Dr. Penninah Ogada discusses the social, political and economic factors that impeding the full participation of Kenyan women in this year's general election.

Introduction

In the East African region Kenya is noted for having the smallest number of women holding elective positions. Statistics however, show that women’s limited participation in politics and governance is neither due to a lack of qualified women, nor their level of exposure and intellectual skills for participation. There are three issues in the public domain that may offer some explanation for women’s limited participation in politics and public life in Kenya. First is the socio-political environment in which the electioneering processes take place. Secondly, the role of political parties and their internal structures and operations in facilitating women’s participation; and, thirdly, the socio-economic environment in which the 2007 electoral processes are taking place in Kenya.

Socio-Political environment

The 2007 Kenyan General Election has the highest number of women political aspirants ever witnessed in the country's history. There are over 120 women cleared through the different political parties to run for parliamentary seats, and, many more are running for civic seats. This scenario is the result of a concerted effort by the non-governmental organizations and civil society activities that started in earnest in early 2006 in the run up to the 2007 electioneering period. Most of the sensitization and mobilization activities have been undertaken by the Gender and Governance Program partners who are funded by development agencies through the UNIFEM kitty for women, and, in furtherance of Article 3 of the Millennium Development Goals for Kenya.

Many sensitization workshops and seminars for women aspirants focused on individual skills for capacity and confidence building, including: identification of electioneering issues, development of relations with the media houses, and the packaging the ‘self’ for public space and elective position. The emphasis has been on “transformative” political leadership, undergirded by the principle that no society can hope to progress when women are locked out of political participation. In Kenya women comprise 52% of the voting population - this is too significant a proportion to be ignored in the decision making processes and public policies that affect the lives of women and those of their families. Yet a cursory observation of what happened during the party nominations in November 2007 reveal two disquieting trends:firstly, that political parties are not ready to accommodate women candidates, and secondly that the public mindset is generally so patriarchal that the female gender roles are first and foremost considered before individual woman’s leadership qualities can be acknowledged and embraced.

Presently Kenyan political parties revolve around individual founders with whom the parties are identified, and who are, to some extent, responsible for funding the party activities. This fact defines the extent of women’s involvement in the hierarchical structure of the party relative to women’s low economic capability in a patriarchal society. The lower the women’s economic capability, the further away from the center of power and decision making they are within these parties, and, the less likely it is that aspiring women would be able to negotiate and influence their chances of winning party nomination. Secondly, until the political parties’ bill comes into operation, it is virtually impossible for a woman candidate to fund her own election campaign from her own resources even if she won her party nomination. But more importantly, the cut-throat competition from the male counter parts which includes huge spending on voter bribery, character assassination, mudslinging, false promises, propaganda, and so on, make the cost of involvement in the current socio-political environment too costly in terms of social capital, especially for many career women with leadership qualities. Many career women find the social environment hostile and are not willing to play hard-ball in the political game which is played according to male-stream rules, and at the expense of family and career dignity and social running – even as role models to the girl child.

During the recent nomination exercises in November, women aspirants were subjected to physical beatings and rape, abductions, and even deliberate delay and hijacking of the nomination exercises in order to cause conflict with women’s other gender role performances. In September, Flora Igoki Tera, an ODM Kenya Parliamentary Candidate for the North Imenti constituency in Meru district of Kenya, was attacked and tortured by a gang of 5 men, near her Meru home. Ms Alice Onduto, a parliamentary aspirant for Lugari Constituency who lost in the nominations was shot dead while on her way home in Nairobi’s South C estate on 1/12/07. Her assailants have not been apprehended. All this has a two-pronged impact: the female voters are intimidated and denied opportunity to support the candidate of their choice, and secondly, the aspirants are traumatized psychologically and physically intimidated into giving up on the quest for elective positions.

Role of political parties

There is no provision for independent political candidates for elective positions in the current Kenyan constitution. This means that any aspiring candidate must be nominated by a political party in order to run for elective political office. The increased awareness of the historical social injustices to women perpetuated by patriarchal structures across the African region, has led the civil society to consistently advocate for ways to seek to redress this anomaly.

One suggestion that has been promoted is that the government should adopt affirmative action as a national policy towards the realization of greater participation by women in public affairs. This is not the first time the civil society and women groups are agitating for affirmative action in Kenya, in fact this policy was first verbalized in the 1970s by Mrs. P. Asiyo - then the only elected woman member of Parliament. In spite of the demonstrated success of this policy in bringing about the desired changes in neighboring countries, the “male-stream” Ninth Parliament did not support the Bill for enactment. Hence the political parties are not bound by any regulation to facilitate greater participation by women in both political party and national affairs. Indeed those who have vested interests in the maintenance of status quo have argued that Kenyan women are so amply qualified that attempts to implement affirmative action would slight their competitiveness and suggest that they are of such feeble mind and weak leadership ability as to require a leg up in the public sphere.

The three major political parties have been crisscrossing the country in the hunt for votes. All the parties are aware of the significance of women’s votes and consequently have been verbalizing their commitment to social justice and, for women’s concerns. We all waited with bated breath in November to see if political parties would grant, at least some women aspirants direct party nominations. This has not happened in the three main parties. Such a let-down to women party supporters given that the manifestos of the major parties contain specific clauses about party commitments to women’s concerns.

One may be forgiven for being cynical and believing that this may just be one more occasion for politicking and paying lip service for the sake of getting the women’s votes without commitment. It is also noted that no party has taken any disciplinary measures against perpetrators of violence against women - even in cases where evidence has been provided and individuals have been named. In the Kenyan electioneering process violence against women are equated with acts of “normal thuggery”. Women remain situated far from the center of power within the political parties. They do not hold positions of influence that can impact the party nominations neither do they have the financial clout to fund their own election campaigns. Therefore following the male-dominated party nominations fiasco that was witnessed in November, many women aspirants had no choice but to migrate to smaller and peripheral political parties in order to receive nomination certificates to for elections. Kenyan political parties are nothing more than vehicles to parliament, and have no ideological distinctions, for practical purposes, and in this regard women incur no ideological losses in changing parties. Women, on the on the hand, lose voter hype and attention when they move to small parties that have no impact and are not popular in their constituencies.

The socio-economic environment of the 2007 electoral processes

Becoming a Member of Parliament is the most lucrative job one can land in Kenya today. It is the kind of job that has no strict rules governing the quality of performance, it is a job where the employee becomes the unquestionable lord over the masses. The crushing levels of poverty in rural communities, and the gap between the haves and have-nots continue to disenfranchise the masses (mostly rural women) who have family responsibilities, forcing them to sell their voter's cards in exchange for small amounts of money to put food on the table. The voter's card buyers are agents of unpopular but wealthy candidates who presume to have a monopoly of parliamentary seats and the accruing privileges. Very few of women political aspirants have this kind of financial resources to disburse to the poor demanding masses among whom the culture of dependency, and financial handouts have been politically engineered and entrenched over the years. This fact makes the sizable block of women’s vote very fluid and transient, and therefore cannot be relied upon by women aspirants who do not have the required handouts to give.

Furthermore, women political aspirants suffer a lack of goodwill and family support. Whenever men aspirants are campaigning for elections, their wives and other relatives support them and are their most trusted campaign agents. This privileged support is not true for women aspirants. Even in cases where husbands and male relatives give moral support, it does not translate into active physical and financial engagement, that is, the relatives allow the women to campaign, but do not actively join in to lend their support. Women are physically more vulnerable to electoral violence; they literally require constant security against hired goons. Women are economically compromised because very few have the accumulated funds of their own for campaign expenses.

Therefore when women political aspirants have no financial support, political good will from political parties, or access to family resources, for logistical facilitation, then their chances of waging successful political campaign is seriously compromised, and their leadership potential and contribution to the nation will not be realized. These are some of the underpinnings to the low visibility and audibility of women’s participation in the highly patriarchal Kenyan political process.

In conclusion one may say that today the attainment of critical mass is occurring faster than the Kenyan political elite would care to acknowledge. Women as voters are both listening and watching the political campaign promises and trends. Many women leaders and voters are hoping to see many more women get into parliament more than before. They are hoping to hear their issues articulated and acted upon by way of public policies by the government of the day, in a manner that would impact their quality of life. The rural women are more likely to demand accountability from members of the tenth parliament than has ever been witnessed before. Most political aspirants during their campaigns are invoking issues such as: provision of clean and accessible water supply, accessible quality medical services, quality education, roads and marketing infrastructure that would enable rural women to sell their surplus agricultural produce to earn a living, and, physical security to enable them to enjoy the little that is theirs by their sweat. The rural women will be watching the performance of the Tenth parliament, and at the end will act accordingly. These are the key concerns of Kenya's women - politics, class and ethnic divisions aside.

* Dr. Penninah Ogada is a gender and human rights consultant, and a lecturer in political science at the University of Nairobi.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Wangui Wa Goro analyses the role of the Kenyan voter in averting a betrayal of a genuinely democratic platform and those who suffered and died to make the platform possible.

When we struggled in exile against the Moi-Kanu regime, our mantra which reflected the name of our organisation was UMOJA – UNITED MOVEMENT FOR DEMOCRACY IN KENYA which spelt out an agenda for change, long before multiparty democracy in Kenya was possible. Much has changed since then, particularly the removal of the dreaded Clause 2A of the Constitution which barred Kenyans from forming opposition political parties. Elections have since been held on two consecutive occasions but whether this represents the much vaunted “multipartism” is yet to be tested.

The fact that there are briefcase parties and several of them does not necessarily mean that the country has turned to a multiparty democracy although we can rejoice at even the ability to register these. In our vision then and in my vision now, we were determined as were many Kenyans to see an end to dictatorship and the restoration of democracy in Kenya which would end violence against fundamental freedoms such as the right to life, the right to associate, the right to conscience, the freedom from want and the freedom of expression amongst others. We hoped that the rule of law and the respect of the rights of all Kenyans would be the baseline from which a new dispensation could be built.

Key to our campaigns was the restitution of democratic rule and governance and the rule of law which protected the lives of every Kenyan no matter what their class, gender, creed or ethnicity, whether they were inside the country or out. It has been my enduring hope that Kenya can quickly get back to track because many Kenyans know what is right, they are decent and hard working people and we are blessed with a nation which is truly gifted in its natural and human resources and well located to harness these gifts for all of us and offer hope to others. I was lucky enough to grow up in a free, post independence Kenya to know from an early age that this was possible.

At the end of the second post Clause 2A election period, five years ago, however, I wrote an article entitled KENYA AT 40 which asked whether we were going to see new wine in old bottles or old wine in new bottles. Despite my misgivings, given the volatile nature of elections and the pre-election Kenyan history which had kept Kenyans repressed through the Moi-Kanu regime, I allowed myself that momentary jubilation with millions of other Kenyans that a milestone had been reached and Kenya had taken a bold and symbolic step of removing the one party-one person dictatorship which meant that the country was finally on the road to democratisation. Despite this, I remained sceptical at both the processes leading to multiparty elections which nearly returned Moi to his “two terms!” and the hurried way in which NARC was formed without much democratic process in the country and in the party. Worrying too, was the fact that the key players of the various “coalition parties” had at one time or another served in the Moi-Kanu dictatorship.

What excited me however, in the last election in 2002, was the will to change and the way in which the Kenyans embraced the ballot box to see off the dictatorship, thus heralding a new approach to the democratic processes. The key promises that were made for this to happen were firstly, the delivery of the new constitution which had been initiated during the Moi-Kanu era and for which the consultative processes had involved all Kenyans and secondly, the end to nyayoism which was synonymous with dictatorship. The referendum also gave us another peak at this will and eagerness to use the ballot box to make decisions.

Yet deep inside, despite these and other cosmetic changes, however, unlike many of my fellow Kenyans, I remain sceptical because I believe that old habits die hard and many of the new players in the new regime and others in the opposition, with the exception of a few had really not been involved in the pro-democracy struggles which led to the toppling of the single party single person dictatorship. They were unlikely to change not for want of trying but they would not know how and in some instances, preferred not to know how in their arrogance and belief in their God given right. I believed that many still do not know or care about what the desires of the Kenyans really are, nor the full extent of the price that has been paid through detentions, killings, exiling, jailing and other state led repressions nor the struggles for democracy which finally led to the momentum which saw Moi and his cronies off. I was soon proven right as old faces began reappearing around the president including, now in the final stretch, Moi himself: Old wine in an old bottle, a scenario I had not contemplated.

We had campaigned for multiparty elections as a tool to democratisation, not just for the changing of guards at the top of brief case, overnight formed parties. A vision was for a Kenya where equality, justice and freedom from fundamental needs could be shared both through the rule of law, particularly for those in the greatest need, but also engaging people in democratic decision making processes at all levels of society including their parties, and not just at election time. What lessons can be learned from the last elections?

I hoped, perhaps cynically, that explicit mechanisms, institutions and personnel would be put in place early enough after the departure of the nyayo regime which had violated the social, economic, political and human rights of the large majority of Kenyans and which all the players, now united through NARC would endeavour to reverse. At the state level, the government was buoyed by the post election feel-good factor and the overwhelming euphoria and expectation that nyayoism and all its tendencies had been shown the door. The Rainbow Coalition also bore promises in that it had activist/reformers who were elected into parliament and even to ministerial and cabinet positions. New bold blood was also engaged in some critical positions. There seemed to be real hope for the foundations for democracy. The hope was that NARC and the other parties would begin to strengthen their parties in preparation for the next elections.

In the early months of the Narc government there was promise that democratic accountability and mechanisms for democracy would come into being and would begin to deliver restorative justice, processes and outcomes which would begin to address some of the gross human, social, economic and political violations and begin to reverse the fortunes of every Kenyan. Key to this was the Constitution which would not only safeguard Kenya from dictatorship by diminishing the power of the presidency and empowering institutions and other mechanisms, but also modernise Kenya for the 21st Century.

Sadly, this was not to be and remains a major stumbling block for democratisation as a mechanism. Other mechanisms would include independent institutions of the Judiciary, Parliament and Executive and the setting up of specific offices and institutions to redress the ills of the KANU years as well as reforming the Public Services. Institutions such as the Anti-corruption Commission were formed, the office for Governance and Ethics in the office of the President and the Kenya National Commission for Rights amongst others. There were promises and attempts to reform the Judiciary, corruption at all levels would be rooted out, people would be held to account for violations of human rights, those who had embezzled public funds or employed their relatives and cronies would be dealt with etc.

In other examples, what has happened to the Permanent Secretary for Ethics and Governance in the person of John Githongo who was forced to flee the country and his job is well known world-wide. His post has not been refilled, nor his work followed up. In other instances, institutions such as the Anti-corruption Commission and the National Human Rights Commission which began with great promise do not have enough authority to carry out their duties. In their weakness, they appear to have been calculated token gestures as corruption, violence and poverty have continued unabated. In another example, the late appointments and processes for the Election Commission of Kenya do not inspire confidence. Equally, the last minute formation of political parties, the wrangling and the violence has also not helped and may predetermine the outcome for democracy even before Kenyans have a chance to get to the ballot box. The unravelling of the official opposition and the joining of the Kibaki party by the leader of the opposition Uhuru Kenya has undermined that democratic space and left the other opposition parties (which are not recognised within this parliament) without a voice.

But after a while, the whole systems began to unravel both at the state and party level, firstly with the breaking up of the Rainbow Party that was not founded on democratic, transparent unifying principals beyond the desire to rid Kenya of the Moi-Kanu regime. The breakdown of the rainbow party (which was based on a coalition of parties) was so bad that at one point, the Kenyan state was governed by an individual, the President whose party nobody knew and there were no mechanisms or checks and balances either at party or state level. President Kibaki did not belong to NARC as it had disbanded and he did not belong to any of the constituent or new parties. This had never happened even in the worst of the Nyayo-era period as Moi conducted the dictatorship under the aegis of KANU.

At the social level, racism, religious intolerance and sexism are at a rampant high including the rape and violence against women and children, attacks on specific ethnic communities and day to day vigilante activities which include violent killings and violation of the law including the killing of police officers. Further, attacks on the media, (and other gestures such as slapping of public civil servants and journalists without censure by those associated to high public office) continue to erode the right to fundamental freedoms and send out the message that there are those who are above the law.

The fact is that through such gestures which happen on a daily basis, many communities and individuals feel under siege through continued political, social, religious and ethnic pressure including vigilante activities like extrajudicial killings and corruption some of which are perpetuated by people perceived to be in position of power and authority, a far cry from what Kenyans had hoped for after what looked like the crushing of nyayoism. The law is not applied equally, thus the poorest and most vulnerable are hit the hardest and the system does not protect them from exploitation by those who purport to be in power, including small localised power linked to big power.

The civil society has also been weakened by the promises of reform from their former colleagues now in government or in parliament, but Kenyans should know by now that reform is the avoidance of change and that is why it has always been preferred by the ruling classes and their intelligentsia who have gone unusually silent or have failed to pick out the nuances that will undermine true multiparty democracy in Kenya. How much longer are Kenyans going to be expected to wait?

The impunity that the poor face in relation to access to justice, fundamental services and the inability to have a say in their day to day lives has been so normalised that paying bribes before accessing any service is a way of life still and expecting that one might be attacked or killed for not conforming makes the lives of many Kenyans miserable. Many communities also feel alienated through exclusion. The rich can pay for protection but the poor remain exposed in desperate conditions and in many instances below what can be called minimal human conditions. Failure to account and be held accountable has to be a measure by which Kenyans can articulate their desires. The delivery of these in the past and in the future are a serious indictment and barometer of democracy, equality, freedom, justice and the rule of law. As Kenyans go to the ballot, they must ask themselves whether the different parties/individuals will address these fundamental needs.

It is in fact these tenets for the road to democracy they must use to measure their promised leaders and to underpin their election decisions. At least that is what I would do if I had that promised right to vote which at present I do not have although I am a Kenyan citizen. At minimum, democracy should guard the most fundamental of needs which alleviate fear and want. This requires a vision for democratic change and rule and engagement at all levels. The institutions, mechanisms and processes which treat all Kenyans as equal before the law must be strengthened and the rights of every Kenyan protected no matter what their race, gender, class, ability or creed. Our right to multipartism must be underpinned by real parties not paper parties. Elections are only the first step and that was secured even before 2002.

