A health worker gives a drink to a young Ebola patient at the Kenama treatment centre run by the Red Cross Society. (Pic: AFP)
Junior doctors at Sierra Leone’s main hospital went on strike on Monday in protest over inadequate equipment to fight the Ebola epidemic ravaging the impoverished nation.
The action at Freetown’s Connaught Hospital follows the deaths of three doctors in two days, with new figures showing Sierra Leone has overtaken Liberia as the country with the most infections.
“We have decided to withhold our services until proper and more conducive atmosphere is created for us to continue our work,” the Junior Doctors Association said in statement.
The association did not say how many doctors were joining the action, but patients were reporting significant disruptions as senior consultants headed to the wards to cover their work.
One junior told AFP she and her colleagues were “depressed” and “losing courage to turn up for work” because of the lack of equipment.
“We are also worried over the deaths of our colleagues… which is very disheartening,” she said.
The doctors say they don’t have enough respiratory machines and vital signs monitors, and that intensive care facilities are lacking in an Italian-built treatment centre in the west of the city to which some them are due to be sent.
A source at the Junior Doctors Association said the union would meet on Tuesday to decide whether to continue the action.
The World Health Organisation published new figures on Monday showing that Sierra Leone was registering the most cases in west Africa, for the first time, with 7 798 cases compared with Liberia’s 7 719.
Sierra Leone has recorded around 1 742 Ebola deaths this year and has registered a worrying surge recently of cases in its western area, including the capital.
Ten Sierra Leonean doctors have died after contracting Ebola.
Aiah Solomon Konoyima’s death late on Saturday at an Ebola treatment unit in Hastings, near the capital Freetown, came just a day after two of his colleagues were killed by the virus.
Even before the Ebola epidemic spread from Guinea in May, Sierra Leone, one of the world’s poorest countries, was still struggling to rebuild its health services after a decade-long civil war in the 1990s.
In 2010 the nation was estimated to have around one doctor for every 50 000 people – or roughly 120 doctors for the entire country.
The doctors are among more than 300 healthcare workers to have died treating patients infected in the deadly outbreak, which appears to be stabilising in Guinea and Liberia but is still spreading at an alarming rate in Sierra Leone.
The virus is spread through contact with bodily fluids, meaning healthcare workers are particularly at risk, and more than 100 have lost their lives in Sierra Leone.
The outbreak has left more than 6 300 people dead worldwide since December 2013, nearly all in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.
A few weeks ago, I helped organise an event in Johannesburg which convened artists from across east and southern Africa. What I thought would be a straightforward process, however, soon became a logistical nightmare with visa challenges for those attending, particularly from Kenya and Uganda.
The list of documents required seemed endless, as did the frustrated back and forth with participants. In the end, some ran out of time to process their visas and therefore did not attend. Others came in a few days after the event had begun, their visas providing legal status for the exact number of days of the event. Single entry. Non-negotiable.
I struggle to accept the arduous process of legalising movement within this continent, and find it hypocritical that as African nations, we decry the same western standards of legality that we then go on to reinforce.
Rules are rules, you say. But these rules suck.
A viral video of a satirical-cum-social commentary exchange between Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah on The Daily Show, is the reason for my latest introspection.
Received with widespread positivity and affirmation, I have been struggling to master the same emotions towards it.
Among the range of stereotypes and issues it broaches, we find Ebola and reference to the precarious race relations in the US which have recently combusted in the face of the non-indictment of white officers, Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo, in connection with the deaths of two black American men, Michael Brown and Eric Garner. At the same time, the revelations of the #CrimingWhileWhite hashtag have returned white privilege in America into sharp focus.
The interchanges between Stewart and Noah are witty, and initiate discussion on a host of complex and important issues.
And also, we see Noah – even if he does provide commentary on his feelings of insecurity within the USA because of his race – corroborate the notion of the ‘American dream’. After all, here is a young successful comedian from South Africa, whose exponential growth has culminated in his making his mark on that most prized entertainment real estate that is the US of A.
While often controversial, Noah’s navigation of race in South Africa has – in large part, because of his own mixed heritage – provided a space where comedy cannot instantly be condemned as racist by virtue of the comedian’s race.
In one of his skits that still sticks out in my mind, Noah imitates a white South African who warns him that he’ll hit him so hard, he won’t know whether he’s black or white.
As the punchline to the joke, Noah shrugs his shoulders and raises his hands in comical apathy.
It is again, this fluidity of identity that serves him well in the USA. There – unlike in South Africa – he is not termed ‘coloured’. He is black, or mistaken for Latino, if his performances are to be understood to be based on his lived reality.
