Category: News

We are here because of Nollywood. For some this is a reason for celebration, to others it is rather cause for anxiety. However, that such debate even rages is a sign that Nollywood has become an institution to reckon with. And being an institution brings with it responsibilities. Nollywood can no longer be indulged as the “Johnny-come-lately” bad boy of movie making; recently recognized as the third largest moving making business in the world, after Hollywood and Bollywood; this means it grosses more money than industries of older standing such as England and Italy, thus it is an industry that can no longer be treated as a child passing through its terrible twos. At the very least it is an industry that has gained its first degree, and we expect more of college graduates than we do of those still struggling through High School.

In many ways, a part of this success can be attributed to the question of technology. Nollywood is an industry that basically skipped the film stage, and went first to video, then was truly liberated by digital. As with music making, the symbiotic relationship between technology and creativity must be acknowledged. This even affects what I can call the social relations of film –making; as for instance that location work predominates over studio work, and as is common with Black independent film makers in Europe and the United States, producers and directors and actors work constantly with each other in stable communities which resemble early Hollywood contract studio system, but without either the studios or the contracts, which has proved a way of promoting and supporting each other in their growth as artists.

The issues to be addressed by this film forum on “women and the dynamics of representation” have been of concern for those who think about such things as “representation” for centuries. But let me begin first with the word “dynamics”, a term that suggests forces that produce change or motion. Nollywood is indeed a force, the existence of such a mass of films, now available, and watched in every corner of the globe, has indeed produced change, it is the nature of that change with respect to women that we are here to deliberate on – we are concerned here with what the force of the dynamo means for those of us embodied to walk this earth as women, and at this forum we are as concerned about women in film as women on film. That is the dynamics of representation ultimately have as urgent force when thinking of women in the film industry behind the scenes as the more self evident sense of women projected on the screen, which is where I will begin.

How women are presented to audiences in a number of media has been of concern for a number of women and women’s movements around the world. As human beings we all become concerned about how we are seen by others, how we are re-presented to the world, especially by others who do not count themselves as one of our number. And when we do not see ourselves reflected, or reflected as we would like, the need for redress, to challenge the discrepancies between how we see ourselves and how you know ourselves to be seen, becomes a powerful driving force, and not just for women. It is of no small consideration, for it has led around the world to powerful social movements- as we know centuries of being seen as “niggers”, being denigrated, which in its Latin root literally means to blacken or “niggerfy” and being classified as social inferiors with attendant social consequences and legal restrictions led to revolutions from the American South to South Africa.

I remind us therefore that the context for this forum rests firmly in the arena of a very broad historical context where issues concerning “the image of Africa” meet those concerning “the image of women”, black women in particular, though in this regard because of the former- the image of Africa- women of African descent have not always even been seen as a subset of “women” in general but of somehow a species apart from female humanity.

Out there in the world the image of Africa, and the women in it or who have historically come from it is not positive. There is not time to rehearse these images here neither do I at this juncture wish to launch into a history of the genealogy of these images about which I can teach whole graduate courses. So forgive me if I simply resort to the shorthand terms we use to conjure up a wealth of images and the ideas associated with them. After centuries, at least in the western world we are still the dark continent, today refined to become more politically correct by speak more euphemistically of underdevelopment, necessary aid, culture bound etc. our people are still somehow lesser, less intelligent, less capable, less whatever. When it comes to our women the situation gets more aggravating…

Yet why does this anxiety about historical images matter? Surely we tell ourselves the marketing of such images is over, or since we have become independent we have control of our own representation so what does the colonial past matter? It matters for two reasons, the first is that the success of Nollywood means that what we do is avidly received in those very places that has created and marketed these negative images, and they have not gone away. The second is indeed that the major audience is ourselves, whether at home or abroad, so what are we telling ourselves and the rest of the world about ourselves? Are we countering or feeding this legacy of hostile images of ourselves?