The score sheet will read disappointingly if Kenyans fail yet again for a third time to seize this golden opportunity by selling their hard won rights to the class interests of the rich and therefore, they can be told again to their own faces that they are willing accomplices in their own violation.

While one can only rejoice at elections as the first step forward towards democracy and the fervour in which the Kenyans have seized this, they are only means to an end and this is what the Kenyans should bear in mind as they exercise their right on December 27, 2007. They are the best guarantee of democracy and not the leaders, whatever their party. Most Kenyans are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea in the current elections as true multipartism has not really arrived in Kenya, but token paper parties with little track record and nearly all of them tarnished by their associations with Nyayosim one way or the other. Kenya needs a clean break through a new republic and a national debate for this needs to happen urgently. Choosing leaders who will genuinely facilitate this may be the way forward.

Kenyans therefore have to fix the wider vision of a better place for themselves now and for their children tomorrow. There is much to be won beside short term, last minute token gestures, empty promises, and those who can vote must keep their eye on the ball for true development, justice, democracy, peace, unity and equality. Kenya has the promise and the potential and if those with the right to vote fail to seize it now judiciously, this may well be the last chance.

*Dr. Wangui wa Goro is a public intellectual, writer, translator and academic who has been living in the UK and campaigning for democratic rights for Kenya for the last 25 years. She is currently an Associate Fellow at the Institute of Human Rights and Social Justice at London Metropolitan University.

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org

Charles Otieno-Hongo argues that a youth agenda should be about giving young people the space to participate in decision making with respect to issues that concern their intellectual development, social identity and economic empowerment.

“Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.”

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success. – Sir Francis Bacon

It is election time once again and as usual it is time for politicians to reach out to special interest groups as they seek votes. And as we have witnessed time and time again, one of the major groups to reach out for are the youth. Suddenly everybody and every party seems to be having an agenda for the youth. Groups such as “Vijana na Kibaki”, “Warembo Na Kibaki” and “Youth for Raila 07” are following in the footsteps of “Youth for Kanu” and similar groups witnessed in the past. And as usual, they are setting the agenda.

But whose agenda is it? We have heard the same rhetoric, about the need to “involve the youth”, “cater to the interest of the youth” during every election year, and these have been subsequently (and conveniently, I may add) forgotten once the elections are won or lost. After five years, the same characters emerge with the same songs, and the same results. And even when the cast changes, the script remains the same. The simple conclusion is that the agenda is to get the massive youth vote. Period. It has never been about the youth, simply about grabbing the votes. It also helps to have many of them turn out for party rallies at Uhuru Park or Nyayo stadium; the numbers create the perception that you are winning, which is critical for propaganda during election. If they can be mobilized to disrupt opponents rallies either by heckling speakers or throwing stones, this will be an added advantage. However, I propose that to involve the youth in meaningful participation of the nation’s politics, we must move away from the current mentality of having an agenda for the youth to establishing a youth agenda. It is not a question of having youthful MPs but rather having MPs for the youth. A political affirmative action for the youth.

Let me explain. There are two issues involved here, definition and participation. Who are the youth or what should be the youth agenda? The term youth is commonly defined by age and it is assumed that anybody falling within a certain age bracket is a representative of youth interest or the youth agenda. It is more like assuming that any woman in power is automatically representing women interests. I can be 25 years of age but be already so high up in the business and political hierarchy that my concerns are likely to be the same concerns as those of other politically powerful, wealthier and older individuals. Politically, the “youth” is a class, in our case a social construct defined by collective intellectual, social and economic oppression.
Youth is also about ideas, aspirations and values. The period in which you grow up determines your thinking and values. People who have lived in this world for a long time have different aspirations from people who are just beginning their lives. The collective youth aspiration is different from that of elders. And the language in which they express this aspiration is also different.

The youth agenda should therefore be about giving the millions of young people in this country the space to participate in decision making with respect to issues that concern their intellectual development, social identity and economic empowerment. Young people, or students for that matter, do not sit on the school governance boards, or even on church boards. In our Estate security committee meetings, fathers don’t bring their sons or daughters to attend these meetings to voice their opinions or concerns for the simple reason that they are not the ones who pay the monthly contributions! And while there may have been some progress in widening the democratic space in general, this has yet to embrace the participation of youth as a constituency. For the youth, participating in decisions on what type of education is relevant to them or legislating on issues that affect the cultural, the social and the economic environment are key. In other words, full participation in the political arena.

Participation in politics is mainly through certain political structures. In Kenya bidding for political office is chiefly through participating in the affairs of political parties. In a strong democracy, winning political parties holds the reins of power. Therefore, the assumption is that party policies and ideology will inform how the government is run. What this implies then is that special interests must be strongly represented in the party in power. But how can youth interests be represented in political parties?

In the past, the political parties have hoaxed the youth (and women) by having token offices or posts within the party to represent their interests. Parties develop posts such as secretary for youth affairs, etc. but these positions are simply for the sake of appearance. The positions are dished out to young looking party stalwarts and these are presented as a representation of the youth. Usually, these persons are already well-connected and senior party members despite their youthfulness.

To achieve this, these persons will have had access to certain privileges that connected them to mainstream party personalities, either through business association or by senior positions in civil society or other organizations, privileges that would have divorced them from the aspirations of the collective youth and endeared them to those of the established elites. A lot of times, these positions are made with the intention of ethnic balancing in terms of post distribution and the more the posts, the easier this can be achieved. We have to move away from this model.

The youth have to start participating in party politics quite early, probably from when they are still in school and college and work their way up the party. Political parties sincere on having the youth actively participate in party affairs must establish and let the youth develop their structures for participation. A party like ODM, or Ford-Kenya (note parties, not coalitions), could run parallel structures for the youth from either the school/college level or other appropriate formats, given that not all youth are in school or college. In some democracies, main political parties fund party chapters in colleges. For example, there would be a Ford Kenya college or youth league with a complete structure that would provide for the participation of young people in debating issues and contributing to party policies. Elections would be held regularly, something that fosters cultivation and education of democratic culture. When I was a college student in India, students contested some campus elections on tickets of existing parties like the Congress Party and BJP! And no doubt, local party operatives did indeed finance some of the campaigns.

Structures could be created to link these youth leagues with the main party structures so that the voices of the representatives of the youth carry equal weight to those of the older established politicians. In fact, the parties should be compelled to allocate a certain percentage of the funds they will be receiving from the government to fund these youth leagues. Voices emerging from these structures could then be given a certain percentage of votes in the august house. This means that debates taking place in the house will be replicated in the youth “parliaments”. Structures for these ‘parliaments’ to bring in bills could also be created. For example, if young people feel that uniforms should be done away with in schools, or that banning artwork on matatus denies them a source of livelihood, they can push for this agenda to be debated in parliament, knowing full well that their votes will count.

All this might sound like wishful thinking just as I am aware that it may not be a thoroughly thought out concept but the ability of the youth to be creative in a daredevil manner in terms of ideas is what this country needs at the moment. We need to think outside the box, and the elder politicians cannot lead us in this process. At least once the idea is out there, it can be debated with conclusions that it can work, or that it cannot work. Even more important, it may give rise to better ideas!

This article was initially published in the WAJIBU JOURNAL Volume 22. No 4 (November - December 2007)

For Juliana Omale-Atemi and Rosemary Okello the electoral landscape mirrors that of the Kenyan society at large, a reason therefore for the struggle of women empowerment to continue after the elections.

For those who are interested in the struggles of Kenyan women political aspirants, it is not hard these days to miss the recurrent conversations revolving around fears about these women aspirants. They face an uphill task. Not only do they have to tackle the problems of financing their campaigns, there are also the ever-changing dynamics in the main political parties, making it difficult for them to participate meaningfully in competitive politics. However, the most serious threat is the violence that may be meted out to them.

Being in the wrong place in an election is something that women candidates can readily attest to. The irony is that in 2007 the situation is no different from the 2002, 1997 election periods. In fact, it is not different from every previous election back to 1963 when Kenya became independent: women have always found themselves pushed into the political periphery.

Unlike the previous elections in the Kenyan history, this year’s General Elections looked better for women since three women, namely Hon Charity Ngilu, Hon Julia Ojiambo and Nazlin Omar had declared their interest in vying for the Presidential seat. However, this has been overtaken by events due to the political re-alignments which, just like in 2002, have become the order of the day. Many women are now wondering whether Kenya will attain the 30 percent affirmative action in political leadership.

A look at the regional statistics as far as African women in Parliament are concerned, shows Rwanda to be the highest with 48.8 per cent, Tanzania (30.4 per cent), Burundi (30.5 per cent), Mozambique (34.8 per cent), Liberia (30 per cent) and South Africa (32.8 per cent).

With the elections on the horizon, the subject of women’s participation in the 2007 general elections is dominated by concerns that history will repeat itself once more.

Speaking recently to a gathering of women’s organizations and journalists in Nairobi, Ms Violet Awori, the chair of the Federation of Women Lawyers – Kenya (FIDA-K), said the escalation of violence targeting women candidates is cause for concern and a pointer to the fact that once again women are being denied an opportunity to participate freely and fairly in the election processes. “Before Flora Tera was attacked in Imenti North, Orie Rogo Manduli, who is a candidate in Nairobi’s Kasarani constituency, was rigged out during the NARC-K party nominations and roughed up when she tried to protest,” said Ms Awori.

The Executive Director of the Caucus for Women’s Leadership, Mrs. Deborah Okumu, says women need to understand that the stakes are high in these elections – the fourth since the advent of multiparty politics in 1991 – and women are under pressure to fit into pre-determined pigeon holes, including within their political parties.

Her argument is that women’s power to mobilize and organize human and material resources for political processes has been compromised and whittled away over the years. “This is a mini-war, and the ingredients include violence,” she explained, “The women’s movement has lost its dominance in Kenya’s political agenda, we have been boxed into programmes, yet all along we were the drivers of a political process,” she says.

The Executive Director of the Centre for Multiparty Politics, Ms Njeri Kabeberi, cautions women’s organizations reliant on donor funding, that the circumstances in 2007 are not necessarily similar to 2002. New funding mechanisms originating in the donor countries mean that aspirants seeking support within women’s political organizations will face new challenges.

“Donors have warmed up to the Paris Declaration which has given a nod for aid flows to governments rather than to civil society organizations,” she explained

Mrs. Okumu is also concerned about the dominance of patriarchy within the election processes saying that it is difficult to recognize and define it: “It has no face or form because it is in the minds of people, and in the environment of an election period, it places women in a tight box,” she adds. Mrs. Okumu says women’s organizations’ programmatic approach to the elections may actually be working against candidates in the context of patriarchy. “Non-engendered institutions are a branch of patriarchy and women cannot count on the police, their parties or the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) to come to their aid,” says Mrs. Okumu.

According to Dr Josephat Ludeki Chweya, from the University of Nairobi’s Department of Political Science, this is the reason why Kenyans ought to address the condition and roles of women in Kenya. He argues that the processes and returns of Kenya’s electoral regime affect men and women differently. “The reason there are more men than women represented in Parliament, City Councils and County Councils is because the constitution and electoral laws are blind to the marginalization of women,” says Dr. Chweya, “The constitution assumes that society is homogeneous between men and women when in reality this is not the case, hence the voices demanding affirmative action in matters of representation.”

A nagging problem for women seeking electoral posts is the realization that it is extremely expensive to run an election campaign. Conservatively, candidates in urban constituencies need between Ksh. six million and Ksh. 10 million, while their rural counterparts would need between Ksh. six million and 10 million. Taking the long-standing economic subordination of Kenyan women into account, this scenario is particularly challenging.

However, Ms Njeri Kabeberi says that winning an election is not necessarily about how much money a candidate has in the bank. “I would like us not to dwell too much on finances for campaigns,” she says, “It is actually possible for a candidate to win an election in this country without money but with the right strategy.”

This is a point that Dr Chweya agrees with: “The constraints women face are not an excuse not to go for those seats,” he cautions, “We cannot wait around until the constitution is amended, laws and cultures changed and the economic situation improved.” The point being, that as they wait to get their feet under the table in 2008, the work is not quite done for women. Dr Chweya says women can use their numbers as a basis for political mobilization and work to subdue ethnicity, cultural and economic hindrances.

* Juliana Omale-Atemi and Rosemary Okello are Editorial Director and Executive Director, respectively, of the African Woman and Child Feature Service (AWC)

*This article was initially published in the WAJIBU JOURNAL Volume 22. No 4 (November - December 2007)

The authors of the article argue that giving Africans ready access to the kind of information contained in the archives will play a part in fighting the apathy that catapulted events in Rwanda from civil strife to genocide.

All persons interested in ending mass atrocities in Africa must take active interest in the question of where the archives of the ICTR – and, for that matter, the archives of the Special Court for Sierra Leone – are located. As the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) winds down – according to its Completion Strategy - by 2010, the major question now emerging is where its archives and records will be located.

The United Nations has established a committee headed by Richard Goldstone, former judge of the South African Constitutional Court and former prosecutor for the ICTR and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to assess both tribunals, consult various stakeholders and evaluate relevant issues to inform its decision as to where the archives of both organs would eventually be sited. The committee will develop a set of parameters for assessing proposed locations to host the archives and determining the location most suited for that purpose.

It has been suggested that Africa is an unsuitable location for the archives of the ICTR; that the archives of the ICTR and the ICTY should be unified in one place, and that “natural” location for these archives should be The Hague, considered to be the judicial headquarters of the world. One suggestion is that Africa does not have the skills or capacities to host such records or guarantee that they will be accessible to the rest of the world.

The ICTR has housed its own records for the past eleven years that the Tribunal has been in existence. For this period, obviously, those records have enjoyed confidentiality that is essential both for the functioning of the Tribunal and for assuring the safety of witnesses, victims, and suspects before the Tribunal. Those records have been quite secure. After the Court has completed its work, it will be necessary to also assure that the records are classified, stored, and managed in such a way to ensure that they will be accessible to all interested in learning from them.

The Goldstone Committee will most probably focus on identifying institutions that will manage the archives. That institution, we submit, must be located and based in Africa. The reasons for this are overwhelming.

The circumstances leading to the establishment of the ICTR are well worth recalling here. Apathy defined the response of the world to the Rwanda genocide. The Oxford English Dictionary defines apathy as: ‘lacking interest or enthusiasm’. The people of Rwanda lived the consequences of global apathy during those eventful months of 1994. The tragic events that occurred have been well-documented. As those events occurred, the rest of the world in Africa and beyond watched. Estimates of the number of people killed during the genocide are somewhere between seven hundred thousand to one million.

Eventually galvanised into action after its stupor, the world in the United Nations created a tribunal to try those most responsible for the international crimes committed during those months of horror. The tribunal was established in Arusha, a small northern city in Tanzania, a country that has not known civil war or strife. Both the United Nations and the now defunct Organisation of African Unity (OAU) established panels to investigate why they were unable to mobilise effective action against such atrocity.

Arusha has played host to the ICTR for over one decade. During this time, it has quietly established itself as The Hague of Africa, hosting three international judicial bodies, one international, one regional, and one sub-regional. In addition to the ICTR, Arusha has also become host to the East African Court of Justice and, most recently, to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights. It is the headquarters of Africa’s emerging regional judicial architecture.

This regional judicial system requires close monitoring and study by and for the benefit of people in Africa. The atrocities in Rwanda were committed by Africans against Africans. The archives of the judicial process of accountability - which is what the ICTR is - are an African heritage that must remain in Africa. There are several institutions in Africa – universities, research institutes, and regional institutions – within the region that can host it.

If the ICTR’s archives were to be re-relocated outside the continent, to, say, The Hague, access to them will be denied to an overwhelming majority of Africans, including most victims and survivors. With each passing year, Africans find it more difficult to gain entrance to European countries. European regimes for entry visas for Africans have become an obstacle course that only the rich and well-connected are confident of completing, and only few can breach. For the rest, it is a matter of ‘break a leg’. The price of international air travel is forbidding for most Africans.

Quite clearly, to even contemplate transferring the archives of the ICTR to anywhere outside Africa is the easiest way to exclude Africans from access to them. It dishonours all those who were killed while the world watched; and ensures that we learn no lessons from what happened. African’s will cease to have a stake in this particular heritage.

Global apathy catapulted the events in Rwanda from civil strife to genocide. It is important that we avoid another form of apathy from denying Africans the records of those horrific events. Citizen groups, governments, civic leaders, academic communities, activists, survivors groups, regional institutions, and friends of Africa everywhere must take the work of the Goldstone Committee seriously and demand that the archives of the ICTR remain in Africa. African governments, especially the governments of the East African Community countries must come together to identify an institution to play this role and mobilise the resources to support it. Nothing less will suffice.

* Yitiha Simbeye is a Tanzanian expert in international criminal law. Chidi Odinkalu is a Nigerian lawyer

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Mukoma Wa Ngugi speaks to the dangers surrounding the Bill Gates initiative - Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)

"Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations. It ensures that the rights to use and manage lands, territories, waters, seeds, livestock and biodiversity are in the hands of those of us who produce food" – Declaration of the Forum for Food Sovereignty, Nyeleni , February 2007

From November 25th to December 2nd African farmer-, agricultural-, and pastoralist organizations from over 25 countries gathered at the Nyeleni Center in Selengue, Mali to, amongst other things, discuss the pitfalls of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) -- the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation initiative now chaired by former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. With around 100 organizations present, thousands of Africans concerned with social justice and agriculture were represented.

Now, the theme of the conference might at first glance seem outrageous. After all, we are talking about Bill Gates here – a man who has become the poster child of good philanthropy. But this is precisely my point: because AGRA is a Bill Gates initiative with widely respected Kofi Annan as the chair, most of us are not going beyond the first glance. But it is important that we send a second glance AGRA’s way because what is at stake here is the very future of the continent’s agricultural practices - what is grown, how it is grown, who gets to grow it, who processes it, who sells it and where and how much the African consumer will pay. Simply put, if food is the basis of life, what is at stake is the very sustenance of the continent.