But most uniquely of all, he is African.
Where Chris Rock or George Lopez (and many others) might meet the comedic needs of America’s various non-white audiences, Noah’s is not an America he can navigate without the appendage of his Africanness.
And it is this Africanness that constitutes my indifference to his latest skit.
Under the broad banner of Africanness, the sort of injustices he calls out about America ironically constitute the injustices that many Africans live every day in South Africa. Additionally, the similarity of the US and South Africa’s current racial combustion is uncanny, and eerily so.
Just last week, a video surfaced of a group of white bikers attacking a black petrol attendant after he reportedly asked one of them – who was smoking – to move away from a petrol pump. Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters party, was involved in more controversy in October after an altercation with Cassie Moller. As his defence, Malema stated that Moller had used racially derogatory language and words – including kaffir – on black restaurant staff. At about the same time, musician Steve Hofmyer publicised sentiments that black people were the architects of apartheid.
In an article on why South Africa largely resists the rest of Africa, Sisonke Msimang states the following;
“In the democratic era we have converted the hatred of Africa into a crude sort of exceptionalist chauvinism. South Africans are quick to assert that they don’t dislike ‘Africans.’ It’s just that we are unique…”
The ideas and associations that both nation spaces – the USA and South Africa – conjure in the minds of the rest of Africa are often interchangeable; these are places regularly described as hostile, impenetrable, xenophobic. The whole comedic gesture between Stewart and Noah therefore becomes unsettling for the similarities it easily discards for a good goad into Uncle Sam.
In the ‘Spot the Africa’ challenge, we see Africa, again, sanitisied and collapsed into one undulating territory. That this is also part of the satire is not lost on me, but the obliging game to, “just tell me which of these pictures was taken in America, and which one is from Africa” is reminiscent of the many toe-curling presentations I have had to sit through where presenters from the continent – addressing largely western audiences – ply their oration with images of the ‘real Africa’. This ‘real Africa’, usually featuring night scenes of the kaleidoscopic colours of traffic skating past skyscrapers in the metropolises of African capitals.
Stewart and Noah gloss over the complexities of each of their territories throughout the skit. A glaring point to ponder is when a class of Kenyan students is mistaken for students in Harlem (a stereotype within a stereotype?), and when a black child sleeping on a mouldy forlorn couch turns out not to be Stewart’s “go to” Somali stereotype, but rather a child in Detroit. In that moment, the commentary is less about the geography of territory and more about a poignant universalising politics of race.
Admittedly, I wouldn’t expect a five-minute exchange on prime time television to deconstruct these complexities in the fine detail that I write of. That people must become aware that Africa is complex and replete with its own charismas, characters and contradictions is ever necessary.
So do I disavow Noah of his right to speak? Should his Africanness be invalidated because of his South Africanness, and therefore turned to mute?
Hardly.
That the conversation has begun – and is beginning in many places and spaces – is a good thing.
Now, we await the nuance.
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.
The tipoff late one night wasn’t unexpected. Since the crime of “aggravated homosexuality” had come into force in the Gambia in October, Theresa had been living in fear. Then a friend who worked for the country’s notorious police force warned her she would be targeted in a raid in a few hours’ time. Theresa’s crime was being a lesbian.
“I wasn’t surprised, I was expecting it anyway because the president has said many times he will kill us all like dogs,” she said. “But I was really, really scared. My friend said, if you don’t go now, it will be too late.” By dawn, Theresa was on a bus out of the country with her best friend, Youngesp, both of whom agreed to speak only if their real names were not used. The two have joined a growing number of people whose lives have been upended by anti-gay laws that trample on an already marginalised minority in west Africa.
That they ended up seeking refuge in neighbouring Senegal, where being gay or lesbian is punishable with five-year jail terms, points to the particularly dismal situation in the Gambia. Its politicians have long and publicly railed against homosexuality, with the tone set by President Yahya Jammeh, who this year labelled gay people “vermin”.
In a heated televised statement, the foreign minister announced last weekend that the Gambia would sever all dialogue with the European Union, which has cut aid over its human rights record and criticised its anti-gay laws. Bala Garba Jahumpa said homosexuality was “ungodly” and against African tradition, and that the Gambia would work with other countries on the continent to oppose it.
“Gambia’s government will not tolerate any negotiation on the issue of homosexuality with the EU or any international bloc or nation,” Jahumpa told state television. “We would rather die than be colonised twice.”