The Nollywood film industry, willingly or unwittingly, carries on its shoulders the hopes and expectations of a people. Perhaps the situation can be compared to the burdens placed on the shoulders of African-American writers in the middle of the twentieth century who had to grapple with the interface between artistic freedom and social expectations. Was Richard Wright justified in creating a monster like Bigger Thomas to prove his ideological point that desperate social circumstances beyond one’s control produce desperate people, or did he merely validate the negative stereotype that all young Black men are brutes and rapists? A generation later when Alice Walker gave us Celie in The Color Purple was she showing how no matter what the degradations, women’s sisterhood and solidarity could lead to personal emancipation, or was she, justly accused of merely adding further fuel to the fire engulfing the besieged masculinity of Black men.

It is not insignificant that the furor over the Color Purple blazed more furiously, leading to demonstrations against the actors and the picketing of the Oscars, when it was turned into a successful film by Steven Spielberg. It is not necessary to say, especially in a forum such as this, that in terms of contemporary entertainment, film is arguably the most popular art form of narrative communication around the world today. Something that causes a spark when published in print can turn into a forest fire when presented on the screen. Controversial as the novel The Last Temptation of Christ was when published in 1960 by Nikolas Kazantzakis, that uproar paled when compared to the fury unleashed when it was made into a film directed by Martin Scorsese which reached a much wider general audience in 1988. It can also work the other way; I am sure J.K. Rowling the writer of the Harry Potter series of children’s books today goes to the bank quite happy that she need never write another word in life if she doesn’t choose to!

Nollywood faces the same agonies and choices as all the other ‘woods’ have faced. The point I am emphasizing is that the question of the responsibility for images is not peculiar to Nigeria or to film-makers, but is the concern of all artists; however that responsibility becomes magnified when the medium is an influential and popular one, such as film is.

If I can digress for a moment, looking at Nollywood films from the perspective of someone who has spent her life wrestling with the question of the “image of Africa” in the western world, I must say that for me one of the huge benefits of the success of this film industry, regardless of the quality of the stories being told, is finally we have a huge body of works which show what the exteriors and interiors of modern Africa look like. Most of these films are shot on location and convey the grittiness of the streets, and has made them familiar. There is a texture to the look of Lagos or Accra that is refreshing to see, especially after living with the notion that there is no modernity in Accra, that we have no capital cities that can rival those of the west. The first time I showed a slide of Abidjan to a class of students they all but though I was lying.

But to return to the other point that I was trying to make; that of the variability and unpredictability of audience. Kazantzakis was careful not to betray the end results of the biblical account of Jesus of Nazareth- he did not in the end succumb to the temptations of the flesh. Nonetheless, there were Christians who considered the very idea of the temptation of Jesus The Christ tantamount to blasphemy. However even when not dealing with theologically sensitive subjects, the concerns raised by images projected upon us or any individual or group we identify with, we carry with us. Thus a forum such as this must raise acute questions regarding the impact of the production and proliferation of the images that concern us here; the images we produce and promote ourselves and send out into the world. We are concerned here with film and with women in film in every aspect. How do we tell our stories? Who is to tell them? Who has access to the storytelling apparatus that film embodies?

It is always a heated debate whether artists are creators or reflectors of the society that support their work. There can be no doubt that we can learn a lot about a people through what we read and see about a society. Still, sorting through the manifold impressions and emotions that art evokes can be complex in a number of ways. One film about a drug addict could be seen as an exploration of a social problem. A number of films in which drug addicts routinely appear, or are referred to, spoken about, drop in casually or are otherwise a part of the fabric of the life being portrayed, can leave the impression that this is a society where drug addiction is endemic if not epidemic, is an integral part of everyday life not to say a social problem.