But in order to fully appreciate the role the sweet sounding Alliance for a Green Revolution is playing in Africa, we need to take a step back and situate AGRA in the context of other international and national forces that are undermining the well-being and sovereignty of African nations – forces that are in fact part of the problem, even as they present themselves as part of the solution.
Amongst the international forces undermining Africa’s well being is an overt US foreign policy whose goal is to consolidate a growing Empire through the pipeline of the war on terror – under the guise of spreading democracy. We have seen how well this is working in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. But even more insidious is the arm-twisting of African governments to pass anti-terror bills that tie African domestic policies to US foreign policy goals.

On top of this we must add US foreign policy-led organizations such as the USAID, and the International Republican Institute, currently active in over 40 African countries. Organizations such as the IRI build on the tracks laid down by missionaries. The missionaries came to Christianize and civilize, the IRI types come to democratize, liberalize and westernize. The missionaries paved the way for the colonialists our history teachers were fond of saying. In the future, they will be saying that organizations such as the IRI paved the way for the US Empire.

Lest this seems far-fetched, here is an example of these seemingly disparate forces at work. The IRI in 2006 helps Africa’s first woman president, Liberia’s Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf into power. So instrumental is the IRI that when receiving a Freedom Award from them, she declares that the “IRI was particularly active in promoting these elections. Very quickly an office was established. They came, they did workshops. They brought political groups together. They worked with the media. They educated. They instructed. They supported. They assisted the process.” [1] But even before the democracy solidified, Liberia becomes the first country to offer the United States a military base for its African Command Center. There are no coincidences here – the IRI paved the way for US further militarization of Africa using Liberia as a launching pad.

Meanwhile in Liberia, Firestone has the gall to invite the Liberian people into its website with a photograph captioned “since 1926 we have succeeded together and we have suffered together, now that peace has returned, learn how we are working for a better future for Liberia.” [2] Firestone, much like Shell, has a philanthropic arm used to cover up the actions of the other heavy, hungry and brutal arm. Under the exploitation of colonialism, industries and corporations served the nation-state. Today it is the other way around: the nation-state serves industries and corporations.

It is into this mix that we need to throw initiatives such as AGRA. An outcome statement produced by the Selingue conference organizers states that “AGRA is actually the philanthropic flagship of a large network of chemical-seed, and fertilizer companies” and is designed to “attract private investment, enroll African governments, and convince African farmers to buy new seeds and fertilizers.” [3]

Waiting at the wings, or more correctly, waiting in the AGRA boardrooms, are seed and fertilizer organizations such as Syngenta (with total sales of 1.2 billion dollars in 2004) and Monsanto (a multi billion dollar seed company), amongst other players. AGRA claims that it will help “millions lift themselves out of poverty and hunger by dramatically increasing the productivity of hundreds of millions of small-scale farmers and improving livelihoods.” [4]

AGRA further states that it will “develop and strengthen Africa’s small and medium-scale seed companies to develop and sell appropriate seeds to farmers, [it will also] develop rural agro-dealers (small rural shops, mainly owned by women) and work with local food processors that can add value to products [and] and with local micro-finance institutions.”

Pointing to Asia, AGRA claims that the green revolution there lifted millions from poverty. This claim was refuted by the Mali conference participants who pointed out the tragic case of Indian farmers. In India, farmers initially flourished under the green revolution because millions of dollars were used to buoy up the farms. But as soon as the money stopped being pumped, Indian farmers found that they could not afford hybrid seeds, or the high price of pesticides, and they entered into debt, eventually losing their land to banks. The green revolution in India really was the pauperization of the poor Indian farmer. AGRA’s promise of Agro-dealers in Africa, and its promise to follow the Asian model means small scale African farmers will be strangled by ever widening circles of dependency and debt.

AGRA claims to be African led because it appointed Kofi Annan as its chair. In Selengue, conference participants responded by saying Kofi Annan surely cannot be seen as speaking for over 50 countries and 680 million people. In any case as African American poet Sonia Sanchez, quoting Martin Luther King Jr. said in response to a question on Condoleezza Rice and Clarence Thomas “We should not fight for equal rights in order to do wrong with them.”

In this same sense, women presidents (as in the case of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf) and African UN Secretaries General (as in Kofi Annan) do not automatically do good for the continent. With Kofi Annan as the chairman of AGRA, AGRA will still do harm. And it will not be any better because he is African.

AGRA’s critics contend that the alliance will not take a definitive stand against Genetically Modified Foods. This was of grave concern to the organizations in attendance at Selengue. The AGRA website leaves a lot of wiggle room when it states that “Introduction of genetically engineered crops are not part of AGRA strategy at this time” but a little later states that “AGRA will not shy away from considering the potential of bio-technology in reducing hunger and poverty and we do not preclude future support for genetic engineering as an approach to crop variety improvement…”

Soon after he was appointed chair, Kofi Annan declared that AGRA will not use GMO’s – a statement that is contradicted in the website statement quoted above – and which he and AGRA retracted. [5] In a sense then, AGRA critics are right when they call it a “Trojan horse” for GMO’s.
Once the mask of philanthropy is removed, we find profit-hungry corporations vying to control the seed market in African countries, create a path for Genetically Modified seeds and foods and to pry open a market for chemical fertilizers – which in turn will have an adverse effect on African indigenous seed populations and destroy bio-diversity, not to mention the devastation of the environment and the salination of the soil. The philanthropic arm that Africa welcomes is in real terms paving the way for further exploitation of our resources.

In his latest novel, Wizard of the Crow, my father Ngugi Wa Thiong’o aptly talks of a corporony – a colony run by a corporation. Fiction is not so strange after all, because with AGRA we are looking at the corporatization of the food industry, from planting to production to selling and buying. With AGRA, what and how we plant and eat, and how much we pay for it will be decided in western corporate offices.

Africans should grasp what is at stake here and mobilize against AGRA. African leaders have already sold off the land and the right to natural resources. They have sealed off some parts of the continent into export processing zones. They have allowed foreign military bases onto African soil. They have given organizations such as the International Republican Institute free reign to determine the very nature of African political institutions. But here it should stop. Africans simply cannot let them sell off the right to food sovereignty. Because if they do, they will be selling off the very future of Africa.

* Mukoma Wa Ngugi is Co-Editor of Pambazuka News. He is also the author of Hurling Words at Consciousness (AWP, 2006) and a political columnist for the BBC Focus on Africa Magazine

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

For notes, see link below

Ramesh Shah looks at the evolution of political discourse in Tanzania

Recently, Mr. Kabwe Zitto of opposition party Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (CHADEMA) faced a four month suspension in the Tanzanian Parliament. The opposition expressed disappointment on suspension of Mr. Zitto as a move by CCM legislators to conceal the “Truth”. The issue was very simple. It was regarding the Buzwadi mining contract between the present Tanzanian government and Barrick Gold Corporations in London. The opposition believed that by blocking Zitto’s motion, the government failed to show the transparency.

On the other hand, Mr. Zitto believed that he had an obligation to “defend the Nation’s resources in the interest of “Wananchi””. Perhaps, President Kikwete saw some truth, perhaps he was honest, perhaps he wants to use the best people and their ideas to lead the nation through the maze of globalization: Whatever the case may be, he made Zitto one of the members of inquiry into mining contract. But then came another surprise. In one of the newspapers, it was reported that the Karatu legislator, Wilbrod Slaa also wanted to disclose secrets on Bank of Tanzania when he felt that the Government would also block his private motion in the Parliament. It was interesting to see the first page of this paper. The top headline was about Mr. Slaa’s remarks regarding suspicion of corruption in the Bank of Tanzania. The lower headline was about the Vice President Mr. Shein asking people to avoid luxuries and invest at home. This showed nothing much except that in the process of fighting extreme poverty in the mineral rich Tanzania, the time had come and some people had risen to ask for greater transparency.

People are asking for more than parliamentary democracy. They are taking a closer look at the parliamentary laws and rules and asking how and for whom they work. Could all this be connected to another problem? Recently, Mr. Warioba said that it was high time that Tanzania had a Constitution that separates the legislative and executives arms. Mr. Masekwa also said that there was a need to amend the Constitution in order to avoid any situation whereby the executive could simply muzzle the parliament.

Tanzania still has to solve many other problems arising recently. The new Prevention and Combating of Corruption Act [2007] is expected to protect the PCB, journalists, and the public in fighting graft. But actually the media will be prevented from independent investigations from the PCB. Yet today’s crime in the world is such that it needs simultaneous investigations from all sides. In India, media plays a major role in the investigations and show their progress to the people on their media channels. Kenya also has similar problem in a Media Bill where it is legally mandatory for media to reveal its source of information in the court. If this Bill becomes effective, no one will give information to the media. Law Society of Kenya [LSK] has promised to go to court to stop this Bill.

A few months ago, some university student leaders were not allowed to continue their studies. I ask myself, when do “leaders” become “ring-leaders” in our country? When I was a student at this university, I always saw our leaders as “leaders”. My point is not on whether Mr. Zitto or the students were right or wrong. When Tanzania wanted to go democratic, the first thing CCM did was to propose the multi-party approach. It was the CCM that was to lead us into democracy. The second thing it tried to do was make the democracy more vibrant and asked the opposition to become more active. At this stage, Mr. Zitto was not an individual but he represented a trend of thought. He was not one but many. He was part of a new trend now emerging in all developing countries. He was not opposing as a party, but just trying to set up a new trend of transparency. Like many academics, and citizens, I have been dreaming of effective arguments and transparency. I did not look at our parliament as a “party” but as a “nation”. ??

When I was a student of economics at the university, I read a book called “Four Essays on Philosophy” by Chairman Mao. One of the essays was on “Contradiction”. When there is a major contradiction, we come to-gather as nation and try to solve it. This is when we fought for and achieved our independence. Then a new minor contradiction arose, and this was party politics. Since then, we have been struggling between different major [national] and minor [party] and still minor [individual] contradictions. Mr. Zitto’s approach showed a major [national] contradiction but many understood it as a minor contradiction, and he was suspended!!! It would have been a plus for the CCM members to respect Mr. Zitto's move if we agree that the CCM wants to increase the level of democracy and transparency. Democracy and transparency cannot be strengthened by merely setting up more human rights institutions, but rather by the people rising to make the use of them. Mr. Zitto may have done exactly that. ??

Amartya Sen has written a book on “identity”. In it he raises the question of how we identify our-selves. Do I identify myself as a national, or CCM, or as an individual, or as a Hindu, or as a socialist or as a capitalist or as a fan of a particular politician? What we are going to do depends on how we identify ourselves. Very often, issues of national interest may conflict with the party interest or religious interest and vice-versa. An issue of national interest may not resonate for the individual or the party. ??If we are to introduce the philosophy of a “majority” decision then it means that the majority can impose their decisions. Nowhere in the world or in history, is it ever said that the majority is always right. Majority is just numerical superiority.

Similarly, the minority is not always wrong, and yet she may loose her view due to the numerical strength of the “majority”. Very often, the law may contradict justice, and that is why we often call upon our nation to be just and not just legal. Laws emerge from the bills that are passed in parliament. A bill is drafted by the national legal persons and passed by the parliament. A Bill will not be just if drafted in the interest of a small influential group. Most of the third world was colonized some time ago.

The colonial “masters” used all sorts of unjust laws, fears, force and techniques to justify colonization. When we became independent, we inherited similar structure, and we also continued playing the same game towards our own people. The events following 1789 in revolutionary France were nothing but terror followed by Directorate and the Consulate. All this may suggest that the old oppression had merely been replaced by the new kind. For many philosophers, the aftermath only reinforced that a man’s true nature was as savage as it was wicked and vengeful. In this way, the social revolution got out of hand because many people wanted liberty before order, while others wanted to put order before liberty.

We should always ask, what is the best order to maximize liberty? If we talk of evil, then we may be talking about religion. The issue of evil troubled Plato greatly. If we use Leibniz’s idiom, God has made the best of all possible worlds. Among the many goods, He gave us, the good of freedom. He may not have liked the world without freedom, because the freedom itself is a necessary part of goodness. But freedom cannot exist without the possibility of abuse. The evil entered the world through our abuse of freedom. Beyond this, nothing else is evil. Some people think that evil itself is the necessary part of the global beauty in the same way the catastrophe is part of the beauty of a tragedy. ??I give regular lectures on Ethics at the University. At one time, while all good ethics may also contain good laws, not all laws absorb ethics. But today many laws are in contradiction to ethics. ??Then we end up with the use of power. When our thought is joined to will, we call it power; this means that if one has got power, one must manifest it to action.

The accumulation of power is likewise as important as its diffusion. An ounce of practice is worth more that a ton of theory. Talking is neither politics nor religion, parrots may talk, and machines may also talk. Each nation, each leader has a mission for the world. There is no power higher then power of purity. ?

* Dr Ramesh Shah is an Economics and Export Consultant and has given lectures on Ethics at the University of Dar-es-Salaam

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Jesús Chucho García calls for a greater recognition of Afro-Venezuelans in the country's constitution.

Afro-Venezuelans are not satisfied with how they are recognized in the constitution:An open letter to members of the national assembly

Esteemed members of the National Assembly,

Last Tuesday, you began to discuss the Constitutional Reform article by article. Days beforehand, Social Communicator Modesto Ruiz, an Afro-Venezuelan member from Barlovento, had expressed the feelings of the Afro-Venezuelan movement as none other had done in the constitutional history of Venezuela. It wasn’t simply the voice of Ruiz speaking, it was the voices of African ancestors and their descendants, who—after the abolition of slavery in 1854—were making a historic claim before the injustice, racism and discrimination to which we had been subjected, just as our decisive contributions to the irreversible social advancement for more than 200 years of this country’s history have done. For the first time after more than 25 constitutions discussed in that same room where you sit, the reason why we should be “legally” recognized in the Venezuelan Constitution was being explained in our own symbols, our own language, and our most profound feelings.

Each one of you knows that the Constitution should be the reflection of the people, with an understanding of how Amilcar Cabral expressed them, “The people are the principal actors and beneficiaries of the liberation struggle. This concerns a political notion that should be defined in the given historical moment.”

Who built the economies in the colonial era? Who was it that paid with their blood, intelligences and bare struggle in the Independence and Federal Wars? Who contributed to the fight for Revolutionary Democracy in the 1970s and 1980s with their blood? Perhaps it wasn’t Barlovento, Veroes (in Yaracuy state) and the most impoverished ghettoes of Caracas—where afrodescendants live—that saved the country during the 2002 coup and oil stoppage?

How can esteemed members and the President of the Republic Hugo Chávez Frías try to reduce us to one Article—number 100—of the Constitutional Reform (which, by the way, was badly written and historically decontextualized)? How can you oppose the proposals that we have made to 11 of the 33 articles proposed by President Chávez, wherein we are demanding our historical character to be an integral part of the Venezuelan people?

Esteemed members, if this is how things will be, then we are facing new, subtle forms of racism and discrimination. Your names will be forever stamped in the history of Venezuelan hypocrisy, just as in 1830 and 1854, when the names of National Assembly members who mocked the aspirations of our ancestors—who demanded citizenship, land and recognition of their cultural particularities - were stamped with hypocrisy in that same room. If the Constitutional Reform is ratified with a reductionism towards afrodescendants, then from the point of view of respect toward diversity, pluralism and the advancement to the total integration of our country, we would even be below an ultra-rightist state such as Colombia, and we would be very much below the Brazilian, Nicaraguan and Ecuadorian Constitutions.

The historic debt definitely continues, and it will depend on you and the President of the Republic, because we as afrodescendants already made our proposals for a newly articulated Preamble and technical contributions to the 33 articles, along with two street mobilizations, throughout which, by the way, the doors to that same room were never opened for us to enter. Our welcome by the highest authorities of the National Assembly and of the Presidential Committee for Constitutional Reform has thus far only been in the streets.

* Jesús "Chucho" García is a leading activist against and researcher of racism in Venezuela

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

“Freedom, my friends, does not come from the clouds, like a meteor; it does not bloom in one night; it does not come without great efforts and great sacrifices; all who love liberty, have to labour for it.” Feminist Ernestine Rose, 1860.

Former Rhodesian Prime Minister, Ian Smith has just died, but his patriarchal legacy, of dictatorship, violence and sexist oppression lives on.

The use of violence in contemporary Zimbabwean politics, is part of the machismo political culture inherited from settler colonialists, which successive political systems are failing to dismantle.

I therefore, wish here to link, gender based violence within the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), to the question of political power and women’s emancipation, based on our experience as a women’s political leadership. My position being that patriarchy as a system of oppression is not going to willingly dismantle itself, it has to be fought.

Historically, Zimbabwe’s violence politics, has been grounded in the quest for political power and positioning, with women often being at the receiving end of it. Thus today, MDC women are still subjected to all forms, of violence, by both the party and the State, as both systems grapple for political power.

Just as during the liberation struggle when women combatants, were told national liberation first, their emancipation later, today, women who have gone into front-line politics are being sold this ‘two stage’ approach model. This approach implies that the struggle is gender neutral, and that we suffer the impact of State repression the same way, and that when freedom is attained we(men and women) will have the same political will, to reverse gender disparities or to dismantle patriarchy.

Events on the ground in the MDC, however, speak differently.

Days before the annual, International 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence Campaign celebrations, MDC women, were once again subjected to another public humiliating bout of violence, this time, by their male counterparts.

Women protestors, against the unfair sacking and treatment of the Women’s Assembly chair-person, Lucia Matibenga, were beaten up in front of the party’s head-quarters Harvest House, on Sunday the 18th of November. The known assailants used fists, kicked, threw stones, to subdue and stop the female demonstrators, from proceeding with the protest in which they were demanding audience with their MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, over the unresolved women’s chair matter.

Strangely, though it seems that it was beyond Tsvangira’s political comprehension that the women were practising their democratic right to demonstrate and seek audience with him, as their leader, instead he shunned them. The message they got was violence. This is not accidental, but a political message.

