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African men don’t do feminists

Ask an African man what he thinks about feminists. Go ahead, and record their answers so you can email it to me later. I like a good laugh to start my mornings. If he is like 90% of the African men I know, his answer will be around the lines of, “You mean those white women who don’t like to cook?” or, “Those single women who can’t have babies?” or my personal favourite, “You mean LESBIANS?”.

Feminism, as many of us daughters of Africa know, is taboo on the continent. I would define feminism as a woman who takes gender seriously and addresses discrepancies between the sexes throughout her everyday life. She is a woman who will not conform or adjust her beliefs for the sake of a man’s (or society’s) comfort. Still, throughout Africa our brothers and sisters tie feminism to western voodoo, a type of evil cult that tells African women it is okay to be unmarried, focused on your career and not on procreation, or that the institution of patriarchy in Africa may actually be – shocker – detrimental.

So imagine the struggle of being a self-proclaimed feminist, raised and educated in the US, now living back on the continent, trying to date African men. The struggle has been real. It seems as though African men on the continent, even those who’ve returned from university or work abroad, have an image of their perfect woman, and she is definitely not a feminist. I’d say she’s more of a maid. Let me explain. First, every African man wants a cook, like his mama. Meaning girls, be ready to chip that manicure-peeling cassava and you better pick up his plate when dinner is done. And how can you expect a grown man to dish his own rice? Don’t be foolish now! Next, he wants a personal assistant. A woman that will check on his family, make sure his mom has all her prescriptions, remember his little sister’s birthday and ensure that his favourite suits are ready for that business trip the next week. You know, the usual tasks we women went to university for. Finally, he wants a nurturer, a woman ready to become a mother as soon as possible. African men want kids, usually lots of them. They want a woman who will take pride in bearing multiple children, along with the breastfeeding, potty training, washing, burping and, in general, 24-hour babysitting.

Now, are the aforementioned tasks and attributes a sure sign of being anti-feminist? Not always, but sometimes I feel that when dating African men there is not too much room for compromise on the woman’s side. It’s all or nothing with African men. To say that you hate cooking, will be no one’s assistant for under $70 000 a year, or that you are not interested in being someone’s mother is romantic suicide on this continent. Many African men love “strong” women, but to be overly vocal about how sexism is negatively affecting women, for example, can turn you into a bra-burning radical that rejects traditional notions of marriage and doesn’t shave her legs. And what African man is supposed to take this kind of woman home to meet his African mother? Again, don’t be foolish!

Even me, an opinionated over-analyser who quotes Pumla Gqola on my Tumblr blog, would get nervous during a first date with a tall, dark and handsome African man who my mother would call “ozzband” [husband] material”. As the two of us would sit there getting to know each other, he’d hit me with the boom early on and say something like, “I mean the first thing I look for in a woman is her cooking skills, I like traditional women you know?”. I would cringe, smile and respond, “Yeah, cooking is important, having a traditional marriage is not the worst thing in the world.” But the whole time I’d be thinking, “What the hell Stephanie, there’s nothing traditional about you besides the fact that you like to eat foufou and sauce with your hands.” But because African men don’t do feminists, I always felt the need to dumb my ideals down a bit as to not scare these brothas away.

African men have set and continue to set the dating tone on this continent, and since many still want that cook/assistant/nurturer/superwoman, it has left us self-proclaimed feminists in a box, a very lonely box where we watch as friends get married and we end up being that guest sitting in the back discussing bell hooks’ Feminist Theory with no one in particular.

So I ask the African men out there: Is it true? If a woman walked up to you wearing a T-shirt with the words “African Feminist” on it, would you be intrigued or intimidated? Curious or concerned? Do you not do feminists? Or am I over-generalising?

Stephanie A. Kimou was born in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire and raised in Washington, DC. She is a blogger by night at A Black Girl in the World and a programme manager at a women’s social enterprise in Tanzania by day. She holds a masters degree in international affairs from Georgetown University in DC, and has studied at the African Gender Institute in Cape Town and the University of Paris in France. Her mother has told her she has two years to get married, or else. Writing is the way she deals with this stress.

11 years ago

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.

11 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.

11 years ago

What are teens getting up to online in Africa’s innovation hub?

