuba for decades after she was alleged to have been involved in the shooting of a US state trooper – an involvement she has always denied. It is the fact that Lewthwaite is a white convert to Islam that fascinates.

The media obsession with Lewthwaite reminds me of something that has irritated me for years: I cannot name a major Hollywood film set in Africa that does not involve a white American as the main character. This goes back to Zulu – ostensibly about the Anglo-Zulu war, but really about Michael Caine; Out of Africa – set in Kenya but really about Meryl Streep and Robert Redford; Lord of War – set in Liberia but really about Nicholas Cage; Tears of the Sun – set in Nigeria but really about Bruce Willis and Monica Bellucci; Blood Diamond – set in Sierra Leone but really about Leonardo Di Caprio … the list goes on. Even Amistad – a film specifically about the impact on Africans of the transatlantic slave trade – is as much a film about the character played by Anthony Hopkins than it is about any African slave.

Samantha Lewthwaite is the white, western character we need in order to remain interested in a story that is primarily African. That is not to suggest her role in the Westgate attack was pure fiction. Like many other journalists in Kenya during the aftermath of the attack – trying to sift through the uncontrollable stream of fact and fiction emanating from its tragic ruins, I heard credible reports of a white, female jihadist wielding a gun.

One witness said he saw two white women with weapons directing the attack. There were reports in the Kenyan press of a white woman smearing herself with blood so that she looked like one of the more than 1 000 innocent people injured or caught up in the attack, desperately trying to escape.

Whether or not she was involved in the Westgate attack, Lewthwaite is already wanted for terrorist offences in Kenya and is believed to be hiding in Somalia. It’s the kind of place the most wanted woman in the world would choose to hide out, because despite two decades and millions of dollars in aid, years of training the military, the arms embargos, UN monitoring, expert recommendations and reports, it remains in a state of chaos. That, of course is the real story. But it does not have the face of an angel.

Afua Hirsch for the Guardian

12 years ago

T2T: Three friends, 24 countries, 165 days and 30 901km

Despite Africa’s impressive economic growth, it’s clear from the way people talk about and do business on the continent that views of Africa have not changed dramatically in the past 20 years. Some views are excessively positive, others overly negative. Both are equally harmful. We – that being me, my husband Matt and our friend Ishtar Lakhani – think it’s high time that changed. And so an idea was born – to do something to make people see Africa differently.

The aim of the T2T Africa expedition is to help people see Africa differently. (Pic: Supplied)

Having lived in three African countries – Ghana, Kenya and South Africa – and traveled or worked in another 20 between us, we learnt the hard way how narrow our view of the continent was. We now know that different size and colour condoms are required in even neighbouring countries. We know that a marketing campaign that was successful in one country can fail in another simply because the model wasn’t wearing shoes, and in that country only prostitutes don’t wear shoes.

We’ve learnt that differences go deeper than belief systems and languages, and similarities are not neatly contained within the arbitrary lines on maps. The treasure chest of cultures that exists on the continent requires more understanding and respect.

But what would be the best way to share these lessons? The most obvious way would be to illustrate that Africa is a continent of 54 diverse countries and to show as many countries as possible in as much detail as possible. We believe achieving this could be as simple as getting in a car and driving as far as time and money would allow.

This would give us access to some of the many unsung, self-funded projects that sustain thousands of people each day, allow us to learn about some of the cutting-edge technology that is helping to push the continent forward and, best of all, meet lots and lots of people. It’s these details that we believe could help all of us see Africa differently.

So that’s what we’re going to do: three friends, 24 countries, 165 days and 30 901km.

From the 5 October 2013 Ishtar Lakhani, Matt Angus-Hammond and I will be driving from Tsitsikamma in South Africa to Tataouine in Tunisia, via the southernmost and northernmost points of the continent with detours to the east and west coasts.

Along the way we will share as many pictures and stories as we can of the things we will see and learn, whether it be the story of a start-up entrepreneur, a trail blazing eco-tourism initiative or an incredible human being whose name we should all know.

The months-long trip will take the three South Africans to the four corners of the continent. (Pic: Supplied)

We’ll send updates via Twitter, our Facebook page, website, a weekly blog here on the Mail & Guardian’s Voices of Africa site and through as many other channels as we can along the way.

We also hope that our journey will make a difference to the people we meet along the way. One of our team is doing a master’s degree in food security and the other two have been part of a successful food garden in Orlando West, Soweto for eight years, so it made sense to take advantage of this experience.