An outcry from western nations over the treatment of lesbian and gay people has often provided fuel for anti-western rhetoric, and sometimes obscured budding homegrown movements for sexual freedom. The African Commission has passed a bill to protect gay and lesbian people against violence and other human rights violations, and gay rights groups are emerging from Botswana to Côte d’Ivoire. But progress is painfully slow. Jammeh, a former soldier who has ruled the Gambia for 20 years, signed the new law against “aggravated homosexuality”, extending the maximum jail terms from 14 years to life. Targets include “serial offenders” who have gay sex, and disabled or HIV-positive people in same-sex relationships.
“Detainees have been told that they have to confess to their homosexuality or they would have a device forced into their anus or vagina to test their sexual orientation,” François Patuel, west Africa campaigner for Amnesty International, said of a crackdown that followed the legislation. At least 14 people have been arrested in the past three weeks, including a 17-year-old boy, and have been held in cells with no windows or lights, according to Patuel.
Campaigners are battling a wave of homophobia sweeping a continent where being gay is typically considered an illness at best. Last month, Chad looked set to become the 37th African country to outlaw homosexuality, while earlier this year Nigeria hardened its anti-gay rhetoric with a populist law that led to stonings in some cases. Some gay people have scattered to neighbouring countries, but exile in west Africa hardly means a haven: only two of the region’s 16 nations have enshrined gay rights.
A picture taken on January 22 2014 shows two suspected homosexuals in green prison uniforms (L) sitting before Judge El-Yakubu Aliyu during court proceedings at Unguwar Jaki Upper Sharia Court in the northern Nigerian city of Bauchi. (Pic: AFP)
Neither Theresa nor Youngesp can shrug off the totalitarian shadow of the Gambia. Though their meagre savings are dwindling, they dare venture out only to beg for food or money, convinced secret police from the Gambia will hunt them down. News from home is grim: six of their friends have been arrested and, they believe, tortured into giving up other names. Last week, security agents turned up at Youngesp’s aunt’s house and told the terrified woman they would kill her niece if they found her – a chilling echo of Jammeh’s own vow to slay any citizens attempting to seek asylum abroad for sexual persecution.
“I just want to leave Africa to go somewhere I’m not judged all the time,” Theresa said. “But I have to speak out because my friends are still in Gambia, and I really want them out.”
Ethan, a gay Nigerian using a pseudonym, is also beginning to speak out. He said depression kicked in at the age of nine when he realised he was gay – and his family would hate him for it.
“I have spent most of my life living in fear. [Recently] I saw a video at an online news site where two suspected gay men were being beaten to death with planks of wood; their blood splattered on the ground. Kids were among the onlookers. No one did anything to stop their murder.”
A friend had advised him to “lead a sexless life. [But] I’m sick of hearing this homophobia and hiding. I’m speaking out because keeping quiet hasn’t done us any good,” he said defiantly.
The barbs are flying at me faster, flung by a hostile crowd.
Here I am, the lone Western correspondent in this tiny African kingdom that still feels volatile since the August 30 attempted military coup that sent the nation’s prime minister scurrying next door into South Africa.
I am suddenly on trial, as a kangaroo court deals me a harsh lesson – and reveals what a minefield Lesotho is for journalists covering this crisis.
A top government official alleged that Nigerian and Ghanaian soldiers-for-hire had slipped into the country, armed to the teeth, to hatch a plot to assassinate Lesotho’s leaders – to throw the tiny nation into even deeper crisis and harpoon the February 2015 elections, already moved up two years earlier by South African Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is mediating to restore some semblance of “lasting peace” here.
For the “mercenaries” claim, I’d asked two people if there was any clue on the identity of these alleged assassins.
Thesele Maseribane, the third leader of the ruling tripartite coalition (who’s also the minister of gender and youth, sports and recreation) floated two nationalities: Nigerians and Ghanaians. Then I spoke to the police’s assistant commissioner of police, Sello Mosili, who confirmed this. So that’s what I reported – their allegations:
Some online media – in Lesotho, too – focused on the nationalities. Even worse, one weekly here turned my story’s allegation into their story’s fact: “Police hunt Nigerian, Ghanaian mercenaries.”
That sensationalist twist unfortunately sparked anxiety among the hundreds of Nigerians and Ghanaians living in Lesotho. They say it’s led to unkind comments from Basotho and feeling threatened on the streets.
When I’d heard about the “unintended consequences” of my reporting, I met a police official and leaders of the two expatriate communities. To help make things right, I suggested a press event: I’ll explain what happened. Maybe the police could discuss the lessons learned – about revealing too much, too soon?
I’m also a journalism trainer here, so I saw the potential for a productive discussion about the dangers of incitement (another real concern) – and choosing words carefully during these tense times.
But I would regret this. Unwittingly, I organised my own public lynching. My good intentions were trampled on.