Thus we also need to take account of what I can call the multiplier effect. We must respect the integrity of every individual story, but we must also be concerned with the multiplier effect of a number of individual stories conveying similar things which then multiply to become a collective story. When this happens it must give us pause for thought. For example, my mother had four sons. My four brothers have each of them married between 1978 and 1984 that is they have all be married for between twenty five and thirty years giving our mother, cumulatively an excess of one hundred years of being a mother-in-law before she passed away. And in all that century, I do not remember any violent disagreements, of her calling or being called a shrew by my sisters-in-law, any necessary escapes by them to avoid her witchcraft or any attempt by her to undermine their marriages because they were unsuitable harridans who on top of everything could not even cook a decent meal! And wonderful as I know my mother to have been, I do not believe she was the only mother of sons in the whole of West Africa who appreciated the complexities of married life, appreciated that her sons had made the best choices they could and the women they married were doing the best they could to lead their lives with integrity and raise their children in unanimity and was thus prepared to leave all three couples to it! (But perhaps you will all tell that is because they had at least provided her with a dozen grandchildren and therefore could be exempted from the general box of unpleasant spells that mother in laws cast!) I think you get the point. This multiplier effect can be most instructive for good or ill.

With respect to representing contemporary African women to a larger audience, Nollywood has had sometimes deservedly, a lot of hits. But the critiques arise out of respect for its successes, if no one watched the films; it would not matter quite so much. (I have been told that the largest market outside Nigeria is not Ghana, or even London, but Canada). Wherever it is, Nollywood has put African film making on the map in spectacular ways, and has with incredible alacrity its products have become widespread enough to bear a discussion on the implications of its communicative power.

To illustrate: it is reviewing a number of films in preparation for this forum that made me sub-title these remarks “Of Cooking, Cars, and Gendered Culture”, though in truth that is a paper that yet remains to be written. Let me explain: although in everyday parlance when we speak of “culture” people’s minds go to Zulu spears, Ndebele beads, Igbo masquerades or Asante kente cloth depending on which part of the continent we are focused on, we should recognize that the real essence of culture is not so much the things we see, but the things we take for granted; not the song and dance routines we third world peoples put on for tourists to admire as proof positive we do even have culture, but the things we believe and hold fast to because they structure the sense of meaning in our lives. The things mentioned above are important to their peoples, but not primarily for the chic market value they have now come to have. And there are other, non-marketable things that are so ingrained in us we scarcely notice; like the different ways in which we greet each other – bowing to our elders, shaking hands from the left and so on, these are the deep strata cultural things seldom articulated that reflect our sense of our selves as people.

Watching these films I became aware of two striking motifs, both of them reflections of our society, one ancient, and the other more contemporary. It was very noticeable the extent to which food remains an index of gender relations and in particular a woman’s moral standing. And I do not mean only the idea of the rural woman’s sweat in her determination to grow crops to feed her children. The films also reflect what appears to be our abiding social truth that in heterosexual relationships whether or not you have a good thing going in a woman is how well she feeds you. Urban or rural, professional, unemployed, or a homemaker, no matter what, feeding is an index of a woman’s moral worth. I have seen only one instance of which feeding a woman with the labour of his own hands (as opposed to in a chic restaurant) was indicative of a man’s seriousness in a relationship. We can, and perhaps should have a conversation about what the automatic and assumed acceptance of this means for us in the early twentieth century, but the point I want to make here, is anyone watching these films, en masse, will learn quite correctly that, rightly or wrongly, in West African cultures at least into the first decade of the twentieth-first century, the cooking, and sharing of food remained a major index of cultural significance. As students and critics of popular culture this can be important to note.