“In boarding school there were a group of girls who were from Nairobi and they were hip and cool, they were computer literate … They would open email accounts for us and show us how to go about the internet and so on, that is how I learnt how to use the internet … log into Facebook and even text our boyfriends back home.” – Female, 15-17, Kitui, Kenya

I remember the first time I heard about Facebook – it was early in 2007 while I was attending university. My sister was on an exchange abroad and encouraged me to join. By the end of that same year I had connected with all my university friends and even some old friends from school.

Fast forward six years, and the first memories of using the world’s most popular social media site come back to me when I was presented with the findings of A (Private) Public Space, a study about the use of the Internet and social media among adolescents in Kenya. Based primarily on focus group discussions conducted in three locations in the country, one of our main motivations for undertaking this particular study was to understand the how and why of what Kenyan children and youth are doing online.

Scholars watch the film Madagascar in the computer lab at Mwelu Foundation in Mathare slum, Nairobi, Kenya. (Pic: Unicef Kenya/2013/Huxta)

The title of the study comes from a sentiment expressed by the majority of participants – that social media and their mobile phones give them the opportunity to construct their own private worlds, to explore their identities free from the interference of family members, to strengthen existing social connections and to establish new ones.

“On the internet you are more confident than face to face. There are some things you can say there that you fear saying face to face.” – Male, 15-17, Kisii

While the findings are not nationally representative – a limitation of the methodology – the study provides a fascinating look into the habits and uses of the Internet and social media by young people in the country. While less than one-third of Kenyans have access to the Internet, the proliferation of affordable Internet-enabled mobile phones and flexible pre-paid schemes is helping to shift this rapidly. Kenya also has one the largest Facebook and Twitter user bases on the continent and the popularity of social media was clearly expressed by the study participants.

It is also not uncommon to hear of Kenya being referred to as the Silicon Valley of Africa, yet in spite of the country’s status as an ICT innovation hub, the study found that overall digital media was not fully integrated into the participants’ learning environments and education. While some shared examples of using the Internet and their mobile phones to research topics for school, many felt that their parents and caregivers mostly saw the Internet as a distraction from schoolwork and learning.

Risks of online use
In addition to looking at habits and uses, the study also sought to understand how risks associated with online use – including cyber-bullying, suggestive self-exposure, exposure to harmful content, scams, and grooming for sexual exploitation – were perceived by young people, to give us insight that can inform future interventions and awareness-raising campaigns on child online safety.

“This guy I befriended on Facebook, he started telling me to send him photos of myself without clothes on, I told him I can’t, he insisted and I refused, he then started [verbally] abusing me and I called him a few names too, he could not stop and I shared with my older cousin who blocked him for me.” – Female, 15-17, Nairobi South B

The discussions on topics related to online safety revealed that many of the participants appeared to have only an abstract awareness of risk. Many were aware but ultimately did not believe that a dangerous encounter could befall them, or they felt they were employing the right preventative measures, or that being connected ultimately outweighed the risk of online harassment or unpleasant experiences. Knowledge of or interest in changing privacy settings was low, although most reported knowing how to block unwanted interactions.

A teenager texts a friend on a mobile phone at Cura Rotary Home, an orphanage for children who’ve lost their parents to Aids, in Cura village, 20km from central Nairobi, Kenya. (Pic: Unicef Kenya/2013/Huxta)

For me the clear take-away from the discussions on risk and safety with Kenyan teens is that in order to be successful, any awareness-raising and educational efforts need to take into account all these complexities.

Approaches based on fear-mongering or preaching are unlikely to be effective. This is not to suggest that children and youth should not be taught about the potential risks of immersion in the digital world. However outreach messaging should balance issues of safety with the developmental and learning opportunities afforded by the Internet, and promote positive online interaction through the concept of digital citizenship.

There is a real opportunity here to empower peer support groups and youth organisations to take the lead on this, while at the same time working with parents, teachers and child protection services to strengthen their ability to provide support, and working with policy makers to improve relevant policies and legal environments. By doing this, we can start to create environments where opportunities are maximised and risk is minimised – and children and youth in middle-income and developing countries have the right base from which to emerge as leaders in the global information and communication technology sector.

You can download the full report here.