The irony that played itself out in this scene, is that the MDC male leadership is forcing a new chair-person for women on the women, as part of their “empowerment” or “building efficiency” within the Women’s Assembly, yet the beneficiaries of this male largess are denied the right to freely express themselves, as part and parcel of that political commitment to their liberation cause.

Apart from the violence and total exclusion, we have witnessed in this matter, the men will also not allow a democratic mechanism by which a proper process is carried out, of finding out who the most popular women’s leader is, and conferring the women’s chair on that person. Again, not accidental, thus the basis of my thesis, on political and gender relations within the MDC being rooted in patriarchal tendencies and practices.

The violence both physical and psychological meted out, against Matibenga herself and her supporters, is characteristic of the misogynistic nature of Zimbabwean society, inherited from Smith, which Mugabe has used against opponents real or false, replicated by men in the opposition. Sexist oppression has thus been validated as normal political practice in opposition politics.

And so it seems, each time male power in the MDC seems to be under threat, violence erupts in all its forms - physical and psychological, we have seen this in the party, prior to the October 12 split, when senior female leaders were targets of this violence.

The assault on MDC MP Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga, twice at party events, in one attack she was with feminist Janah Ncube. The psychological or emotional abuse, of Sekai Holland when the men, callously removed her as secretary for International Affairs. Like Matibenga she was told, it was because she had been “inefficient” as secretary. I will not try to delve into an analysis of efficiency and male leadership, otherwise Zimbabwe would have been a better society.

Or the emotional trauma and stress I suffered when without warning funding was cut to me as MDC Representative to Europe. In fact I was slowly marginalised and excluded from all party activities, until I made my own way home. I was an emotional wreck, as I failed to survive, to date this gross treatment has never been explained to me, by either of the male leadership in the two MDC factions.

Last year, MDC MP Trudy Stevenson, suffered, severe physical attacks in an MDC constituency, which left her bruised with a broken arm and deeply traumatised. These are examples of women who have come out, I respect those who remain silent, there are more cases, of physical and emotional abuse. Including instances of sexual harassment of female staff members that have been suppressed.

All the abuse we have suffered has been condemned internationally, as being retrogressive to the women’s emancipation agenda.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, (CEDAW) or the International Women’s Bill of Rights, defines discrimination as "...any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field."

Matibenga’s abuse has also led me to revisit the notion of sacrifice within the framework of gender power relations, in the party where others are “sacrificers” or “sacrificed” and others hold positions of power and privilege that insulate them from those “sacrifices.” It is an open secret that in her tenure of office Matibenga never had a vehicle allocated to her, in spite of all the dangers she was exposed to, such her brutal torture in September, 2006.

For a long time we have suffered silent persecution, like the horror stories of the rape of female comrades during the liberation struggle, by their fellow male comrades, that have never been really openly talked about or the perpetrators brought to book. The negative reaction to the screening of the “controversial” movie Flame, which sought to highlight these crimes against women during the liberation struggle was met with such a strong backlash by those in the Zanu PF leadership.

We seem to be ingrained with this, culture of silence around the forms of violence or abuse, we suffer as women in politics. We have been socialised into a political culture of only talking about State sponsored violence.

Matibenga’s battle helps us to further interrogate and demystify these primitive notions, of our silent persecution vis-à-vis our role and placing as women in politics and the respect we deserve from our male comrades.

Two weeks ago, Matibenga was locked out of Harvest House by rowdy youths and told to go away and form her own party. She was seeking an audience with the party leadership which was about to hold a National Executive meeting. There was no condemnation of this treatment of the widow Matibenga, in fact in typical Zanu PF fashion, all rights are suspended when one is seen to be at variance with the powers that be. Yet another example of the terrible abuse, she is enduring.

A social liberation party that articulates so well, violence against itself in the quest for political power, but fails to understand the same kind of violence against its own leaders and members, presents us with bigger questions about the Zimbabwe we are fighting for, as women.

This is because, the women’s emancipation project has been subordinated to the political whims of those in power, who are not willing to let go of patriarchal privilege, thus the different political systems in Zimbabwe have failed in the endeavour of women’s liberation.. Each historical juncture, has seen women lose earlier gains, as they are forced to renegotiate with patriarchy for their survival, be it in the home or in politics. Male bigotry, in both the ruling party and the opposition, has resulted in the further narrowing down of spaces women had carved out for themselves as a movement.

When I first wrote on Matibenga’s unjust sacking I was attacked by men in both the ruling party and the opposition, and so my thesis is based on my personal experience and of other women in politics, and the backlash we suffer when we raise our heads. Most women in politics, are subjects of political violence, both emotional and physical, but are socialised not to talk about it. The way violence in the domestic sphere has been treated as a “private affair” and men getting away with increased cases of femicide, rape and other forms of violence.

Looked at within a historical context, what women at the front-line of Zimbabwe’s struggle for social liberation and democracy are going through is no different to what their sisters in Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle were up and against. It is always a double struggle internal and external.

Writes feminist Patricia Chogugudza on women liberation fighters, “Zimbabwean women, like their counterparts in Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau, joined the armed struggle. Their hope was that with the revolution, gender equality would be certain. Women who could not conform to tradition saw the revolution as an opportunity to escape difficult situations. Yet feminist critics argue that at the end of the struggle, women’s status actually fell as nationalist leaders and nationalist-oriented societies, in the quest of preserving tradition, expected women to be guardians of culture and respectability, or mistresses of the emerging ruling elites, or wives and mothers, recruiters for political parties, and labourers for the new market economy, while men were engaged in competition for political power in the state and the accumulation of wealth.”

Thus today women who have delved out of the socially constructed roles of wife, mother or mistress into the public arena of politics have had to deal with much back-lash.

Feminist critique has shown us that power and democracy are historically exclusionary notions, as they remain class based and androcentric. The MDC example is important in this analysis, as the dust settles on the utopian vision and idealism many of us viewed the party with, as a fulfiller, of liberation goals, and ultimately our emancipation, that the nationalists failed to deliver on. It is in this context that I will further locate the analysis on the cycle of violence in Zimbabwean politics, from the State, to the opposition, and how it impacts on women’s participation, in politics.

In this vein it is also important to take the analysis further to the rise and consolidation of power by Tsvangirai’s “kitchen-cabinet”, and the brutal expression of sexist oppression, that has accompanied it.

The rise of this elite core group of male and female financiers is important to the feminist discourse within the MDC because our political engagement has changed totally, from the values upon which the party was founded to a new finance driven, elitist political culture, that lacks popular support and legitimacy.

It is now power politics, in total and not a pro poor, people centred social liberation struggle, that is just, recognises history and honours sacrifice including women’s role in that struggle. Thus the suspension of these values, explains the crude injustice against us as we are further marginalised and excluded from political processes. Violence in the party becomes self perpetuating as this group seeks legitimacy, outside the organisations formal or official structures and boundaries.

Feminist Patricia Macfadden, writes “And even when such systems aspired to be inclusive and socially expansive, they remained essentially exclusionary and patronizing of those who had been constructed as Other in relation to power as the most critical resource in that society. Across our world we struggled for what appeared to be collective visions of freedom and justice, and while it is critical to acknowledge the opportunities that nationalist liberation struggles and anti-colonial resistance provided to those groups in our societies which had been up till then excluded from the public, for example women, we must also critically evaluate the implications of nationalism as an ideology which is fundamentally sexist and exclusionary of women, particularly during the neo-colonial period.”

To further my thesis on how power relations between Zimbabwean women and men have not evolved with time, from nationalist notions and understanding of our roles in society with the use of violence being a common denominator between the systems, I will now look at Zanu PF’s system of violence.

Mugabe responded to the formation of the MDC and the threat to his continued hold on power through violence. On the character of the post-colonial state and the way it has responded to demands for reform, by the broader pro-democracy movement, in Zimbabwe academic Brian Raftopoulos, writes, “Confronted with a strong former liberation movement, led by a leader with enormous prestige on the continent, civic and opposition forces have had to face the combined obstacles of an authoritarian nationalist state constructed through the legitimacy of the liberation struggle, in a rapidly shrinking economy that has comprehensively undermined the structural basis for the reproduction of broad social forces in the country. Moreover, in the short term, this scenario has not engendered a spirit of reform in the ruling party. Instead observers have witnessed the intensification of repressive rule and the continued marginalisation of opposition forces, with the military taking on an increasingly prominent role in all spheres of the state.”

I celebrate sheroes of the struggle, like young Talent Mabika who lost her life to the regime, others have been raped, tortured, arrested and have suffered different forms of victimisation in the hands of the ruling Zanu PF party.

The Women of Zimbabwe Arise, (WOZA), has just released a report on the violence suffered by its members, in the hands of state agents, reads part of the report, “WOZA has conducted over 100 protests on various issues of civil rights and social justice in its five-year existence and up to 3,000 women have spent time in police custody. Many have been detained more than once, most for 48 hours or more and 112 members once spent five days in police cells. These women, front-line human rights defenders, are willing to suffer beatings and unbearable conditions in custody to exercise their constitutional rights and fundamental freedoms. They continue to suffer torture and other forms of cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment.”

Given the above analysis and the way it now mirrors the unhealthy situation pertaining in the opposition, of increased authoritarianism, lack of accountability and violence, I will further link this situation to yet another process and the danger it poses for Zimbabwe’s future political dispensation, in relation to popular participation, democracy and our emancipation as women.

As part of the deal under South-Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki, SADC sponsored mediation, the two MDC formations agreed to endorse Constitutional Amendment number 18, against public opinion on the political recklessness of such a move. I will not go into the details of the amendment and how in many respects it contradicts the very struggle the pro-democracy movement has been waging, over the past years, and how the manner in which it was adopted short changes our quest for participatory democracy.

However, it is important to use this example to further illustrate, and magnify my point on the connection between ‘elite-deal’ making and politics of exclusion to increased violence and marginalisation of women, in the MDC. Civil society organisations, and the women’s movement got a rude awakening last September, at the voting for CA 18, when the Secretary General of the Arthur Mutambara led faction, Professor Welshman Ncube, literary told them that, their work was to lobby and advocate, they must leave power to politicians.

Defending their voting for CA 18, in Parliament Ncube said,“At that time I was the spokesperson of the NCA and President Tsvangirai was the chairperson. The NCA agreed that we needed a new constitution for Zimbabwe which would be crafted or written in an open, transparent and participatory manner. In that regard, we as members of the NCA were there to oppose two things. One: the piecemeal amendments to the Constitution of Zimbabwe, Two: the unilateral manner of setting such piecemeal amendments. Mr. Speaker, it is important to understand those two principles. Let me say that these two principles were conceptualised, conceived and adopted, not to be verses in a bible. They were strategic and tactical principles which were intended to forge the making of a people-driven constitution. I despair today when I read and hear the attempt to transform these principles into some fundamentalist decrees which, we are told, are to be regarded as completely sacrosanct. As far as we understood them, they were supposed to be means to an end.” And the end political.

Consequently, again by going this route the MDC has agreed to play junior partner to Zanu PF and so now they are on a reactive rather than proactive agenda, on many electoral issues, such as constituency boundaries, access to media, political violence and so on.

Zanu PF however feels re-legitimated as it sees a mirror image of itself in an MDC, that does not respect women, public opinion and is violent.

The men will broker a power sharing deal that will not transform our society, by reconstructing the gender, class and power relations, as they exist, today, but rather endorses the status quo.

And so the notion of liberation through this avenue, has to be viewed within a perspective, of it really being a reconfiguration and consolidation of patriarchy, in our politics, just as we witnessed at the Lancaster House Conference, without any popular participation or support.

Meaning that our experience as women, in politics should really be an eye opener to the struggle ahead beyond Zanu PF’s demise. This abandoning of values we have believed to be sacrosanct, by the men, should be an eye opener to the longevity of our struggle for emancipation.

Activist and journalist Charlene Smith writes, “Governments are by their nature hypocrites. The structure of modern political systems encourages this. Globally politicians are more concerned about getting the right sound-byte on television than in going into communities to hear what people have to say. Politics and perhaps even the way you and I live our lives, have become divorced from values. Values drive societies, they are the essence that sustains humanity. Without them societies decay.”

Given this sad scenario, as a political activist who has put in her all in the fight for a just and democratic society, I can only urge other sisters in the struggle to find new spaces, to continue with our struggle for emancipation, and for those who remain in the patriarchal systems, I can only give them my support.

In conclusion I say Smiths ghost will haunt Zimbabwean politics for some time to come.

*Grace Kwinjeh is a visiting scholar with the Centre for Civil Society and writes in her personal capacity

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Déirdre Clancy analyses refugee human rights, statelessness and the African commission.

Despite diverse stories of exile and exclusion, refugees, internally displaced persons and the stateless all have one core experience in common: they have been removed from their communities as a result of a severe breakdown in the relationship with the State authorities charged with protecting their rights. In Africa, the severing of state protection and the exclusion of individuals and groups is widespread.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 2.4 million refugees in Africa are compelled to seek protection outside their country of nationality or residence. An even greater number are also displaced from their homes but unable to cross an international border—over 11 million Africans are classified as internally displaced persons (IDPs). Quantifying those who are stateless in Africa—whether through denationalisation, expulsion, or the imposition of barriers to proving membership of the community—is a more difficult task. It is estimated that worldwide the number of stateless persons is 11 million, but many believe that this is a gross underestimation.

The Open Society Justice Initiative’s multi-year research on citizenship and discrimination in Africa found that statelessness was a complex spectrum of experience, from de jure statelessness at one end, to those who are de facto stateless, or whose citizenship is under threat, at the other. Some victims are high profile politicians or activists who have been declared individually de-nationalised, such as Zambia’s founding President Kenneth Kaunda. In other cases, entire populations have been excluded from full and equal citizenship, such as 1.5 million Zimbabweans whose parents were born elsewhere. Using this approach, at the very least, 10 million persons can be qualified as stateless in Africa.

While international law recognizes that national governments have the primary responsibility for protecting the rights of those within their borders, individuals who are unable to create a strong link with the state are often left in a vacuum. Stripped of the protection of their own governments, these groups—refugees, IDPs and the stateless—constitute a millions strong population of disenfranchised persons who are increasingly looking to regional mechanisms to address their urgent needs. As the premier human rights institution on the continent, the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights (the Commission) has been at the forefront of the effort to carve out a new layer of protection for these African citizens.

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights

Since it first started operating in 1987 the Commission has been the principle mechanism charged with promoting and protecting the human rights of all those on the continent of Africa. In its stewardship of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (the African Charter), the Commission has both a human rights monitoring role (which includes the examination of periodic State reports) and direct protection functions.

As a promoter of human rights, the Commission has identified the situation of refugees and displaced on the continent as a priority. In 2003 the Commission signed a Memorandum of Understanding with UNHCR dedicated to strengthening collaboration between the institutions [1] and in June 2004 the Commission confirmed the appointment of a new Special Rapporteur on Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (Special Rapporteur) [2].

It is perhaps, however, through the Commission’s direct protection functions that it has contributed most to the strengthening of the rights of the excluded on the continent. The Commission has the power both to launch investigations in special circumstances and, most importantly, to consider specific complaints, or ‘communications’, alleging rights violations, brought to its attention by individuals or organisations. Through a developing jurisprudence, the Commission’s consideration of the situation of the excluded has allowed for the elaboration of standards relating to their rights, a particularly vital function in a context where it is rare that that refugees or the stateless can seek protection at national level, due to practical and legal obstacles.

The role of the Commission as adjudicator: carving out a basic set of protections [3]

The Commission confirmed early on in its decision-making history that the rights protections granted by the African Charter were not limited to nationals should be secured to “all persons” within the jurisdiction of State parties to the treaty. The case of Rencontre Africaine pour la Défense des Droits de l’Homme (RADDHO) v. Zambia concerned the detention, ill treatment and eventual mass expulsion of 517 West Africans from Zambia. Since then the non-discrimination and equality protections in Article 2 and 3 of the Charter have been used by the Commission as the foundation stones for its construction of a folder of protection for the excluded. In Organisation Mondiale Contre la Torture and Others v Rwanda the Commission later explicitly confirmed that refugees were among the categories of persons protected from discrimination on grounds of their status.

Unlike many international human rights treaties, the African Charter specifically guarantees the right of the individual “when persecuted, to seek and be granted asylum in a foreign territory, in accordance with the legislation of the state and international conventions [..]”. In Organisation Mondiale Contre la Torture (OMCT) and Others the Commission ruled that the expulsion of Burundian Hutu refugees from Rwanda constituted a violation of the right to seek and enjoy asylum, but also of the protections in the Charter against the expulsion of legally admitted persons and mass expulsion. In the same case the Commission also demonstrated how the due process provisions of the Charter could provide additional protection to the excluded, declaring that the manner of the expulsion of the refugees had violated Article 7 (1) – the right of every individual “to have his cause heard”. The Commission has yet to give guidance, however, on whether the right to have a “cause heard” could be interpreted to encompass the right of access by an asylum seeker to a fair refugee determination status procedure—in the OMCT case the persons concerned were already recognised as refugees.

The situation of the stateless has been tackled by the Commission in a number of cases, using a variety of provisions, particularly centred around extrapolating a right to protection against arbitrary denationalisation. Although the Charter does not specifically protect the right to nationality, the communitarian aspects of the rights regime established by the Charter affirm the principle of the “right to belong,” through protection of the rights of “peoples” to self-determination, development, a satisfactory environment and “existence” (Article 20).

In the Mauritania cases the Government of Mauritania was accused of harassing, detaining, and eventually forcefully expelling thousands of ‘Black’ Mauritanians, its own citizens. The Commission ruled that the expelled Mauritanians had been stripped of their citizenship in a discriminatory—and therefore illegal—way and that the government should take appropriate steps to facilitate their return. In the case of John K. Modise v. Botswana it was both the act of denationalisation and the treatment of Mr Modise that resulted which attracted the censure of the Commission. Mr Modise had been rendered stateless by the Government of Botswana and deported to South Africa. Further to his ultimate removal back to Botswana Mr Modise was confined by the authorities to a strip of no man’s land between Botswana and South Africa and rendered homeless. The Commission found that the treatment of Mr Modise taken as a whole violated his basic dignity—and Article 5 of the Charter. It will be interesting to see to what extent in the future the Commission will continue to interpret the types of conditions suffered by those forced into statelessness as amounting to a violation of Article 5.