What of the cars? These were as noticeable as the plates of badly or well cooked food but they seemed to have a different resonance. Where the matter of food seems an almost unquestioned sign of womanhood, to be taken for granted as it were, the cars were not an unconscious signifier. Rather they were, in film after film singled out by the camera, frequently lovingly caressed by it, not as a taken for granted aspect of character, but as a potent symbol of a man’s (frequently rising) power. A woman is expected to be able to cook, what is noteworthy, to her detriment, is when she can not. The ability is the status quo. In contrast men are not assumed to have cars, so every car rebounds to their worth and value on an ever increasing scale according to the value of the car. So fixed a sign of potent masculinity has the car become that in one film it was also used as the index of the extent to which the men who drove them were held in regard or pampered by the sugar mamas who kept them happy. Interestingly in that film, though they acted as a sign of her buying power, they reflected socially to his glory. In this particular film, the women’s access to cars was indicative of their corruption. Furthermore, by providing the men with them, they provided them with the instruments with which those gigolos could then play the fool by using them to impress women other than the ones who had purchased them. I will return to this issue shortly, the point I am making here, is that for good or ill these films give us clues to world view and culture of the societies which support them, whether by indicating fixed assumptions – as in the case of women and cooking- or signifying a symbol of flux and change- as in men and cars.

This is why the plethora of “saints, whores, nags and witches” raises such concern. The sessions of this forum tell the story of the complexity of the issues we face. In the films made by us, we must acknowledge we have made great strides in the images we present of ourselves in our stories, but we still have a great way to go. After the struggle waged by e.g. African American women in Hollywood to even be allowed to represent beauty and glamour, not to speak of sexuality, we are ahead of the game, but still need to ask, to what end? On that side of the Atlantic they had to struggle to be regarded as a social acceptable body beautiful. Over here, we have no problem with the concept of an African woman’s body as beautiful, our actresses are manifestly attractive and flaunt it on screen, though we do have to ask sometimes to what end this glorification of the body, especially in a context where the validation of woman’s sexuality outside of heterosexual marriage is still seen as a potential source of problems.

We do have plenty of storylines which reflect our lives as they are lived. Sort of. That is we do have films depicting young people in love, and young people having sex, and the women are not necessarily required to be virgins. Yet if we study carefully the development of the storylines, a number of issues arise. So often, even when supposedly college girls with no time for studying, they have time to pursue men and seduce them with their wealth, cars and bodies; yes, when unmarried women own cars it is seldom to any good end, it is a sign of women who do not know boundaries, of women who transgress.

The choice of the tongue in cheek title of the session for writers is unfortunately not so tongue in cheek. Much of the ire against the Nollywood industry has come precisely because these are the dominant images that we grapple with. I often wish, when I visit yet another office showing “African Magic” movies of wicked wives and greedy mistresses 24/7 one more time, I could issue a blanket decree banning it from the airwaves. I do not want to see anymore women actually turning into snakes before our eyes, or metamorphosing into blood suckers for the sake of gold truly believing that that is the sole objective of life.

Yet as an artist, I also recognize that this gut reaction borders on policing. Where do we draw the line between demanding socially responsible art and policing the artist, and besides, can we police morality or demand, as opposed to desire, socially responsible art forms; and again, as I asked before, must our art be required to be what we consider positive, for then when does it become propaganda, why not be content with reflecting what is, however discomforting that may be?

In short, what is the purpose of our storytelling, for make no mistake; filmmaking is simply the latest, or one of the latest forms of collective storytelling. But modern storytelling faces a complex set of situations. If you will forgive the resort to the cliché of grandmothers by the compound fireside or under the village tree, what happens when the audience is no longer a cohesive clan with shared history and antecedents and a relatively shared common set of goals, but has translated into the “global village” of both kinsmen and spies.

Human stories, whether mythic tales or proverbs and riddles have always served, in every society, the purpose of enabling, and even empowering societies to make sense of the world around them. When they encompass the grand issues of human existence, what is the source of life, or the nature of the divine, they exist in the realm of sacred myth, but as we know, even good local stand up comedians can help us comprehend the messiness, and seemingly intractable problems of human living. A cartoon about a destooled chief can be more powerful than volumes of ink spend on condemning his behaviour.