So in addition to our #seeAfricadifferently campaign we will be planting 45 food gardens – an average of two per country – en route. The seeds and water-carrying equipment for this initiative will be purchased with R61 050 raised via Thundafund, Africa’s first crowd-funding platform, over a 60 day period.

Volunteers are being sourced via social media and experts all over the continent are generously giving us their time to make sure this has the best chance of succeeding. We know the gardens won’t all survive and that if we go back in two years some may no longer exist. But we also know that with the right people involved, within five years a single garden could be feeding an entire school of 60 staff and children daily.

Preparing for this trip has already taught us many lessons and the only thing we now know for sure is that while we don’t know what we’re in for it’s sure to be one heck of a journey. We hope you’ll join us for the ride

Tracy Angus-Hammond is a disabilities activist and social researcher with a passion for convincing others to see Africa differently. She volunteers at Nkanyezi and occasionally contributes to Africa: The Good News. She is also the owner and manager of a research consultancy, Angus Hammond Africa. Tracy has lived, traveled worked in more than 20 countries in Africa. Follow her on Twitter or visit the T2T website for more details on the trip.

12 years ago

‘Tey’: a toast to life and exploration of death

“Satché must die by the end of the day.” Such is the surrealist Senegal of Alain Gomis’s Tey (Today), a toast to life through an exploration of its morbid counterpart. The latest from the French-Senegalese director is a diasporic tale of the final day in the life of Senegalese returnee Satché, played by Saul Williams, who has been away from his community after years of living in the US.

‘Tey’ tells the tale of the final day in the life of Senegalese returnee Satché. (Pic: OkayAfrica)

Tey makes its American theatrical debut on October 6, at New York’s Mist Harlem Cinema, and will thereafter run in selected theaters through a “hybridised, community-driven model.”

Said BelleMoon Productions founder Guetty Felin on the importance of reaching out to smaller markets: “The hybridised model for releasing Tey is really about ‘cutting our cloth’ as my mentor often says. We know our film very well, we know who is sensitive to this sort of cinema and who isn’t. It is definitely not mainstream.”

“Neither Alain nor Saul or my company BelleMoon productions for that matter, is mainstream. This is an independent foreign film with subtitles, and black … We’re not going to break box office with it and that’s not truly our main goal. We’ve figured out who our audience or community was for the film and we are basically bringing the film to them, whether it is through a small theatrical release, college [and] university screenings or community screenings.”

OkayAfrica’s Alyssa Klein spoke with Gomis about the film.

While living in Dakar during filming did you relate to Satché’s experience in terms of diaspora-related disconnect with Senegal?
I’ve lived between Dakar and Paris for 20 years now. I was saying with this film, like Satché, this is my place, this is my present. In fact I don’t have any patriotic feeling for no country. My land is in Guinea Bissau, my fights, my dreams are in Senegal, my cinema, my family, my loves, are everywhere. Even in my little family village in Guinea Bissau, I don’t know no pure people. As soon as you understand that everybody is fighting in his own body, you deal with human beings with fundamentally [the] same type of doubts. I am a filmmaker, I’m dealing with souls, I’m disconnected everywhere, and connected everywhere, just like Satché.

What about your experience with film, if anything, made you realise the necessity of a hybridised, community-driven model of distribution? Is there anything about this film in particular that would make such a model a goal?
Maybe each time that you’re trying to make something different, I mean with a free and no marketed form, you also have to imagine new ways to reach people, especially with an African film. Africa is like another planet for a lot of people. With this film we have organised special nights – “ciné-concerts” – in theatres, in underground places, in concert halls … trying to reach all kinds of audiences … from Addis Ababa to Sydney. We had wonderful experiences and above all, it is fun to do, travel with a film just like a band in tour. And people are surprised, because this film is about us, wherever you come from. In the Q&A people talk about themselves.

Has your attitude toward death changed as a result of your work on Tey?
Yes. One of the reasons I’ve made this film was to face my own fear of death. It has become a reality. And if your death becomes a reality, your life becomes a reality. It’s a film about life.

What music would you listen to if you knew today was going to be your last day to live?
I know now, that is something you can’t predict. I have to make my life connected with my present. My last days have started 40 years ago. Every second is my last one. Today I have listened to Baloji.