At this moment, some 30 leaders and members of the two communities have filled the room to debunk the claim.
Even a Nigerian diplomat from Pretoria is here to defend his country.
My defence – that I published allegations, attributed to highly credible sources, and identified the police source by name – isn’t enough.
Indeed, it’s the Lesotho Mounted Police Service (LMPS) spokesperson seated beside me who pours oil on the fire. He stands to read from an authorised, one-page statement. The police are still pursuing reports of foreign mercenaries, he says, with no nationalities named. Then his final paragraph, with its inflammatory kicker: “The LMPS distances itself from the information appearing in the AFP newspaper [sic] dated 13-19 November 2014 that the mercenaries are from Nigeria and Ghana.”
Comfort the afflicted Not deny the substance, mind you, but distance itself. A vague, carefully chosen term, it seems.
Even worse, the police appear to have confused the article I wrote for Agence France-Presse – a round-the-clock international news agency, not a “newspaper” – with the article that appeared in the November 13-19 edition of that Lesotho weekly, which reprinted my allegations as fact.
“That doesn’t exonerate your actions,” says one Nigerian community leader-turned-prosecutor, facing the crowd, his voice filling with emotion.
From the audience, a community member eyeballs me: “If someone is attacked for this, their blood will be on your hands.”
A third chides me: “You should just apologise – but you seem unwilling to.”
That’s right. I stand by my reporting. In front of this crowd, though, I do pause to reiterate my sincere regret for the “unintended consequences” of my reporting.
I have a conscience, after all, and abide by the journalistic creed: afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted. I’d never want a story of mine to harm innocents. Especially not a minority, given my affinity for them.
Was this a show trial? An inquisition? Verbal vigilantism? I’m still struggling for words to describe what happened to me last week. Was it just a traumatic professional incident?
More importantly, a great revelation slaps me in the face: this whole ordeal illuminates just how dangerous this environment is. Not for me – because I can leave. Even flee.
Instead, imagine my Basotho journalism colleagues, who are woven into the fabric of this monoethnic, monolingual society, perched in a remote mountain enclave completely surrounded by South Africa.
The Basotho need a robust, confident media. Yet if one local journalist were to dare to “get to the bottom of things,” but then angers the wrong person, who would protect them? (Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko)
I can handle this public assault adequately. Yet how could a local colleague weather such intimidation? How to cope in this climate? Where the homes of public figures are attacked at night – by grenade or bullet – yet no one is arrested? Where an adversarial radio station is trashed, yet no one is held to account? Where police arrest a prominent editor and reporter for a day – for accurately reporting a criminal case?
A few weeks back, a leading local reporter called me to describe how she was publicly accused of taking bribes from one political faction to report negatively about another. She broke down, crying: “I’m scared, I can’t go anywhere.”
Now, for the first time, I feel this intimidation.
Why does all this matter? Because Lesotho is the latest crisis mediated by the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Stabilising this little tinderbox is in South Africa’s interest – and SADC’s too.
Sandbag the messengers
However, Basotho society is highly polarised, with duelling accusations of what one side is doing to the other.
Yet there’s no neutral arbiter to separate fact from fiction. What’s true, what isn’t. Who’s telling the truth and who isn’t.
In short, the Basotho – and Southern Africa itself – need a robust, confident media, to help connect the dots. Yet if one local journalist – or any member of civil society – were to dare to “get to the bottom of things,” but then angers the wrong person, who would protect them?
Don’t get me wrong: even after this public assassination of my character, I’m still enjoying the adventure of living on the continent the past three years, especially among the Basotho.
Yet the fact remains: at that moment, all three communities needed a scapegoat. To “refute and debunk” the damage purportedly done to the reputations of Nigeria and Ghana, and duress caused for their diaspora communities. From any diplomatic fallout, perhaps the police also felt compelled to deny responsibility.
So I was fingered as the culprit. The true outsider. The foreign correspondent. So expendable. If not shoot the messenger, then sandbag him.
“These were just allegations,” my most vocal defender, Tsebo Mats’asa, director of the Media Institute of Southern Africa’s Lesotho chapter, tells the crowd. “We should thank Ntate [Mr] Jordan for being brave to come explain what happened.”
Brave? No, I was foolish.
The most absurd part of this event is that I actually co-organised and invited many of the people – to witness my own public lynching.
As the meeting ends, and they clear the room, several young journalists approach me.
“You see? This is what they do here,” says one. “They’ll tell you something, and you publish it. But if others don’t like it, they’ll deny they told you that. They’ll blame you.”
I’ve learned many lessons from this experience, but there is one worth underscoring: it’d be irrational for my colleagues ever to put their necks on the line. Their trepidation also drives me forward, to continue probing the reality.