And on the subject of chiefs and village grandmothers, what indeed do we do with our past and its legacies and continuities? What do we do with those stories, those forms of living, those ways of being? And certainly one of the issues indeed facing us as modern people is making clear to ourselves and others, that there is no rupture between “then” and “now”. Some years ago I used an illustration for this point which I would like to repeat here: A few years ago I was invited to Rochester institute of Technology to conduct a faculty development workshop. So whilst there, I took the opportunity of visiting the Eastman Kodak museum. I was fortunate that it was the year of the centenary of the Brownie, and amongst the many events celebrating that little camera, which was the first camera of almost everyone I know, was a glorious display of every brownie ever made, displayed in chronological order. We could all mark our age group by the camera we first knew. What was very striking was that if you looked at only the first and the last in the series, the two cameras had nothing in common. Yet seen on display with the dozens of intervening cameras also displayed, the differences between each were only small and incremental, at times barely perceptible, and the links between the cameras at their different stages, irrefutable. It might be fruitful to think of that vexed word tradition in that manner. With each manifestation of a “traditional” ceremony, what is produced is its own variant, dependent on its own time, space and ritual acts and immediate needs. Nothing remains static … this is the health of ritual. [Each re-enactment] in form and performance carries the echo of that remembered form which each performance both recalls and gives the lie to. So, for example, to commemorate deaths in exiles, instead of sitting in open spaces outside the family home, we hire church halls, and do the things that need to be done, improvising from necessity to create something new we dress in the language of tradition, sometimes amazing and bemusing our neighbors because of the sudden influx of people, particular colour, public ceremony and noise that Ghanaian funerals generate, which seem incomprehensible unless you understand the culture of mourning. The danger is the extent to which we are all capable of genesis amnesia, forgetting the cameras in between. So how do we deal with tradition and change, how do we film those translations of traditional mores into contemporary life and modes of existence, how do we make the invisible, visible? This is not a simple task.

Derek Walcott once admonished “if the old gods were dying in the mouths of the old they died of their own volition”. What do we do about “old gods” who are not necessarily old; their mores, strictures and worship are still an integral part of our daily lives. In particular how do we deal with them in the face of the fundamentalisms of every kind that have swept through our world in the latter part of the twentieth century? I am a Christian myself. Yet at the same time I can not, in all honesty, help but baulk at the ways in which fundamentalist faith is presented and/or deployed, sometimes almost as a deus-ex-machina, suddenly appearing at the end of a complex and intricate set of plot lines to make all things right by the easy solution of sprinkling a little scripture on top, when nothing at all in parts one two and three on the film has in any way given grounds for such a possibility as acceptable. So many of our films lack a satisfying sense of an ending.

We are dealing here, amongst other things, also with the quality of writing, not to say, of re-writing! If I may be forgiven, I would like here to quote Steven Spielberg. A year after the Academy of Motion pictures effectively turned its back on him, by nominating the Color Purple for 13 Oscars, and awarding it not a single one, he was given the Irving Thalberg award for his consistently high quality of motion picture production. He started his acceptance speech by talking about how he was a movie junkie, and then continued: That the whole idea of movie magic is that interweave of powerful image and dialogue and performance and music that can never be separated, and when it’s working right, can never be duplicated or ever forgotten. I’ve grown up—most of my life has been spent in the dark watching movies. Movies have been the literature of my life. The literature of Irving Thalberg’s generation was books and plays. They read the great words of great minds. And I think in our romance with technology and our excitement at exploring all the possibilities of film and video, I think we’ve partially lost something that we now have to reclaim. I think it’s time to renew our romance with the word. I’m as culpable as anyone in having exalted the image at the expense of the word. But only a generation of readers will spawn a generation of writers.

I confess, when I heard those words, literature teacher that I am, I stood alone in my living room and cheered. That short statement reminds us of a number of things that are crucially important here; that film is a collective art form dependent on co-operation; that it is an art form dependent on technologies of great possibility; and that in the end, it all begins with the writing.