The Charter and the findings of the Commission have also provided a context within which solutions to the breakdown of State protection can be sought. The Commission has tackled, for example, the root causes of exclusion, examining the human rights violations suffered by those who have lost the protection of their State. In the leading case of John D. Ouko v. Kenya the Commission showed itself as a forum where state responsibility for the creation of the refugee phenomenon could be analysed – an issue often neglected by refugee advocates where the focus is on the urgent need for States to provide refuge. The Ouko communication concerned a Kenyan citizen who had been recognised as a refugee in the Democratic Republic of Congo further to fleeing persecution and detention by Kenyan authorities. The Commission found that the persecution and forced flight of Mr Ouko had violated a number of articles in the Charter, including Article 12 which protected Mr Ouko’s right to leave, and return (voluntarily) to, Kenya.

The responsibility of the state which provides asylum has also come under scrutiny at the Commission. In the case of African Institute for Human Rights and Development v Guinea the communication centred on a spate of abuses, including rape, detention, and killing which were suffered by Sierra Leonean refugees, in the wake of a speech by the President of Guinea urging all foreigners “searched and arrested”. The Commission ruled that the President’s speech, as an incitement and de facto authorization for the resultant attacks and expulsions, violated article 12(5) of the Charter. The Commission also found that there had been violations of the right to life, property and dignity of the refugees in addition to noting that the targeting of Sierra Leonean refugees violated Article 4 of the OAU Refugee Convention on the Specific Problems of Refugees in Africa.

In the Mauritania cases the Commission not only focussed on the arbitrary denationalisation of the complainants’ but also on the deplorable conditions in which the deportees had been held, finding a violation of Article 16 – the right of every individual “to enjoy the best attainable state of physical and mental health”. It is hoped that this approach will be followed in future cases relating to the standards of treatment in refugee or IDP camps, especially where freedom of movement is restricted by the authorities and people are confined to the settlements in contravention of international law.

The role of NGOs

All of the key cases considered to date by the Commission which touch on extrapolating the rights of the forcibly displaced and the stateless have been brought to the attention of the Commission by human rights and civil society organizations on the continent. It is not just in the realm of moving forward the Commission’s jurisprudence, however, that NGOs have been active. At the bi-annual meetings of the Commission it is usual for one of the statements to the Commission by NGOs to be dedicated to a review of the situation of refugees and IDPs on the continent, contributing to the overall monitoring function of the Commission.

It is acknowledged also that the work of NGOs dedicated to advocacy on refugee and IDP rights was critical to encouraging the Commission to create the position of Special Rapporteur. Since his appointment, first as focal point, and then as Special Rapporteur, Commissioner Nyanduga has been very active, conducting a series of missions which have done much to highlight the plight of the displaced (see article in this issue). The work of the Special Rapporteur, however, does need to be better supported to increase its effectiveness—resources at the Commission are highly stretched. NGOs can assist through seeking observer status before the Commission to play a more active advocacy role, and helping to mobilise funds for the functioning of the Rapporteur system.

Challenges

As an independent rights arbitrar the Commission suffers from a number of defects, the greatest perhaps being the non-binding nature of its rulings. It is also fair to say that as a deliberative body of State appointed experts, the Commission can find itself subject to political pressure. Despite this, the Commission can point to a history of courageous position-taking which has belied many of the predictions of politicisation. In recent years, however, it has been suggested that, the progressive stance which marked the evolution of the Commission is suffering a backlash. Some point, for example, to the fluctuating approach of the Commission’s jurisprudence to “exhaustion of domestic remedies”—a threshold consideration for admissibility of communications. In the past the Commission demonstrated a rather liberal attitude to interpreting this concept, particularly where asylum seekers, refugees and the stateless were involved, but it is now building a more elaborate set of hurdles.

Others note the difficulties encountered by the Commission in conducting its broader monitoring functions, particularly in reaching consensus on response to the humanitarian and human rights crisis in Darfur. The official report of the Commission of its mission to Darfur, presented at the third extra-ordinary session of the Commission in Pretoria in September 2004, has still not been published. This report was the first comprehensive African Union assessment of the human rights situation in Darfur, including focussing on the plight of IDPs. Although adopted officially by the AU, publication remains hostage to political manoeuvring, as the text awaits the comments of the Government of Sudan. [4]

What next for the Commission and for the excluded?

The foundation of the African Union in 2002 expressed a regional commitment to creating a more effective, integrated political and economic union with human rights situated at the heart of its principles and objectives. There are a number of areas where the Commission can be encouraged to use its position in the new African Union human rights firmament to promote the rights of the excluded. The new AU institutions, from the African Court to the AU Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOC) all present opportunities for the Commission to contribute to the setting of human rights benchmarks. The Commission has already been explicitly assigned functions, for example, with respect to the peer review mechanism under NEPAD and the Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation in Africa (CSSDCA). A

The Commission, however, is the human rights touchstone, not just for the new AU frame but for other continental processes which address human rights concerns—the International Conference on the Great Lakes is just one process comprising a series of new laws relating to the rights of the excluded. The Commission can ensure complementary efforts and exchange of jurisprudence with such mechanisms. It will be essential, also, for the Commission to act as a a guide to regional courts as they are increasingly called upon to adjudicate on the rights of the excluded who may also claim rights from a sub-regional organisation—the East African Community is currently, for example, adopting a Bill of Rigths where freedom of movement and protection of the regions “citizens” will be paramount. Attention also needs to the paid to the promotion of the Charter and its jurisprudence at national level where the potential for the case law of the Commission to be cited in domestic proceedings is ripe but rarely exploited. National human rights commissions might be mobilised by the Commission in this regard.

Finally, the Commission can be a forum for the promotion of the new norms and standards which will certainly be required to respond to the changing nature of displacement and exclusion on the continent. Among the areas requiring particular elaboration include access to citizenship and the reduction of statelessness, the right of freedom of movement for IDPs and refugees, due process guarantees in asylum proceedings, rights of access to domestic courts (often restricted for refugees), the social and economic rights of the displaced and their hosts, and the implications for State responsibility of delegating protection of the excluded to international organisations. NGOs of course must play a role in identifying the strategic opportunities for litigation that will facilitate this work. They may also need to explore, alongside the Commission, where normative developments—new protocols to the Charter (such as perhaps on the right to a nationality)—may be required.

*Déirdre Clancy is Co-Director of the International Refugee Rights Initiative. She was formerly the Director of the International Refugee Program at Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights).

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

* For notes, please click here

Henning Melber tackles the critical issues surrounding the EU-African summit.

Gone are the days of perpetuating historically entrenched interests and relations between “old Europe” and its in the meantime sovereign African colonies as unchallenged integral part of a global economic and political system in favour of the imperialist powers. The former hunting grounds for slaves fuelled European early capitalist development and pushed the continent ever since into structural dependency from a world market, which benefited others. Africa remained on the receiving end since then. But with increased competition for its natural resources, African economies emerge as a new attraction for a multiple range of potential partners, allowing the governments more choices than ever before.

The preparations for the EU-African Summit in Lisbon during December happen in the midst of what could be termed a new scramble for Africa’s resources. At a time when the US-American administration under the outgoing president Clinton enacted the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) to secure mainly its own interests through a new preferential trade scheme, the trade department at the EC headquarters in Brussels initiated negotiations for a re-arrangement of its relations with the ACP countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific through so-called Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). The declared aim was to enter an agreement meeting the demands for compatibility with the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The EPA negotiations have since then entered critical stages and should have been finalised by the end of this year. They provoke reluctance if not fierce resistance of many among the ACP countries, who feel that Brussels seeks to impose a one-sided trade regime in its own interests.

Meanwhile China as a new kid on the block expands aggressively into African markets and seeks access to the fossil energy resources and other minerals and metals it urgently needs to fuel its own further rapid industrialisation process. In a matter of time, India, Brazil and Russia (as well as a number of other actors such as Malaysia and Mexico) are likely to add further pressure to the scramble for limited markets and resources. It appears at times, that the criticism often raised these days in the West against China and other potentially emerging competitors is more so an indicator of an increasing fear for losing out on own interests than being motivated by a genuine concern for the African people.

The interests guiding decision-making in this new constellation are illustrated prominently by the discussion over Zimbabwe’s participation in the summit. The overwhelming majority of EU member states seem to be prepared to accept the presence of President Robert Mugabe in violation of the own sanctions decided earlier on. The main argument is the concern that his exclusion would result in a boycott of most African countries, weaken Europe’s status among African governments and thereby strengthen the Chinese influence further. More pragmatically, it is also maintained that using Mugabe’s presence for a discussion over the situation in Zimbabwe would allow the further pursuance of a negotiated solution. This could strengthen SADC’s mandate to Thabo Mbeki for seeking an acceptable exit option for the aging despot and a political solution to the ongoing crisis.

The new rivalry between external players strengthens at the same time the political bargaining role of African governments. In the presence of alternatives to the historically established exchange relations, their heads of state can easier agree on signs of solidarity among themselves, threatening to turn a back on Europe if it is not complying with their demands – such as the one to include the Zimbabwean despot in the list of invited guests.

The long lasting dependency syndrome, which characterised the North-South relations, is replaced by a feeling of having alternative choices at hand. While this expands the action radius of African governments, it has not necessarily a positive impact on improved governance. Quite the opposite: it might create new exit options for kleptocratic regimes to once again being able to literally get away with murder.

* Henning Melber is the Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Uppsala.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Salma Maoulidi examines the link between abortion and women's reproductive autonomy

The first ever Safe Abortion Conference was held in late October 2007 at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London bringing together about 800 people from different parts of the world working in different capacities on the issue. The conference was jointly organized by Marie Stopes International, Ipas and Abortion Rights.

Impetus behind the agenda

40years of legal abortion in the UK provided a suitable opportunity to revisit the abortion debate in view of its policy relevance to women's reproductive and sexual health. Indeed in spite of advances in reproductive health sciences and technologies about eighty women, mostly of reproductive age, die every hour from unsafe abortions in countries where it is illegal. One in three women will undergo an abortion at some stage in her life. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 1 in every 16 women in sub-Saharan Africa will die from unsafe abortion as opposed to 1 in 2400 in Europe. Most deaths arise from post abortion complications, deaths that could be prevented if medical abortion were legal.

Deaths resulting from unsafe abortions account for over half of all cases of maternal mortality in most African countries. The continued toll unsafe abortion poses to women's lives worries reproductive health activists and providers. They warn should the current trend continue it will be impossible for most countries in Africa to reach goals 3 and 5 of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The struggle for practitioners and activists is to eliminate unsafe abortions a feat that is complicated by the undue influence the US, backed by conservative quarters, exerts on women's sexual and reproductive health and rights in national and international policy contexts.

Globally the abortion debate is masked in moral and religious terms where the right of the unborn child is put against the right of the woman to choose to bear or abort the child. The public health dimension is rarely underlined and the millions of women who die, or are maimed from unsafe abortions hardly come under scrutiny. Rather, it is the agency of women that is questioned. The purist discourse on the right to life and the guilt of committing a cardinal sin effectively polarizes women and men from engaging with the issue from a political lens where abortion is not only seen to affect some 'immoral' women but is an issue for all women.

The realities on the ground

Abortion politics hold women's reproductive capacity ransom at huge costs to their individual freedom and health. As the Safe Abortion Conference was closing in London, the Morogoro Resident Magistrates Court passed a prison sentence to a 21 year old woman in Tanzania, Faima Hassan, for aborting an eight month old fetus. This case is not a rare occurrence. In recent times abortion has become topical and a major topic for women bashing by parliamentarians in the national legislature. Leading this bashing is the President of Tanzania who, symbolically on the Day of the African Child on June 16, 2007, is reported by the Daily News to have called all women, who opt for an abortion, murderers, a view echoed by the deputy Minister for Health, Hon. Ayisha Kigoda during several Parliamentary sessions. Surely such utterances can be construed to reflect the official position towards women's right to make decisions over their bodies, a position that is in direct conflict to article 14(2) (c) of the Maputo Protocol that recognized a right to medical abortion which Tanzania signed and ratified!

Regrettably it is mostly poor women who cannot afford safe abortion services that will encounter legal and medical problems mainly because they lack resources to benefit from available abortion options that are legal and safe. The bottom line is that back street abortions provide women with an essential service in a context where birth control is not widely and regularly available or where the sexual relationship is unequal and often coerced. Denouncing those who perform illegal abortions could put their lives at risk or make them targets of public and moral recrimination. Faima's double tragedy of carrying a fetus almost to term and being prosecuted is a near impossibility for a woman who is well to do. They can either fly to destinations like South Africa where abortion is available on demand; or solicit the aide of friends in the medical establishment where, in spite of the ban, abortion services continue to be available for a fee.

Significantly the ban on abortion denies women the ability to assert their reproductive autonomy. Prof. Fred Sai, an adviser to the Ghanaian President and a respected personality in women's health in Africa, argues that it is unacceptable that women cannot have a choice in such a personal matter.

What informs my interest in the debate?

While at high school I watched a form two student fight death after a back street abortion. She stank after becoming septic and was delirious. Her state paralyzed anyone from seeking medical attention because either way it spelt trouble incriminating not only the girl but also others who supposedly harboured her: Pregnancy continues to disqualify female students, in most African countries, from enjoying their right to an education. Even if the procedure was successful, it is sufficient grounds to expel a girl from school. In this instance, however, taking her to medical authorities for attention would incriminate her for partaking in a criminal act. In the end, her colleagues smuggled out of the school to undergo another clandestine intervention to save her life.

Alas this is not the only abortion incident I would encounter. During my undergrad years at the University of Dar es Salaam, a dorm mate died after attempting to end a pregnancy her boyfriend refused to acknowledge. She swallowed a handful of pills. Her family found her and sought medical attention but the process attracted delays such that by the time doctors attended to her she was already cold. Also in the course of my work I have met young and older couples pushed by economic considerations to end unintended pregnancies: In view of the harsh economic realities they cannot afford another child since, in a cost sharing set up, the question is not just about an extra mouth to feed but also about an extra body to shelter, dress, treat and to educate. Women also end a pregnancy because it was forced; or there is a bigger threat militating against having the baby such as marital discordance or a health risk like seropositivity. Rarely is the intent to pursue a hobby of killing fetuses or as alternative a FP method.

Origins of the prohibition

Abortion is challenged on a number of grounds chief being preserving the sanctity of (all forms of) life. Religious scriptures are often cited to challenge the practice. In addition to religious arguments human rights arguments are deployed to delegitimize any moral basis to the practice, similar to those employed to oppose the death penalty. Yet abortion laws, per se, are not indigenous to local cultures and prior to their adoption there existed practices in local communities to get rid of unwanted fetuses or children.

The prohibition against abortion came as a result of British laws and missionary interventions in African colonies. The context such a law came to be is underemphasized. Prof. Said explains that when abortion was criminalized in Victorian England it was to protect women from "barber surgeons" whom, women frequented to end unintended pregnancies. Abortion services at that period were not safe and more women died undergoing abortions than during child birth, requiring urgent measures to safeguard women lives and health.

Lord Steel, the Architect of the UK 1967 Abortion Act notes the tremendous advances in the sciences since the passage of the Act necessitating a fresh look at the 1967 Act which working within the confines of possibilities of science at the time mainly confined it self to surgical abortions. But today medical technology is so advanced women can induce abortions at home by taking a pill requiring minimal medical intervention as was the case four decades ago.

How then is it that while imperialist forces that abortion law have adapted to the progress made in reproductive technologies the law is fervently retained in most former colonies? Surely abortion legislation reflecting an antiquated approach to safeguarding women's health and lives, can only be understood as a remnant of the imperialist project in Africa, a project increasingly manifested through the undue control of women via criminal and personal laws while all else on which livelihood depends is liberalized.

What is implicit in the anti-abortion debate?

All types of women have abortions and they do so for various reasons. Few women make the decision to have an abortion lightly (or while emotionally possessed) as is suggested by those who question women's state of mind and motives for wanting an abortion. In most cases an abortion is a desperate act to control one's fertility where that ability to do so has been denied. And while undue attention is on the woman and her 'immoral' and 'criminal' rarely is the behaviour of men who impregnate women against their will, either by force or deceit, brought under scrutiny.

Is the ban on abortion about the sanctity of life or about patriarchy and the obsession to control women via the womb? Indeed the most effective way to control women has historically been via her reproductive function. Also some arguments against abortion express conservative notions about the sexual hierarchy. In many ways family planning technologies revolutionized power in the sexual relationship. Anti choice arguments imply that a woman cannot make decisions over her own person and body and further the assumption that women are not rational beings and impliedly cannot make decisions over their own bodies let alone over others.

Possibly the high abortion death rates are tolerated because women are deemed replaceable should they die; become maimed; or rendered infertile as a result of unsafe abortion. In contrast the same jurisdictions place few prohibitions on men's sexual and reproductive practices (or the consequences thereof) as are placed on women. While the law and pro-life opinion compel the woman to have the child, few laws oblige a father to look after issues fathered; the responsibility largely rests with the mother. Presently the official maintenance rate in Tanzania is 100 shillings (about 8 cents US) nor is there a mechanism to enforce maintenance awards. A mother knows what carrying a pregnancy to term will mean. Yet, those opposing women's right to choose are not willing to offer women the institutional support to raise an unintended child; or to advocate the necessary reforms that would put women in a more egalitarian footing in the sexual and reproductive relationship.

The abortion debate reflects a desire to perpetuate gender dominance at one level and power inequalities in development prescriptions on the other. The control of poor women's reproduction features prominently in development strategies but no where is the intent as contentious as in the case of abortion. Indeed long before the Gag Rule abortion was high in the US development agenda leading the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) to have an abortion branch. A few years later the priorities have changed impacting significantly on local reproductive health politics where the services are most crucial to reduce unnecessary deaths.