Kate Pawelczyk is the project manager of Voices of Youth Citizens – a UNICEF initiative that seeks to understand how young people in middle-income and developing countries are using digital media to inform awareness-raising, interventions and policy advocacy. Kate is South African and currently based in New York City. Any questions about the study in Kenya or the Voices of Youth Citizens initiative can be directed to her via email.

11 years ago

Rwanda rail project on track to bridge Africa’s economic divide

Hundreds of lorries trundle through the Rwanda-Tanzania border every hour, damaging Rwanda’s narrow hilly roads. A $13.5-billion (R136-billion) railway project linking the Kenyan port of Mombasa to Kigali, the Rwandan capital, cannot come soon enough for Silas Lwakabamba, Rwanda’s minister of infrastructure.
“The trucks carry too much load, they end up spoiling the road,” he said. “Rail will be faster and can carry more. Maintenance of rail will be much easier.”

A woman walks on a main street of Rwanda’s capital Kigali. (Pic: Reuters)

The 2 935km line is one of several big infrastructure projects on the continent, reflecting renewed global interest among policymakers after years of focusing on health and education. Besides the Mombasa-Kigali rail link, a seven-year initiative to connect Niger and Ivory Coast is to begin next year as part of efforts to improve rail infrastructure in west Africa.

The railway would link Niamey, the capital of landlocked Niger, with the Ivorian commercial hub of Abidjan, via the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, after the extension of mining activities in west Africa.

Dams are also back in fashion. Ethiopia is pressing ahead with its Grand Renaissance dam to the consternation of Egypt, which fears that the project will curb its water supply. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, work is scheduled to start on Inga III, a $20-billion project.

“Infrastructure is critical for development,” said Lwakabamba. “For the transport sector, we need roads, rail and air, they are all very critical for economic development. And we can’t do anything without energy.”

Rwanda is also involved in the Rusumo falls hydroelectric project to increase power supply of electricity to the national grids of Burundi, Rwanda, and Tanzania, a project backed by the International Development Association, the World Bank’s soft loan arm, and the African Development Bank.

Africa accounts for just 3% of global trade and African countries trade 10% of their goods with each other, compared with 65% between European countries. Landlocked countries are hit particularly hard by poor infrastructure, paying up to 84% more to export their goods than a coastal country. Improving regional markets in Africa would have a significant impact on economic development and poverty reduction.

Huge infrastructure needs
The continent’s infrastructure needs are huge, but financing levels are only half the estimated $93-billion needed annually between now and 2015 to sustain 7% growth rates. Infrastructure is the key issue around plans for a development bank by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – known as the Brics.

The Mombasa-Kigali link is getting attention at the highest level. Leaders from Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda have been meeting regularly on the project and plan to discuss financing next month in Kigali. Funding has been secured from China for the $3.7-billion Mombasa-Nairobi section, a distance of 500km, and construction is due to begin in November.

The 200km Rwanda section will cost $1.5-billion and Rwanda is still lining up financing. The line will be used to carry coffee, tea and other agricultural products and minerals out of Rwanda and machinery into the country. The railway will be designed for freight speeds of 80kph but will be open for other passenger travel too.

The Mombasa-Kampala-Kigali railway project entails a 1 184km rail from Mombasa through Nairobi to Malaba and branching to Kisumu (Kenya); a 1 400km rail from Malaba to Kampala, Uganda and linking to four Ugandan towns before connecting to the main line to Rwanda at Mirima Hills; a 201km rail from Mirima Hills to Kigali and an extra 150km rail to other towns in Rwanda.

The existing railway between Mombasa and Kampala dates to the colonial era, and has a small gauge. The new line will have a standard gauge, which is wider, and therefore faster and capable of carrying heavier loads. Rwanda will build its section from scratch as there is no existing line.

The project is unlikely to receive support from UK taxpayers as the Department for International Development has withdrawn £21-million (R343-million) in general budget support – direct aid to the Rwandan government – shifting it to sector support, focusing on health and education. The decision was taken after allegations that Rwanda was supporting M23 rebels in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“We do respect decision of the UK government,” said Lwakabamba. “We obviously prefer budget support as it allows us a degree of flexibility on priorities. The UK concentrates more on education and social areas.”

Mark Tran for the Guardian