Yet one other question we face is this very question of language: in which language do we make our films? Again this discussion goes far beyond the concerns of the film industry. In this respect, the film makes have a real edge over the writers, as proportionally there are far more films made in Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Akan or Ga etc than there are either books written, or films made in English.

This is important because I believe it helps account for the massive popularity of film as a medium, regardless of the challenges of the democracy of its art form. Yet in this regard there are also challenges regarding the quality and integrity of translations and sub-titles.

Yet no matter the language in which we write, we must deal with the stories we tell. Of these issues I would like to refer now not so much to the question of writing, but to the question first, of the language in which we write. Again this discussion goes far beyond the concerns of the film industry. This forum has been occasioned by a general concern about the way in which women are presented and the stories told about them. And there seems to be a kind of social malaise that has difficulty juggling the ideal and the real; at times we seem to have difficulty actually dealing with who we are, though perhaps the films do reflect a general social inability to deal with the world in which we live when it comes to the changing roles of women in society.

To illustrate with an anecdote from a class assignment: last year, in an undergraduate class on rights ethics and the rule of law, I gave an assignment to describe and discuss the power and authority structures in any small unit to which each student belonged, most of them chose the family unit. When they handed them in, in a class of 50 students, all but one of them who described the family launched into descriptions of the ideal patriarchal nuclear family where the father was the breadwinner and the mother stayed at home taking care of the children. But when I asked in the class, only ONE of them actually has a mother who stayed home full time as a housewife, all the others their mothers were in full or part-time employment. They were surrounded, at home and at school, by women in full-time employment, but seemed to have difficulty even articulating this, when it came up against some imagined sense of what a modern middle class family should look like, and this was a class in Accra, not in New Jersey. What place do women occupy in the cultural imagination? This may seem a trivial example, but for me, it makes me wonder about the continuum of social attitudes that ends up with women’s work being disregarded from the authority of the household to being factored into the statistics of national economies.

Yet we must acknowledge that there are changes being made. The question of a new future is the subject of our last panel, and there are some things we ask for which should not be too hard to accommodate; that the stories reflect our lives as lived a little more – for instance that female college students be seen a little more in classes and discussion courses and a little less in the beds of their lovers; that professional women be seen acting professionally in professional settings; that complex situations, including those involving conflict situations be presented without necessary demonization, and that the concerns with which we live be struggled with integrity.

Our lives, contemporary and historic, are food for story enough; we live through coups, countercoups and corruption. Beyond the drama of such incidents themselves, they take a toll on everyday life. Even in democratic peacetimes we pass through road blocks on our city streets on peaceful Sunday afternoons; we have to balance between snacks for our children or having their bus fare, we get sick, get well, loose our mothers, and we do all this without always being charged by circumstances to refer to demonic interferences. The place of women at the interface of tradition and modernity remains a vexed one. And we still have not fully grappled with what we call traditional cultures

The career of a film maker such as Tunde Kelani is evidence that it is not only women who can tackle these questions with courage. In his films women are bright, articulate, and face the dilemmas of our day, whether the legacies of ancient customs, or the consequences of contemporary social forces. Yet we must also support the growth of women in an industry which has traditionally limited their roles in front of the camera and severely restricted their roles behind it. Tough as the industry is for everyone involved in it, it is exponentially so for women who have a tougher time having access to all aspects of film making from the equipment to the financing. They are also, as some here will attest to, amongst those who are the most enterprising and risk taking in getting their work out.

I have concentrated here on fictional storytelling, but I would like here to acknowledge the work of women documentary film makers. African women living on the continent and in the Diaspora are amongst the most consistent and persistent in using that medium to challenge the ways in which are lives are framed on film. As with documentary films they are making popular films with messages targeted to general audiences for the transformation of society. The central issue remains: how hard is it to create an industry which projects the complexity of the way in which we our lives from a humane, ethical standpoint. These are the issues which confront us as women and men who support us, over the next two days.