Medical dimensions of the debate

In view of the advances in reproductive heath technologies abortion deaths should be history in the 21st century not a public health issue. Sadly this is far from the reality such that women are forced to adopt extreme measures to get rid of pregnancies they had not planned. This may involve taking toxic potions and drugs; inserting crude objects in the uterus; and subjecting themselves to falls or blows to induce abortion.

Surely, confining the abortion debate to the 'appropriateness' of ending the life of an unborn child fails to take into account the circumstances in which the child came to be.
WHO estimates that one in every three pregnancies is unintended. Questions should therefore be posed about how women became pregnant and not why they want to rid themselves of a pregnancy they do not want.

There is a strong link between abortion and women's reproductive autonomy. Many women have sex in circumstances that are equal to forced sex or rape putting her at risk of becoming pregnant and becoming infected with sexually transmitted diseases. It is, therefore, important to vigorously link the public health aspects in the ongoing debate. Likewise, advocacy initiatives should emphasize facts with regards conceptions. Indeed about a quarter of all conceptions (about 240 million annually) will lead to early pregnancy wastage a figure twice higher than that pertaining to induced abortions estimated at 42 million, only 20 million of which are illegal. Perhaps such truths will mitigate residues of ambivalence abortion evokes especially among conscientious women and men.

Opportunities for decriminalization

Increasingly abortion is not solely seen as a feminist agenda but as an agenda that is embraced by a wider spectrum of actors from the reproductive health sector and medical professionals. For instance the medical community in India made safe abortion a health agenda and actively lobbied the government under the banner 'Safe abortion saves lives'. While doctors elsewhere are spearheading safe abortion, one wonders why the medical community in Tanzania and in other Africa countries remains silent lest the status quo benefits individual practice.

Decriminalization is easier when safe abortion is part of national population or health policies as is the case in India and China. Even so in societies where women feel compelled to produce male heirs there is a risk of abuse to facilitate sex selection. In any case safe abortion is more cost effective since more money is spent treating complications arising from illegal and unsafe abortions. In a context where health services are severely constrained and fewer allocations in the health budget are made to reproductive health services, liberalizing medical abortion and post abortion services may be the logical policy intervention.

Some activists believe the Maputo Protocol has a potential to advance African women's sexual and reproductive rights via test in line with regional and international instruments. Alas, courts on the continent, continue fail women, willingly preserving the status quo while stifling any attempt towards a progressive appreciation of women's human rights. Moreover although new judicial regimes like the East African Court present a huge potential in furthering existing human rights interpretation, their mandate is confined to issuing opinions effectively limiting their influence in obliging states to reform. Surely this is an area for future advocacy.

Is there strong policy commitment to safe abortion?

Presently there is a deep realization within the activist community that legalizing abortion may not be enough. Abortion activists in the US express concern with the April 2007 Supreme Court decision which though on later term is interpreted as dispensing with the requirement to protect women's health asserted in the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade that explicitly recognized a woman's right to choose.

Thus while abortion remains legal in the US conservative forces have used sophisticated means to ensure that a woman's right to choose is thwarted by raising legal challenges and placing procedural restrictions, at the state level, all designed to limit a woman's ability to access abortion on demand e.g. mandatory waiting periods. Moreover as fewer clinics in the US provide the services, women are forced to go further distances, at times out of state, to obtain an abortion placing undue economic and social burdens.

The Dutch Minister for Development Cooperation, Bert Koenders, offered an optimistic assessment of donor practice with regard development assistance in the area of maternal health including reducing deaths from unsafe abortions. The assertion while laudable must be evaluated against current practice with regard development funding where increasing partnership with governments to the exclusion of civil society organizations may limit meaningful interventions in sexual and reproductive health and rights. Moreover greater activism in countries where abortion is not legal may further restrict the mandate of civil society organizations supposedly for engaging in illegal activities.

The conference came to a realization that civil society organizations and health practitioners in Africa can agitate for the politicization of the abortion issue e.g. as part of Peer Review Mechanism to monitor progress of national and regional instruments. Sadly there remains in Africa a reluctance to approach abortion as a policy issue it is therefore not surprising that maternal health dominates different forums on women's health instead of reproductive health, the latter recognizing more forthrightly the biological role women play in conception but also her agency in the sexual relationship.

Towards meeting key policy commitments on sexual and reproductive health rights.

WHO and ICPD define health and wellbeing to include the right to decide one's fertility; and to enjoy a satisfying sexual life free from violence and risk of disease. The MDGs reiterate the centrality of maternal and reproductive health and rights to the development agenda. Health Ministers acknowledge the link between unsafe abortion and maternal deaths and the African Union (AU) has sought to address this aspect in article 14 of the Maputo Protocol and Plan of Action.

How can the legal framework and reproductive health services locally reflect the accepted global standard? Undoubtedly the ideal is a situation where women don't have to resort to abortion as a way to get rid of unwanted pregnancies; or to regulate births. This implies empowering women to exercise sexual and reproductive choices. Clearly it makes no sense denying a service that is medically and economically efficient. Rather than moralizing on the issue policy makers ought to engage more effectively with evidence gathered by different actors including the WHO to guide policy interventions with respect to curbing maternal deaths.

* Salma Maoulidi is an Activist/Executive Director of the Sahiba Sisters Foundation in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Miriam Madziwa writes that each time the Zimbabwe dollar tumbles, women's survival chances take a corresponding knock, as it means more sexual favours to seal deals with men, who by virtue of their jobs or connections are able to make or break women's survival attempts

With her unkempt hair tucked into a woolen hat, a faded T-shirt, skirt and a pair of torn canvas shoes, Nokhuthula Tshuma* does not fit the stereotypical profile of a commercial sex worker. As an informal trader earning a living selling agricultural produce from rural areas to urban residents, it is difficult to link her to sex work and its inherent dangers.

Yet, the mother of three, like thousands of impoverished Zimbabwean women struggling to feed, clothe and educate their children in a hyperinflationary environment, is at great risk of infection. Each time they embark on a business trip, the women expose themselves to vulnerable situations.

As the Zimbabwean economy crumbles, shortages of basic goods have presented numerous opportunities for enterprising women to make money. The same shortages of goods and essential services such as transport coupled with endemic corruption mean the women traders have to operate according to business rules defined by men.

One such rule is to offer a “favour,” really a bribe, to secure scarce commodities and free passage by police officers. For these impoverished and desperate women, the bribes take the form of offering "a little bit extra" to male service providers and suppliers in order to remain in business. These extra favours are invariably sexual.

For the cash-strapped women, sex offers an easy and cheap, albeit risky, means of supporting their families. In return, they are able to secure scarce goods as well as discounts on transport and accommodation and their businesses flourish.

A few experiences gleaned from a cross section of informal Zimbabwean women traders illustrate the magnitude of the dilemma these women contend with in trying to meet economic needs and safeguarding their health.

Tshuma lives in the southern half of Zimbabwe in the coal-mining town of Hwange. Twice a month, she makes a 400 kilometer round trip to Lusulu in Binga district. Lusulu is a thriving agricultural area where Tshuma barters basic goods such as soap, sugar and salt, which have disappeared from shop shelves, with maize. Normally she is away from home for a week.

If she were to pay for all her transport, food and accommodation expenses when she is away from home, she would make very little profit. So to boost her profit margins, she pays using what is known as "bottom currency," to pay off bus crews to secure seats on overcrowded buses, truck drivers to ferry bags of maize back to Hwange, and lodge owners to discount her accommodation costs.

Beauty Phiri started selling dried fish six months ago soon after government's clampdown on prices saw butchers' refrigerators going empty. An astute entrepreneur, Phiri saw a viable business opportunity selling dried fish to protein-starved Bulawayo residents. She sources her fish fresh from the Zambezi River in Binga from both Zimbabwean and Zambian fishermen.

She points out that it did not take her long to figure out that she had to sleep with the fishermen for her to get in order to meet her requirements quickly. Women fishmongers openly admit that fishermen prefer to deal with "generous women."

On the extreme end of the age scale are poor girl pupils in remote rural schools, such as Lusulu High School. Pupils walk an average of 20 kilometers to get to school from their homes, so many become “bush borders.” Bush boarding is an informal set-up where pupils build their own huts and have to find their own food and other basic requirements.

Many pupils come from poor families who are unable to send regular supplies of cash and food to the borders. In desperation, female students resort to illicit affairs with teachers, police officers and other rich villagers. Statistics from Lusulu indicate that annually, an average of 50 female students drop out of school after falling pregnant.

Thanks to HIV and AIDS awareness campaigns, most women who find themselves in such situations are aware of the inherent dangers of their survival tactics. The women know that HIV and AIDS have reduced the life expectancy of women in the country to 34 years, and that the pandemic is decimating families and drastically reducing mortality rates.

The sad reality though, is that the poverty forces these women to engage in risky behaviour in order to survive anyways. Some women still are not making the connection between granting sexual favours and the increased risk of infection.

Another worrying fact is that when women travel a lot, their partners are likely to turn to mistresses called “small houses” in Zimbabwe, during their absence. These "small house" occupants in turn often have numerous partners in an attempt to balance their ever-increasing monthly expenses with their incomes.

These bleak scenarios aptly portray how Zimbabwe's economic meltdown, characterised by hyperinflation now at almost 15 000 percent, is fuelling the vulnerability of women to HIV infection and erasing the gains of concerted HIV and AIDS awareness and behaviour change campaigns. The black market, a phenomenon triggered by acute shortages of basic goods and services, is forcing desperate women to forget lessons learnt from these campaigns.

The instinct to meet basic needs has erased survival skills painstakingly acquired over the years. Each time the Zimbabwe dollar tumbles, women's survival chances take a corresponding knock, as it means more sexual favours to seal deals with men, who by virtue of their jobs or connections are able to make or break women's survival attempts.
Even more disheartening is the realisation that efforts to break the vicious circle will come to nought until the economic free fall stops.

* Not her really name

* Miriam Madziwa is a freelance journalist based in Zimbabwe

* This article is part of a series produced by the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service for the Sixteen Days of Activism on Gender Violence

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Elizabeth Mataka says the needs and the rights of women need to move from the empty discussions in the margins and given the necessary resources, attention and action the urgency requires

In the days leading up to the International Day Against Violence Against Women I have been reflecting on exactly what ‘violence’ in the violence against women means. The more I thought about the subject, the more I realized that violence now has many shapes and colours, it has transcended the violence of physical, sexual and psychological assault, touched down on political and economic harm and now moved into the space of complicity by silence.

We need not look further than the recent epidemiological data released this week by UNAIDS, it illustrates that approximately 60% of HIV infected adults in sub-Saharan Africa are women. This information, I am aware, is not new – women in our region have for many years been what has been coined ‘the face of the epidemic’ - but what this new data has done is brought home the realization that nothing, nothing has changed for women.

The HIV estimates in Africa have shown a leveling off and in some instances, a decline and this is hopeful news. But the situation of women has not changed.
And so I ask, when it comes to women, why are we so slow to act?
With statistics such as these, we are facing a critical emergency, we are rapidly moving towards an Africa without women. Allowing this to happen is violence against women. You may not conduct a physical assault, but being silent is being complicit and non-action is now a violent act.

I have made a personal stand not to be complicit or be a silent aid to any form of violence against women. Strengthening the rights of women and girls is a priority area for me during my tenure as the UN Special Envoy on AIDS in Africa. I have decided to move beyond the lip service of discussions on the empowerment of women and work closely with governments and legal groups, lobbying them, to make sure that legislation and policy is reformed to actually support the empowerment of women.

However, as we know, we can change policy and legislation, but nothing will change unless we change our cultural practices and our personal attitudes that support this violence against women.

For example, am I wrong to say that in some of our cultures here in Africa, a well brought up daughter is one who is submissive and obedient? Doesn’t this well mannered daughter reflect well on her family? But doesn’t this very same education in submissiveness and obedience create a dependency, which in turn disempowers our daughters?

Another example, am I wrong in saying that some of our cultures here in Africa condemn divorce; and our societies are quick to denounce marriage separation, even a marriage with high risk and abuse? Evidence shows that a massive number of new infections in women here occur in the context of marriage or long term relationships. With this kind of information, it is a violent act to hide behind ‘culture’ to justify leading our women to an early grave.

This is why in my tenure as the UN Special Envoy on AIDS, I will talk publicly and honestly about the cultural practices that are harmful to women. We need to break the silence on this. We need to ask ourselves about the kind of legacy we will leave for our daughters and granddaughters, unless we stand-up to some of these harmful practices, all they will inherit is a certain death before they have actually lived.

Again I ask, when it comes to women, why are we so slow to act?

It is still astounding that over 25 years into the HIV epidemic, and in the context of sexual relations, for the most part a woman is still made dependent on her male sexual partner to protect herself. The statistics show that time has run out, women need products, now, that they can control – without negotiation and with discretion - to protect themselves against HIV. More political commitment and resources need to go to the research agenda around women controlled HIV prevention products, like microbicides.

The needs and the rights of women need to move from the empty discussions in the margins and given the necessary resources, attention and action the urgency requires. However, absolutely nothing will change for women unless men and boys are involved and educated towards an understanding of equality – this will help them understand, better, the advantages of true gender equality.

Today, the International Day Against Violence Against Women and the first day of the 16 days of activism against gender violence, I ask that non-action is included as a definition of violence. It is our collective responsibility to take a stand against violence against women, if we remain silent, we become complicit, we become an obstacle.

I conclude by asking again, when it comes to women, why are we so slow to act?

* Elizabeth Mataka is the UN Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

The journey just got tougher for civil society activists who have been spearheading efforts to ensure that Southern African Development Community (SADC) governments are legally bound to achieve gender equality, writes Pamela Mhlanga

The SADC Protocol on Gender and Development, due to have been adopted by Heads of State at their meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, in August, has been deferred until the next annual summit to be held in South Africa in mid-2008. The latest draft of the Protocol has had huge chunks removed and concrete commitments softened.

Rising to the challenge, during 16 Days of Activism these activists will be picking up the pace in a campaign to see that a draft Protocol on Gender and Development has the needed commitment and detail necessary to make it a meaningful document in promoting true equality.

SADC is arguably one of the few regions that have done some groundbreaking policy work to institutionalise gender equality. Aside from adoption of a Declaration on Gender and Development in 1997 and an Addendum to address violence against women and children in 1998, all 14 SADC states have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

This positive gender equality policy scenario in SADC should lay the basis for a smooth transition from having non-binding SADC instruments to achieve gender equality, such as the 1997 Declaration, to a legally binding one, right? Wrong, as the most recent SADC Heads of State Summit demonstrated.

The baby was almost thrown out with the bath water, when the draft Protocol failed to be adopted, despite having been approved by SADC Gender Ministers, as well as Justice Ministers, the latter having reviewed it in an extraordinary meeting just weeks prior to the August Summit.

The essence of the proposed SADC Gender Protocol is to consolidate all the various commitments made by SADC governments to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment, in an “omnibus” document. This document will legally bind member states, and provide a framework with time bound targets, for assessing progress and evaluating their performance.

If adopted it will be the first document of its kind in any sub-region. Technically, a lot of work went into the preparation of the pre-Summit draft, including input by an intergovernmental and civil society Task Force set up by the SADC Secretariat under the leadership of the SADC Gender Unit, as well as portfolio SADC Ministers.

Members of the Southern Africa Gender Protocol Alliance, a coalition of 16 organisations working on women’s empowerment at national and regional levels, also made expert input into the drafts. Coordinated by Gender Links, this Alliance includes a wide range of organisations from across the region, such as the Botswana Congress of NGOs (BOCONGO), the Federation of African Media Women (FAMW) – SADC, Gender and Media Southern Africa Network (GEMSA), Malawi Council of Churches, Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA), and Women in Law in Southern Africa (WLSA).

What is worrying is that the revised draft that came out of the Summit is substantially different from the pre-Summit draft in many respects. Some of the core issues that will, if effectively tackled, result in considerable positive impact on (currently unequal) gender relations and women’s full equality have either been removed, or modified.

This significantly compromises the potential effectiveness of the proposed Protocol, and, interestingly, even limiting the potential to achieve other commitments already made by SADC governments. For example, the text of the new draft creates loopholes to the adherence by governments to time bound targets, in line with commitments already made in global development blue prints such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Words like “ensure” are changed to “endeavour”.

Examples of gaps in the new SADC Gender Protocol draft include excluding reference to groups that suffer marginalisation or exclusion and limiting constitutional review processes that will eradicate discrimination and marginalisation of women. The new draft is missing entire sections from areas such as health, HIV and AIDS, education and institutional arrangements.

Some sections, such as HIV and AIDS are cross-referenced with documents that are either not legally binding such as the Maseru Declaration on HIV and AIDS or do not take into consideration gender issues, such as the SADC Protocol on Education and Training.

The commitment to ensuring that where there is a contradiction between customary law and Constitutional provisions for gender equality the latter takes precedence have been removed. This leaves wide open the dual legal system that daily undermines the rights of women in the region, especially poor women in rural areas.

In preparation for the next SADC Heads of State Summit, the Gender Protocol Alliance, currently coordinated by Gender Links, is developing a position paper motivating for a redrafting of the text of the Protocol in order that it a meaningful document that is grounded in women’s rights, and in line also with already existing SADC gender equality commitments.

The Alliance met in Johannesburg on 9 November 2007 to review the status of the Gender Protocol adoption process. The meeting focused on action that civil society can take to facilitate an essentially government process that seems to have been drawn back sharply.

Alliance members realise that the adoption of the Protocol requires greater political engagement, particularly at national level, to influence the spheres of power with responsibility for committing governments to act. Further, engaging with different spheres of influence at national and regional level is priority on the agenda, including Ministers of Gender, Justice, and Foreign Affairs, parliamentarians, seniour government officials, and other strategic activists.