Watch the trailer below.

For more on Tey read the full press release and stay up to date here.

Alyssa Klein for OkayAfrica

12 years ago

Ghana’s first farmers’ market: ‘We need more like this’

There are some things about public gatherings in Ghana’s capital Accra that are guaranteed. A certain amount of dust and Atlantic spray on the breeze, a sound system blaring Azonto – a local music sensation – just a bit too loud, fearless children lining up to show off their moves, and an orderly row of canopies where the hot and the tired sit down on plastic chairs and take stock.

But if you looked a little closer at the fair in Ako Adjei park on Saturday, you would have found that what appeared a typical Accra event was quietly masking something quite unusual: a farmers’ market. The dozen or so small-scale producers selling their wares at The Accra Green Market were busily making history as participants in Ghana’s first ever fair for locally grown, sustainable, organic produce.

A fruit seller holds six-day old eggplants from Ghana. (Pic: AFP)

“This is a great way to give exposure to organic, local products,” says Jeffrey Mouganie, 22, founder of Moco Foods, an organic company that produces local forest honey and fiery chilli sauce, guaranteeing a traceable supply chain and hiring workers with disabilities. “The only space we usually get to market our products are at the bazaars of international schools, where we sell to a lot of expats,” he says. “But we need more markets like this – the best feedback we have had for our products is from Ghanaians.”

Moco’s Savannah Honey, on sale here for 10 Ghana cedis – approximately £3 (R45) – is being exported to the UK where it will go on sale at Harrods and Selfridges for what the producers expect to be around five times that price. Also on sale, organic mushroom wine – said to be a treatment for practically every medical condition from sclerosis to high blood pressure, asthma and “sexual weakness” – pak choi, gloriously frothy-leaved heads of broccoli, watermelon, small, knobbly carrots, and tough-skinned, tangy nectarines full of seeds and sweet-sour juice.

The organisers of the market believe they are part of a new trend towards sustainable, organic and local food, which they say goes hand in hand with the growth of Ghana’s new middle class. “Things in Ghana are changing – it is no longer a poor country but a middle-income country. And because of that, people are more interested in what they eat,” says Edison Gwenda Abe, 29, founder of Agripro – a mobile application company that provides farmers with access to marketplaces and which organised the Accra Green Market. “In East Africa, farmers’ markets are already really popular, but in West Africa, there is nothing like this. We plan to take it to different locations in Ghana, and we have had interest from Nigeria too.”

New interest in organic food
Constance Korkoi Tengey, founder of Immaculate Gold Beads, Mushrooms and Snails, is typical of the kind of small-scale grower whose products the market is designed to showcase. An energetic 62-year-old who carefully dishes out mushroom sandwiches, mushroom salad and mushroom gari foto – a veggie version of a popular Ghanaian dish made from cassava tubers – Tengey began growing mushrooms in her back garden seven years ago and says sales are on the rise.

“I eat a lot of mushrooms as a substitute for meat, and I’ve noticed that I don’t gain as much weight, and it keeps me looking younger,” Tengey says. “People in Ghana are becoming more health-conscious these days, they are really showing an interest in my products. It’s a profitable business for me.”

But it’s not only shoppers who are fuelling Ghana’s new interest in organic food. The city’s ever expanding directory of hotels, restaurants and cafes has an insatiable appetite for local products and high quality produce. “There are a lot of new eateries bringing in foreign chefs, and as a result the quality is getting higher,” says Sadiq Banda, an organic grower in Accra who supplies some of the city’s five-star hotels.

“Chefs are always looking for the best produce, and there is a great need for more local food producers to supply them. The Ghanaian middle class is growing too, and becoming more interested in quality. But Ghanaians are still mainly interested in conspicuous consumption – they do not tend to spend money on high-quality things unless other people can see them doing it, and fresh produce is not yet a priority.”

Ghana may still have some way to go in grasping the concept of organic, whole foods. Alongside the organic avocados on one stall were tins of corned beef, canned sardines and mayonnaise, where young women were zealously composing “salad” – a concoction of oily, processed products with a dash of fresh vegetable to top it off. And Ghana being Ghana, there is a strong affection for the deep-fried. My taste award went to Tengey’s “Kentucky Fried Mushrooms” – not blessed with a name that conjures up all things fresh, small-scale and local, but they tasted quite simply amazing.

Afua Hirsch for the Guardian Africa Network