Guinea Solidarity Mission-Executive Summary

Agenda – Solidarity Mission to Guinea

Since the draft constitution for Kenya was passed by Parliament paving the way for its publication and referendum, those seeking to stop the march towards a new dawn for Kenya have embarked on a mission of misinformation and misinterpretation of the draft constitution for selfish personal and fundamentalist interests.

A section of Christian leaders and the political class have latched on the legalization of abortion as one of the reasons why we should delay or forget about having a new constitution. Abortion is defined as partial or complete expulsion of products of conception before viability normally taken as 23 weeks from the last normal menstrual period. There are two types of abortion: spontaneous abortion referred to by lay people as miscarriage and elective or voluntary abortion.

In case they have not read the draft constitution carefully, Article 26 on the right to life states that: (1) every person has the right to life. (2) The life of a person begins at conception. (3) A person shall not be deprived of life intentionally, except to the extent authorised by this Constitution or other written law. (4) Abortion is not permitted unless, in the opinion of a trained health professional, there is need for emergency treatment, or the life or health of the mother is in danger, or if permitted by any other written law.

The clause above seeks to protect the life of all Kenyans regardless of their gender, religion or moral persuasion. Article 26 balances the interest of the church on one hand and women’s rights to life and respect for medical ethics and professionalism on the other. Taking care of the interests of different groups in society is the cornerstone of any constitution making process worth its salt. The minority should not suffer under the tyranny of the majority.

It is immoral to try and misinform Kenyans on this issue from the pulpits or public fora. A few men who have never and will never conceive should not purport to speak for and on behalf of the women of Kenya on an issue that they are inexperienced to discuss. Which Kenyans or women have they consulted? Women are citizens of this country and are entitled to all human rights including the right to life. Women constitute more than half of the Kenyan population and the church. Are the leaders telling us the lives of the majority of Kenyans who voted them into power and who finance and sustain the church are inconsequential?

Why are sections of the church and the political class hell bent on distorting facts in their personal quest to stop the country from getting a new constitution? Why are they trying to reduce our struggle for a new constitution to two non-contentious issues; kadhis courts and abortion? Why must their misinformed opinion prevail?

In their submissions to the CoE, women’s groups, lawyers and medical practitioners made it clear that a Constitution has no business delving into issues of abortion and should provide the general principle and leave abortion to be legislated through an act of parliament. They disagreed with the church’s assertion that is now in Article 26 (2) that ‘the life of a person begins at conception’. They questioned what is conception or when it occurs and expressed fear that this vague reference point may be used to criminalize certain effective and safe contraceptive methods. The church’s proposal prevailed.

Politicians and church leaders must be tolerant and understand that they cannot win all the time and that it does not hurt to accommodate other people’s views. They must emulate the humility of other interest groups; exercise tolerance, honesty and truthfully educate Kenyans on the provisions of the draft Constitution so that we can realise a new Constitution for this country.

The crafters of Article 26, listened to all interest groups on the right to life and came up with a provision that appreciates that there are instances when abortion does occur naturally or spontaneously which is referred to as miscarriage in layman’s language. In fact, 30 per cent of all clinically diagnosed pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion. It also seeks to acknowledge that medical conditions such as ectopic pregnancy, high blood pressure and others do not allow a woman to carry a pregnancy to term without resulting in maternal and foetal death and therefore doctors make a choice to preserve the life of the mother.

For those clamouring for the amendment of the Article 26 before or after the referendum, it may be useful to consider some sobering facts on abortion, women’s rights and the status of women in this country.

They need to appreciate that abortion is a universal practice: it occurs in all parts of the world—east and west, developed and developing, rich and poor—and among women of all types, single and married, sexually promiscuous and ‘celibate’, believers and non-believers, adolescent and older. Abortion is not a service procured by women only; men also force their wives, daughters and girlfriends to procure it.