At the core of action by gender activists is also to mobilise from the grassroots, so that there is popular support and a critical mass that recognises the value of the Protocol and sees its adoption and implementation as a critical factor in achieving equality and positive transformation for all. Thus, engaging potentially powerful sectors such as faith based organisations, local government actors, and others with their fingers on the pulse of community action and change will make significant inroads in ensuring multi-layered support.

The sum total of these proposed actions should turn the tide towards adoption of a SADC Gender Protocol that we can all identify and work with to raise the bar in addressing women’s rights in this region. Once ending gender violence becomes a legal obligation, maybe then our countries and communities will be safer places for everyone.

* Pamela Mhlanga is the Deputy Director of Gender Links.

* This article is part of a series produced by the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service for the Sixteen Days of Activism on Gender Violence.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Melanie Judge writes about the apparent passivity of government leaders in the face of lesbian attacks and murders in South Africa.

It is hard not to feel pessimistic when it comes to 16 Days of Activism. The killers of Sizakele Sigasa and Salome Masooa, two lesbian activists murdered in Soweto in July, have still to be brought to book. The murder of Thokozane Qwabe in Ladysmith remains unresolved. And, as I write this, another two lesbian women have been targeted for attack at a township gay bar, followed, and then shot: one of them fatally.

These recent violent attacks and murders have left many of us deeply saddened and enraged. Many more are non-plussed. Yet, these attacks on lesbian women are nothing new. For each of these women, there are hundreds more who are raped, to prove a point by men and communities who do not approve of their sexuality.

To compound matters, government leaders remain silent about such incidents of extreme prejudice. Whilst South Africa boasts a myriad of laws that protect against discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation, which leaders often trot out with great aplomb during the 16 days of Activism, such laws are meaningless in the face of ongoing gender-based killings. As women, and as lesbians, our bodies and our sexualities are quite literally under attack.

In the midst of trying to make sense of the brutality meted out to women every day, through rape, murder and sexual assault, the question arises: How do we deal with hate? Firstly, we need to acknowledge that as South Africans, we are steeped in hate – arguably the most pernicious survivor of the apartheid era.

Such hatred forms part of why we rape and kill each other. Women are frequently the target of displaced anger and disempowerment as expressed through violence. Lesbian women in particular seem to be increasingly singled out for attack in actively homophobic communities. The level of violence against women in South Africa is perhaps the truest barometer of our progress, or lack thereof, to healing and reconciliation, as a society.

Our relatively new social commitment to our Constitution, which enshrines the core, values of equality, dignity and freedom, demands of us to address the matter of hatred head on. Why should we have to tolerate the killing and the raping, and be silenced by the promise/veneer of the Constitution?

What is done in our homes, on our streets and in the heart our communities is the very antithesis of these values. There is neither celebration nor justice in that.

People hate along a continuum. “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never harm me” is all but a nursery-rhyme lie. It is the attitudes, beliefs and words that provide the impetus for the sticks and stones. For hatred that is acted out in turn establishes and reestablishes particular forms of social power, through the means of abuse and violence.

We know the discourse only too well: It’s the lesbian that “needs” raping to “sort her out”, the wife that “needs a klap” to “keep her in line”, and the gay man that gets bashed for letting the team down. No coincidence that these manifestations of prejudice are directed at groups which are not exactly at the top of the social hierarchy. The point is that there are social systems that shape the nature and form of South Africa’s violence and gendered power is central to this.

Laws that promote equality and protect against discrimination, do not even shelter the most powerful. Why, after over a decade of democracy, do we not have one politician in the ruling party who is publicly out as gay or lesbian? One can only surmise that the fear of marginalisation, if not outright victimization, is just too great.

And despite the laws, there is little justice for women who suffer the consequences of systemic oppression. The handling of various cases of sexual harassment against senior male government leaders, despite policy and legislation designed to protect women from gender abuse, are a case in point.

And the afore-mentioned lesbian murders remain nameless statistics in the bowels of an unresponsive criminal justice system. The insidious thing about systemic oppression is that it pretends that it’s not there. It’s the elephant in the room. And we turn a blind eye as the trampling continues.

What we need are less policymakers pontificating and more unequivocal voices that say “this is not acceptable.” We need less rhetoric and more action in communities, not in the hallowed walls of conferences and imbizos. When does hate become a crime? Unfortunately only when our legislature and political leaders decide it should. Until then, the prejudice that underpins gender-based violence is kept invisible, and the transformation required to build a non-discriminatory and rights-based culture is thwarted.

Instead of the preoccupation with the spurious notion of “moral regeneration,” our religious and traditional leaders should take a proactive position against all forms of hate-fuelled violence. This would require bold positions on bigotry and discriminatory rhetoric, in contradiction to the hate speech that is often shaped through religious and cultural narratives.

“Homosexuality is unAfrican”, taken to its logical conclusion, may be used to “justify’” victimisation. “Homosexuality is a sin,” may also be evoked to the same end. There’s nothing cultural or religious about beating your wife or about driving your lesbian child out of home. That’s called oppressive power, and it happens through patriarchy – often under the guise of “culture.”

During this year’s 16 days of activism I challenge our leaders say and do something about the rapes and murders of lesbian women, the many women who are killed by their male partners, everyday, and those women who continue to be harassed, even by male political leadership. Or are we headed for another 336 days of silent passivity?

* Melanie Judge works with OUT LGBT Well-being.

* This article is part of a series produced by the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service for the Sixteen Days of Activism on Gender Violence.)

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Aboubacry Mbodji proposes a gender approach in regard to violence, labour rights and discriminations against women in Senegalese working environment.

In the Senegal, issues relating to violence, to right to work and to discriminations against women in working environment, cannot be understood without a detailed analysis of multi-secular historical context, which have founded the economic, social and political status of women yesterday and today. It is not of our intention to exhaust a so vast subject in the economy of a presentation. Our purpose will especially try hard to ask fundamental questions by hoping that a more deepened study will be able to be carried out to enable a more exhaustive analysis of the subject.

What is the role of the traditional institutions and religious practices in the promotion of the right of the woman to work? By traditional institutions, it is not only necessary to hear the formal institutions, but also modes of organizations or the forms of practices codified by tradition and by religion. The influence of tradition and religion on the life of the individuals appears to be obvious, but this one hides the worst forms of discrimination against women on the one hand, and obstacles in promotion and protection of their right to work on the other hand.

What are the traditional institutions and the religious practices with harmful effects on the right of women to work? What are the worst forms of discrimination which follow from it? Are there good recommendable practices? How to change status quo? What have to be the actors or the institutions of such change? From which actions and strategies can we lead such a desired social change?

In fact these are the fundamental questions in which our presentation will try to bring answers.

I. Traditional institutions or customary practices

In spite of the importance of its contribution and its role in the traditional society, the position of the Senegalese woman seems to challenge yesterday as today the human dignity, as much discriminations are numerous, structural as inhuman. Traditional institutions and customary practices seem to have sealed the position of the woman as insignificant citizen, or anyway, been born to be dominated by the man.

1.1. The matriarchal system

Following the example of the African traditional societies, the Senegalese society seems at first glance to idealize the woman with regard to its position, with its social status, with its instructive and economic role. She is honoured and seems to occupy an important place in the matriarchal system. However, this situation following from the functioning of the matriarchal system of the society, which would have been able to lay the foundations of an egalitarian and no-discriminating society, hides to a certain extent the influence of the traditional institutions and the customary practices with tendency to relegate the woman in the background in the distribution of its economic, social and political functions.

If the political institution of matriarchy put the woman in a privileged position which could enable her to play entirely her economic, social and political role within the society, one can realize obviously with the analysis of this system that this role was generally figurative: it was not indeed a real exercise of power. Certainly, there were exceptions, particularly in certain ethnic groups of the Senegalese society (to Wolof, Fulani, Soninke, Bambara, Diola, etc), where one noted the existence of queens who occupied at the same time economic, social and political functions (example: Ndete Yalla Mbodj who was queen of the Walo until 1853, Alin Sitoye Diatta, queen of Kabrousse who was deported of her natal Casamance in Gabon by the French colonists).

Apart from these rare exceptions, the status of the woman in the Senegalese traditional society in comparison with the possession and in the transmission of power seldom gave her possibility to achieve high political functions to the men.

1.2. Patriarchal system

As social practice, the custom appears in all respects in the Senegalese traditional society as the symbol of the submission of the woman to the man. It forces the woman to dedicate an almost complete submission to the man: spouse, father or brother. This structural presentation profoundly anchored in tradition and customs constitutes the main discriminating factor for the access of the woman to the public and political sphere. If this situation is based on a patriarchal organization of the family and the society, it is necessary to emphasize that the passage of matriarchy in patriarchy was historically long and laboured.

Reasons advanced in the course of history are numerous, even if the motherhood (matrilinéarité) could be considered to be the consequence of motherhood, owing to « mystery of conception » which engenders the unification of the child with its mother and, by way of consequence, to the maternal family, due to the power of life which it detains and from which the man is excluded by ignorance of his role in the process of delivery. This situation is transformed in fatherhood (patrilinéarité) when at least two elements converge:

* the realization of the role of the father in the conception of the child and the progressive transformation of the economy of survival into a trader economy, requiring the knowledge of its descendant in order to enable the transmission of treasures collected which only man has found it, at a given time, loaded

* The recognition of the role of the mother which has moved it away during a moment of the conception and tasks of reproduction.

This postulate of economist origin of the patriarchy which consecrated the economic, social and political domination of the woman seems to be of a key importance. It has enable to understand that the economic and conditions to reach it could be a way to drive to social change.

1.3. The institution of polygamy

From all institutions or traditional practices, polygamy appears to be the one which is in the centre of debates, in the fact that it is holder of numerous forms of violation of the rights of the woman. It draws its legitimacy at the same time in the custom and in religion, particularly Islamic. The practices of the lévirat (after the death of the husband, the woman must marry a member of the family of the deceased, most often one of the brothers of the husband), or of the sororat (practice of remarriage of a widower with the sister of his spouse, particularly when this late has small children), are common practices in the Senegalese society which violate systematically rights and fundamental freedom of the woman.

1.4. Slave state practices and their after-effects

The institution of slavery was and is another pain and social tragedy in the African countries. Even if it has been eradicated in all ethnic groups of the Senegalese society, it still remains some after-effects which constitute the worst social forms of discrimination in a way to keep the woman in a situation of extreme domination as long as she will exist.

1.5. The harmful traditional practices violating the woman dignity

In the Senegalese yesteryear society as that of today, there are several types of harmful practices such as female genital mutilations. These have a negative effect on the health of the mother and the child. The most frequent female genital mutilations in certain ethnic groups of the Senegalese society such as Fulani, Soninké, Bambara and Diola are the following:

* the incision or "Sunna" according to the Muslim religion which seems to leave undamaged the female sexual organs and that consists of taking away a small end of the clitoris or in proceeding to the injection or boring of the organ

* the removal which consists of severing the hood of the clitoris or in proceeding to the excision of a part or the half of the small lips of the organ

* The infibulation which consists of cutting entirely the small lips, the clitoris and sewing the big lips together by leaving only a small orifice which allows the passage of urines and menstrual flux.

In the Senegal, the realisations of inquiries on these practices reveal that excision represents 85 % of female genital mutilations, for reasons related to nutritional taboos and to force-feeding.

1.6. The worst forms of discrimination and their consequences on woman’s rights

From the medical point of view, traditional practices such as excision and infibulation cause, in short, medium and long-term, serious consequences to the physical and mental health of the woman. On physical and psychological plan, the state of shock of the little girl, owed to bleeding but also to high-pitched pain, to the suffering and to the fright, can cause disturbances of behaviour which later lead to the lack of trust regarding the others, to neuroses or even of psychoses according to the experts of the Worldwide Health Organization (WHO).

Immediate physical complications (bleeding, infections, tetanus, sexually transmitted diseases, AIDS, death), legions of the neighbouring organs (urethra, vagina, lapsed or rectum) can happen immediately after operation. In the long term, other complications can also happen: repeated bleedings, blockage and chronic infection of the urinary and genital ways, forming of cheloids, cysts, neurinomes and vésico-vaginal fistulas.

Such complications cause painful sexual intercourses, menstrual frequent riot as the dysménorrhée. They can also lead to incontinence and to sterility of the woman by putting her in a critical social situation (Report of the WHO, 1994). Problems related to pregnancy and to delivery are also numerous: complications of delivery plunged or extended which are dangerous for the life of the mother and the child who can suffer from neonatal cerebral legions.

1.7. Ideological foundations of harmful traditional practices

In the Senegalese society, families justify these dreadful practices by the necessity to find a husband to the little girl. In fact it is to transform her according to the desire of the men: cutting the organs of pleasure of the little girl to attenuate her sexual appetite or force-feed her to make a «soft mattress» for the future husband. The pinches which accompany force-feeding participate in a process of torment which must lead these little girls to become crushed women, and therefore, subjected to the men.

Female genital mutilations are an integrant part of the patriarchal system through which, in a relationship of power, the men appropriate and control the women. They are the form the most finished by the management of sexuality by the men in the African and Senegalese society, in particular.

II. Institutions or religious practices

Between institutions or religious practices and those considered as traditional, the border is not always airtight, considering the long history of interlocking or coexistence of both universes. Very often, it is allocated in the religion of the practices which are not it responsibility, and vice versa: religious practices are though and are lived as emanating from custom or traditions. This amalgam is source of a lot of confusions in daily practice. This poses problems, seen from the angle of the freedom of choice and the respect of rules. In addition to the numerous and various interpretations or even contradictory of the religious texts, particularly the Koran.

Here, the debates have been always the contradictory, or even enthralled. Even if one has often recalled the progressive nature of the Koran, hadiths and sharia in terms of respect or promotion of the rights of the woman, as a rule, practices related to the laws of the family in Muslim religion, both institutions of polygamy and inheritance are those which pose most problems.

III. How to change the status quo?

On one hand the modernization, the universality of human rights on the other hand, are changing in a positively and in a substantial way but yet in a non-radical manner the women position. Reforms following from political mutations and from the democratization of the Senegalese society however face up ideological, cultural and religious problems. The statuses of the family appropriate to traditions and to religions remain in a great extent the cornerstone of the resistance to change.

3.1. Right at work and discriminations against women in Senegalese environment

How to change the status quo? It will be to passing by the pedagogy of the change of mentality and behaviour which requires:

* The destruction of the wall of indifference: the struggle must continue seeing the significant progress which enable us to have hope.

* The fight against all forms of discrimination against women: it is a means which enables women to free themselves from the system of domination by men which, as that of apartheid, is not irremovable and can therefore be eradicated.

* We all should, together work to change this system, because it was rooted for a long time so profoundly in almost all cultures. Seen from this angle, the requested effort to dismantle all the social structures which tolerate it or that secrete it, or that deny themselves apparently even to see it or to consider it to be as such (as discriminating), demand the imagination and lasting actions to be led on several fronts in a holistic and systematic perspective which must take into account all areas of life and all the actors.

* The struggle against all forms of discrimination against women does not limit only to punish the individual acts. It is necessary to work in a way to change deeply the beliefs so profoundly anchored in the mentalities which seem unconscious and which consider that basically, the women and the girls do not have value as much as men and boys. It is only when women and girls will have their place in the society in a quality of strong and equal members that discriminations against them in the Senegalese society will appear as a horrifying aberration rather than an invisible norm.

The immensity of obstacles and stakes related to tradition and to religion is likely to discourage more than an actor, but it will always be necessary to fight individually and collectively, in spite of difficulties which pose the fight for the liberation of the woman from the domination of the man.

By basing on what precedes, we can say that the first step consists of the implementation of the national and international juridical instruments relating to human rights in general, to the rights women particularly. In this title, it is possible to imagine appropriate strategies, smart and progressive reforms holders of change on the ground of the fight against all forms of discrimination against women.

At the international level, the Convention of United Nations against all forms of discrimination against women of 1979 (CEDAW), lays the foundations of a social change and successive legal reforms, but which the effectiveness demands method in the sense that they cannot change by the magic of the texts of beliefs and multi-secular practices, that are so profoundly anchored in the unthinking collective of communities.

Another supplementary instrument to the CEDAW in the fight against all forms discrimination against women is the Convention of United Nations on the rights of the child. From these two legal instruments of universal range are added other pacts or treaties including the African Charter for Human and the People’s rights of 1981 and the additional Protocol relating to the rights of the woman of 2002. It is through the education of children (girls as well as boys) that we can forge the weapon of social change.

Certainly, the children face in some extent the same otherwise worse forms of discrimination than women, but our purpose is elsewhere. In fact, the woman was educated to occupy her present status. One must therefore change this status through education so that she acquires a different status. As has mentioned the famous philosopher Simone de Beauvoir : « one does not born woman, we become it». We should derive the weapon of liberation of the woman from the domination of the man through the education of the girls in the same capacity as the boys who must be educated to look in another way at their sister, at their partner or at their colleague.

Besides, it is what encouraged certain African States in the implementation of programs favouring the education of girls in order to correct the inequality between them and boys. The inequality in the access to education is one of the most serious forms of discrimination against girls. It perpetuates their inferiority or weak position with regard to boys and makes them vulnerable in different despoiling such as harassment in working environment where the majority of women still do not have access to the authorities of decisions. On the other hand, because of illiteracy and growing pauperization, the most part of girls or women devote themselves to harmful practices to their health, or even to behaviours which reduce the value their status and their role in the society (prostitution, narcotic, for instance).

Education to human rights gives to girls to have confidence in themselves in order to better reinforce their capacities in school and university environment. In this way, it constitutes a precondition in progress struggle against all forms of discrimination directed to them. The access of girls, therefore future mothers of family to school has been very late and remains still very slow in the most part of the African countries. The happiness of the woman being in the conjugal home, even the rare promoted among the girls, were and still continue to be very precociously. They are pulled from the benches of the school by precocious marriage and motherhood which sometimes cause disastrous consequences (death after having their first sexual intercourse, complications during the pregnancy and during delivery).