Foolish to speak out
Then, as I lick my wounds the next day, I get a call that lifts my spirits. From a Nigerian who has lived here for years – and observed my inquisition, in silence.
“I wanted to tell you that I was very proud of you, that you didn’t chicken out,” he says. “I see you’re a man who believes in what he has done, who knows he was right, and no amount of pressure will make him surrender.”
I listen, speechless. Then express my gratitude for some of the most meaningful and fortifying words of my career.
The Nigerian continues. “Unfortunately, this is quite common in Africa. In this environment we live in, some people, but not everyone, lack integrity and principles. The Basotho journalists would tell you they weren’t surprised like you were, to see what happened to you yesterday. It’s almost a continuous way of life here.”
Then I ask him, respectfully: Why didn’t you speak up? And are you now willing to be quoted in this piece, by name?”
No, he prefers anonymity.
“Because you see the way they came after you,” he says. “That same angry display would be turned against me.”
Indeed, I finally understand. The sad reality is, it would require rare courage – or foolishness – for anyone to speak out. Just when Lesotho needs them the most.
Michael J Jordan is a freelance journalist based in Lesotho. Visit jordanink.wordpress.com for his coverage of the three-month Lesotho crisis.
A Zambian HIV counsellor looks at text messages coming up on the U-report platform for HIV and Aids awareness at a call centre in Lusaka. (Pic: AFP)
The questions teenagers ask about HIV are brutally honest, anonymous – and sent in 160 characters or less over mobile phone text messages.
At U-Report, a Zambian HIV advice organisation, thousands of bite-sized questions come through every day.
One asks, “I have a girl who has HIV and now she is talking about marriage what can I do with her?”
Another wants to know “when you kiss someone deeply can it be possible to contract the virus?”
Though Aids-related deaths are significantly decreasing internationally, they continue to rise among adolescents, according to a Unicef report released last week.
But services like U-Report are offering a new way to get through to teens too afraid or too embarrassed to talk to health care workers face-to-face.
Located in a nondescript office building in Lusaka, the counsellors sit behind desktop computers answering SMS queries on everything from how the virus is spread, to the pros and cons of male circumcision.
Launched in 2012, the service now boasts over 70 000 subscribers and is being used as a model for other countries, including South Africa and Tanzania.
“We are receiving messages from all over Zambia,” said manager Christina Mutale. “It went viral.”
Significantly, a third of participants are teens, those most likely to die from Aids.
Sitting in a garden outside the Lusaka clinic where she receives her treatment, U-Report user Chilufya Mwanangumbi said counsellors could be hard to find.
High infection rate With purple-painted nails and dreams of being a civil engineer, the 19-year-old student is one of Zambia’s many teenagers living with HIV.
“At other clinics, they don’t tell you what to do, they just tell you you’re positive and send you home with the drugs,” said Mwanangumbi.
“That’s when people kill themselves – because they think it’s the end of the world.”
UNAIids, the UN agency battling the disease, estimates 2.1 million adolescents are living with HIV in 2013, 80 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
Zambia has one of the highest HIV infection rates in the world – an estimated 13 percent of its 14 million people are infected.
Signs of the epidemic are everywhere.
In the Saturday Post newspaper nearly half of the classifieds section is filled with adverts for herbal cures for HIV and Aids, alongside remedies for wide hips and reclaiming lost lovers.
And while U-Report is starting to address the teenage HIV crisis, the barriers to success in the country are high. Even if teens get access to counselling, they may struggle to find a suitable clinic in Zambia, where there is a chronic shortage of doctors and health workers.
Medical services and technology Yet there has never been a better time for a mobile phoned-based counselling service.
By the end of 2014, there will be more than 635 million mobile subscriptions in sub-Saharan Africa, a number set to grow as phones become cheaper and data more readily available, said Swedish technology company Ericsson in a recent report.
Zambia’s text message experiment is part of an international trend that is seeing medical services being provided via technology, with digitally savvy teens the quickest to adapt.
“The long-term findings on adolescents, health care and computer technologies is that they often prefer them to face-to-face communication,” said Kevin Patrick, director at the Centre for Wireless and Population Health Systems at the University of California, San Diego.
“They will more likely confide in a computer about sensitive issues.”
And as Zambia wrestles to shore up its overwhelmed health care system, inexpensive mobile technology could help ease the strain.
“Apps exist to help people locate the closest HIV testing site,” said David Moore, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, researching mobile technologies and HIV. “What if you could do something like an HIV rapid test using an app on your phone? That could be a game changer in terms of HIV incidence.”