Besides, the education to human rights also constitutes a means through which girls and boys can learn to consider themselves equal in relation to the social institutions and to promote equity in all forms of collaboration. In this respect, the actions of sensitization of girls and women on their rights constitute supplementary benefits in the pedagogy of labour legislative reforms. It would be necessary to lose of view that reforms on theoretical and legislative plan will have effect and can be led to a real social change only if we all want it and work out to create the favourable conditions to its realization.

It is then imperiously necessary to integrate the education to human rights in the programs of education from the primary school, by passing through secondary schools up to universities. Besides these programs of education it important to implement actions in the field to supplement in a pedagogic way legal and legislative reforms. In this title, three types of actions on the ground need to be implemented in field:

* Legal and judicial assistance to the victims of abuses.

* Sensitization for the popularization of the national and international legal instruments relating to the human rights in general, and to the rights of women and the child particularly.

* The strengthening of the capacities of women and children by qualifying training for their social status and to empower their economic and political powers which were subjected for a long time to the domination of men and boys.

3.2. What are the agents for change?

These are at the same time the social institutions, men and women, boys and girls. It is then necessary to reinforce the capacities of these institutions, its actors and actresses by trying to reconcile tradition and modernity. It passes necessarily by a pedagogic approach which takes into account the importance of civil and political rights of women and girls on the one hand, as well as their economic, social and cultural rights on the other hand.

To conclude, we shall say that the Gender approach in regard to violence, right to work and discriminations against women in working environment, constitute a pedagogic means enabling the involvement of all concerned actors among which:

* The religious and traditional or customary leaders

* The political authorities and decentralized local powers

* The technical directly or indirectly concerned ministries (ministries of the women or the family, justice, national education, social development or national solidarity, etc)

* The institutions of the republic (presidency of the republic, National Assembly, government, Constitutional Council or Supreme Court, State advice, supreme court of appeal, national audit office and courts)

* The organs of support of democracy such as the national commissions for human rights (CNDH), national autonomous electoral commission (CENA), the national council of broadcasting regulation (CNRA)

* The Economic and Social Council, the council of territorial communities

* The civil society organizations and those of private sector (trade-unions, employers, non governmental organizations, women or youths associations, old or handicapped) who have to participate in education and in popularization of the human rights, in the strengthening of the economic capacities of the women, to the struggle against impunity and injustice

* Populations themselves

* Private and public mass media.

* Aboubacry Mbodji is a Medical Anthropologist who is a Public Relations Officer of the African Assembly for the Protection of Human Rights (Rencontre Africaine pour la Défense des Droits de l’Homme - RADDHO), an NGO for Human Rights whish is a panafrican Orgaization based in Dakar, Senegal

* This paper was presented at the West Arica regional workshop on fair trial and criminal justice, 7th – 8th november 2007, Nairobi, Kenya

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

In the run up to World Cup 2010, organisations around the world are seriously concerned about the problem of human trafficking into the Southern African region, says Tonya Graham.

In the run up to World Cup 2010, organisations around the world are seriously concerned about the problem of human trafficking into the Southern African region. At a mid-November conference held by the Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women (GAATW) in Bangkok, Thailand, the need to adequately prepare for the upcoming world event taking place in South Africa was one of the topics on the agenda

In Southern Africa as well, gender and women’s rights activists are increasing recognising human trafficking as a human rights and gender violence issue. Though still not well understood, trafficking in women is an emerging problem, which will increase substantially as the South Africa, and the entire region, moves towards the 2010 mass influx of tourists.

Human trafficking is a pervasive global problem, and strong laws are vital to preventing and prosecuting it, as well as caring for survivors. Take the case of Mary Jiang* who left her home in Vietnam to go and work in Taiwan, anticipating a good job with a salary that would give her the chance to improve her life and that of her family.

However, when she arrived she found the promises were false, and she suffered inhuman treatment by her employers who forced her to work gruelling 16-hour days. When one of the 20 machines she worked on at once caught Jiang’s hand, she waited 45 minutes before her hand was freed, suffering sever injuries.

After two days in hospital her employers told her to sign some forms, they were taking her to a better hospital. Once signed, they took her back to a company building and locked her in a small, dirty room. Jiang is just one of the thousands of women across the worlds that are trafficked into forced labour, domestic servitude and sex slavery every year.

The United Nations (UN) Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children defines human trafficking as, “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, or abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments of benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.”

This Protocol entered into force in 2003, and resulted in new or bolstered anti-trafficking laws in many countries, laws intended to support trafficked people like Jiang and arrest and prosecute traffickers. Jiang managed to escape her captors, and fortunately, Taiwanese law was on her side. She was able to access proper treatment for her injury, and is now back in Vietnam studying law, with partial support from the Taiwanese legal centre that first assisted her.

However, Jiang’s case is a rare success story. Taiwanese law, the legal facilities available there for migrant workers and trafficked people, as well as Mary’s ability to gather hard evidence such as hospital bills and photographs of both her injury and company buildings, enabled her to successfully seek justice.

Unfortunately, for the majority of trafficked people, despite new laws and protocols, access to justice is still far out of reach. This is especially the case in Africa, where many countries have been slow to react to the problem, and where legislation exists at all, it is inadequate or poorly implemented. Mozambique, for example, is a major source country for trafficking to South Africa, but has yet to adopt a proposed anti-trafficking bill.

A new report by the GAATW, Collateral Damages, examines anti-trafficking measures and their impact on the human rights of trafficked people from 8 countries across the globe. Nigeria, a major source country for women trafficked to Europe, is the African country included in the report.

The Nigerian government passed an anti-trafficking Act shortly after the UN Trafficking Protocol came into force. Victoria Nwogu, author of the Nigeria chapter, says that while the Act is definitely a step in the right direction, it has many loopholes and shortfalls, the result of acting too quick.

The Act, she says, essentially reproduces the UN Trafficking Protocol, without effectively adapting it to the local context. Some of the points of the Protocol are inappropriate for Nigeria and so the Act, in some places, misses its mark.

However, the Act and other anti-trafficking measures are important steps taken toward ending human trafficking, and their successes and positive activities are important to consider. In addition to the Act, Nigeria established a specialised anti-trafficking agency (NAPTIP), introduced severe penalties for offences related to human trafficking, successfully prosecuted offenders, and launched a massive awareness campaign.

The Nigerian Police Force has specialised Anti-Trafficking Units, and works together with NAPTIP and immigration services in detecting, investigating and prosecuting traffickers. According to Nwogu’s report, from, “2003 to date, NAPTIP has successfully prosecuted nine cases resulting in 11 convictions, while 35 more cases are ongoing.”

Despite all this, trafficking in the country is not really decreasing, something that Nwogu attributes to the fact that Nigeria is not properly addressing the issues that cause people to migrate, issues that become the root causes of human trafficking, and that impact women specifically, such as poverty, human rights violations, social exclusion, etc.

“If these factors are ignored, people will continue to explore unsafe migration channels and ultimately find their way into the arms of traffickers,” she says.

One of the major problems with current anti-trafficking laws in Nigeria and elsewhere is that they focus more on arresting traffickers than they do on protecting or supporting trafficked women, children and men. Assistance to trafficked people is often conditional on their agreeing to cooperate with law enforcement.

Non-cooperation can lead to unnecessary detention or deportation. In many ways, current measures deal with trafficking from a national security perspective. The Collateral Damages report gives 10 recommendations that aim change that to a human security perspective, putting the rights and needs of trafficked people at the forefront.

Many of the recommendations simply sound like common sense: base policies on evidence collected from trafficked people; inform people who have been trafficked from other countries about how they can get assistance in their home country upon return; monitor the impact of anti-trafficking measures and make changes accordingly.

Many nations in Africa, because of their slow response to human trafficking, have actually been given a unique opportunity to learn from the mistakes of countries, which may have responded too quickly to the UN Trafficking Protocol. They have the opportunity to create evidence-based legislation that is country-specific, to institute measures that take the rights of trafficked people and other migrants into account, and to respond in ways that also address the root causes of migration.

With it porous borders, high rates of poverty, and pervasive gender inequalities, Southern Africa is ripe ground for human trafficking. The region has the opportunity to recognise and act pro-actively, with the lessons learned elsewhere, to deal with the problem before it escalates even further.

* Not her real name.

* Tonya Graham is a projects coordinator working with CMFD (Community Media for Development) Productions, currently working on media to raise awareness about human trafficking.

* This article is part of a series produced by the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service for the Sixteen Days of Activism on Gender Violence.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Along with partners and husbands, families also often shun women who disclose their status, placing the blame squarely on the woman’s shoulders, writes Gloria Ganyani.

24-year old Ruth Sibanda* was pregnant and could not wait to have her first baby. On one of her visits to the antenatal clinic, they gave her an HIV test.

No one really explained to Sibanda much about the test. She received no pre-test counseling to mentally and psychologically prepare her for the action she is about to take. All they said was that she must get the test done, so that if she tests positive she can get assistance so that she does not infect her unborn child.

As fate would have it, Sibanda tested positive and her world was never the same. When she arrived home and broke the news to her husband, she met with blows and insults. The most terrible thing for her was that, though she had only slept with one man, her husband, he accused her of infidelity and of infecting him with HIV.

More than 25 years into the struggle with HIV and AIDS, and this is just one among many stories of women who have experienced violent behaviour and abuse by their partners after disclosing their HIV status.

“We receive a number of complaints from women who are abused by their partners after disclosing their status,” says Sara Murera, the Programme Assistant, Gender Violence and HIV and AIDS at Musasa Project in Zimbabwe.

“It is women who usually get to know their HIV status first and if they discuss the results with their partners, they are blamed, shamed, threatened and in some cases this can lead to divorce, stigma and discrimination,” she said.

Along with partners and husbands, families also often shun women who disclose their status, placing the blame squarely on the woman’s shoulders. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), among women who disclose their HIV status in sub-Saharan Africa, between three and 15 percent report violent reactions to revealing their status.

“Even in instances where there was no form of violence in the home before, disclosure can ignite violent acts by the partner,” says Murera. “The husband can refuse to share a bed with the wife, even if he does not know who infected who. The blame is always heaped on the wife.”

Murera’s organisation runs support groups for women. Because there are many women who have been in such situations, it is easy to find some willing to come and share their experiences with affected women. “They try to show them that their problem is not unique. They have survived it and have moved on with life.”

Abusing women who disclose their HIV status encourages people to keep their status a secret and fear of testing and its consequences increases the spread of HIV and AIDS.

The WHO estimates that in Sub-Saharan Africa only 17 – 32 percent of women who test positive for HIV reveal their status. Fear of violence and reprisals prevents many women from accessing information on HIV and AIDS, being tested, disclosing their status, accessing services for the prevention of HIV transmission to infants, and receiving treatment, care and support.

The main reason health service providers test women for HIV during pregnancy is to prevent mother-to-child transmission. According to UNICEF, if a woman living with HIV becomes pregnant, there is a 35 percent chance that she will transmit the virus to her child, if there is no preventative action. Some 15 to 20 percent of children become infected during pregnancy while 50 percent are infected during delivery and 33 per cent through breastfeeding.

Yet in pursuing this worthy cause, as in Sibanda’s case, there are times when there are no supportive measures in place to help the woman deal with their newfound knowledge and to ensure that they return for follow up, or even to make them aware of treatment options or positive living messages. Ignoring women’s needs for the sake of the child’s defeats the purpose.
Men who have tested positive for HIV also have fears about disclosing their HIV status. An Ethiopian man who discovered that he was HIV positive started taking antiretroviral drugs, but kept it a secret from his wife. The man told his wife that his anti-retroviral drugs were vitamin tablets and that the doctor had prescribed him a “vitamin” to boost his energy levels because he was always overloaded with work.

He told his wife that the tablets were not good for women’s health. “My husband confessed that he knew his status for three years and did not tell me, fearing that our family and neighbours would discriminate against us. The fact that the virus is sexually transmitted shamed him,” said the 35-year-old woman whose husband died shortly after his confession.

Couples should be encouraged to go for testing and counseling together and to be supportive of each other whatever the results. They should also try to avoid the blame game and instead focus on the way forward and living positively. In the case of women especially, there needs to be more work done to ensure that revealing one’s status is a healthy life choice, and not a catalyst for increased violence and discrimination.

Recognising that underlying gender norms are at the heart of some of the barriers women face in sharing HIV test results with their partners, and in the type of treatment they experience after revealing their status, is key to making headway in preventing and caring for women when it comes to HIV and AIDS.

* Not her real name.

* Gloria Ganyani works with Southern Africa HIV and AIDS Information Dissemination Service (SAfAIDS) Media Unit in Zimbabwe.

* This article is part of a series produced by the Gender Links Opinion and Commentary Service for the Sixteen Days of Activism on Gender Violence.

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Irene Sithole writes that Zimbabwe's women suffer violence in all environments including work place, the home and the political arena.

In Zimbabwe, violence against women continues to be a challenge with hardly a day passing without at least one case reported in the media. Women suffer violence in all environments including work place, the home and the political arena. Domestic Violence is the most common and pervasive form of violence against women in Zimbabwe. The problem is exacerbated by the culture of silence around the issue coupled with religious and cultural practices that condone violence particularly domestic violence. The magnitude of the problem of domestic violence spurred women’s rights defenders to advocate for a law to address domestic violence. The result of the advocacy was the enactment of the Domestic Violence Act (Chapter 5:16) (hereinafter referred to as the Act), which came into force on 25 October 2007.

The question, which should be uppermost in everyone’s mind, is now that the Act is in place what is next? For this reason the theme for this year’s 16 days of activism against gender based violence could not have been more relevant for Zimbabwe. The Act has to be implemented effectively and this can only be done by challenging all the obstacles that may hinder effectiveness. The objective of this paper is to analyse these obstacles and suggest some ways of overcoming the obstacles. The writer has been involved in information dissemination and development of implementation plans for the Act hence the analysis will draw a lot on this experience. The writer has identified three main challenges or obstacles to the effective implementation of the Domestic Violence Act. These are

i) Resources both human and financial
ii) Knowledge of the law and
iii) Negative attitudes towards the law

Resources

Effective implementation of the domestic violence law will require a lot of resources. Awareness programmes have already started and resource materials are required for the programme. In disseminating information on the Act, people need the actual Act for further reference. Others need simplified versions and versions translated into their vernacular languages. Beyond information dissemination, resources are also needed to put in place certain structures that are provided for in the Act. Some of the structures are domestic violence sections at all police stations and safe houses for complainants of domestic violence.

Besides financial and material resources, effective implementation of the law will require manpower. The various government departments who have the mandate to implement the law such as the police, the courts and health officials should have adequate staff for complainants to be assisted expeditiously. Zimbabwe as a nation is currently experiencing the challenge of skilled manpower with most people living the country in search of greener pastures. This means that new people have to be trained to fill in the gap.

Overcoming the obstacles of resources seems like an insurmountable task considering the economic crisis that the nation is going through. However, the obstacle can be overcome by prioritizing and applying a multisectoral approach to resource mobilization. Given the high incidence of domestic violence in Zimbabwe, it is argued that the issue deserves priority in the national budget. The 2008 national budgets are currently being prepared and this is an opportunity to factor in funding for the implementation of the Domestic Violence Act. The state needs to show its commitment to the elimination of domestic violence by providing funds for the Act’s implementation. However, one needs to appreciate that the state alone does not have sufficient funds hence the need for all stakeholders to combine resources to fight the scourge of domestic violence. This means that the government, civil society and the private sector all have to mobilize resources and make a meaningful contribution in funding the implementation programme. The resources mobilized can be used for information, education and communication materials development setting up of safe houses and training and capacity development of personnel.

Knowledge of the law

Whilst sharing the provisions of the Act with various stakeholders, the writer has been amazed by the things which are said to be in the Act which are not there. Unfortunately this lack of knowledge is not only found in the receivers of information but even among resource persons and facilitators disseminating the information. The distortion of information could have arisen from the fact that when the law was still in Bill form, all women’s rights activists took it upon themselves to raise awareness on the law among the public. While this was good when one considers the area covered and the speed with which the information travelled, the problem was that some of the information disseminators had not seen the Bill. They just passed on information, which they had heard from those who had the Bill. Further to that, others who are without a legal background did not interpret the provisions of the law correctly. The Bill also underwent some amendments in Parliament. Some people continued to disseminate the information in the original Bill without noting the changes that had been effected in Parliament.

Since people cannot utilize a law, which they do not know, it is imperative that the advocates for this law and the implementers join hands in conducting an intensive national awareness programmes. In carrying out this awareness programme, those who have no legal expertise must ensure that they involve legal experts so that beneficiaries receive correct information. The implementers themselves i.e. court officials and police officers ought to be trained so that they know what they are supposed to do and how they are supposed to do it.

Negative attitudes towards the law

The introduction of this law has sent shock waves among cultural and religious circles where it is viewed as usurping of husbands’ marital power by women. Some opponents even went further to attack the women who were advocating for the law labeling them as divorcees and singles seeking to destroy other people’s marriages. The gatekeepers argue that the family is sacred and the law should not interfere in family matters. They contend that if there are any disputes between husbands and wives, they should be solved through the cultural or religious structures because the private should be separated from the public.

Attitudes are the greatest obstacles to the implementation of this Act because usually they cannot be changed overnight. One has to keep pushing and lobbying until change occurs. Some of the resistance stems from ignorance of the law and therefore the religious and cultural leaders need to be targeted with information in order for them to understand that the law protects both men and women. However, involvement of the cultural and religious leaders has to go beyond information dissemination to a level where the leaders appreciate the benefits of the law so that they can also influence acceptance among their followers.

Conclusion

Despite these obstacles this year’s commemoration of 16 days of activism against gender based violence is a time of celebration for Zimbabwe. It has been a long road to have a domestic violence law in place. The struggle went on for more than ten years but now the Act is operational. We celebrate this achievement and we celebrate the lives of those women who have put their reputation at stake to ensure that the law becomes a reality.

* Irene Sithole is the Gender Based Violence Programme Officer for Women's
Action Group, an NGO which advocates for women's rights in Zimbabwe.
She can be contacted by email at [email][email protected] or
[email][email protected]

* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at www.pambazuka.org