They should note that no one in his or her right mind would say that it is fortunate to need a kidney or heart transplant. The same applies to abortion. Should need arise, it is very fortunate to be able to have a safe and legal one. That is why abortion is a medical procedure that doctors are taught and examined to make sure they are proficient in performing it before leaving medical school just like a tooth extraction, amputation of the leg or any other medical procedure. Therefore, it is a critical health service that should be made available to all Kenyan women and girls regardless of their economic status, religious or moral persuasion like any other medical or surgical procedures.

They should recognise the fact that voluntary abortion happens irrespective of whether laws making it legal or illegal exist. The only difference is that where laws restricting voluntary abortion exist, many women—especially those who are poor and cannot pay for safe procedures—end unwanted pregnancies themselves, or at the hands of unskilled personnel using unsafe methods. By doing so, they risk their health and even their lives. Legal status only affects the safety of abortion. In other words it makes safe abortion illegal and ‘unsafe abortion legal’ and sentences poor women and girls to unnecessary and preventable suffering and death.

Making voluntary abortion illegal does not save ‘babies’ it just kills and maims women and girls. Even though the current Kenya laws restrict voluntary abortion, 300, 000 abortions are performed annually. Furthermore, after procuring unsafe abortion many women and girls die which is a huge cost and loss to our economy. For the 21, 000 women who manage to get to health facilities with abortion complications each year, most post abortion care is provided in government health facilities, exacting a heavy toll on our under-resourced public health system.

Another consideration that is overlooked is that voluntary abortion reflects the unmet contraception and security needs of women and girls in the Kenyan society. Poor and young women in our country do not have easy access either to birth control, proper sex education or protection from sexual violence such as rape. Who is to judge that voluntary abortion for these Kenyan citizens is improper? Have we seen the church and political leaders marshal their troops in support of the Kenyan women’s call for an end to violence against women particularly rape and incest? The truth is, they have been silent.

Have some church and political leaders been at the forefront of campaigns opposing the use of contraceptives and introduction of sex education in schools? Have certain sections of the church been accused of sexually violating women and girls? For those who end up being pregnant, are they entitled to voluntary abortion? Is it moral to punish women for the failings of society or even the failings of their own judgment as human beings?

Have some sections of the church refused to baptise or admit in their schools children born out of wedlock because they have ‘no fathers’, their ‘parents are single’ or simply because they are ‘children of sin’? Have they excommunicated women who get pregnant before marriage? Do they pause to consider under what circumstances the children were conceived before discriminating against them and their mothers?

It is critical to appreciate that a woman with an unwanted pregnancy has three choices: to continue with the pregnancy with its risks and responsibilities, continue with the pregnancy and arrange for adoption or procure abortion with its risks and consequences. The key word here is CHOICE.

They also need to consider the known ways to reduce the health and human burden of unsafe abortion: to integrate sex education in the upper primary school curriculum, to increase the prevalence of contraceptive use to reduce overall levels of unintended pregnancy; to broaden the legal criteria under which abortion is permitted and establish services for the provision of safe, legal abortions within the law; and to provide women who experience complications from unsafe abortion with the medical treatment they need. They could borrow a leaf from Ethiopia, South Africa, Benin, Chad, Niger, Togo, Guinea and Mali who have amended their laws to provide for safe abortion resulting in considerable reduction in unsafe abortion and maternal mortality rates.

Abortion is morally right because a woman should not be forced to use her body to bear a child against her will. The universal moral justification would be that no one should be forced to use his or her body for the benefit of someone else. The real moral outrage should be that a section of our society with selfish personal and fundamentalist religious and political interests is preventing a majority of Kenyans from enjoying a very critical service-abortion. Lets us vote YES and later amend Article 26, not to make abortion illegal, but to make it explicitly legal and available on demand. That is the only way to ensure that all Kenyan women and girls enjoy their fundamental rights to life and health.

Mary Wandia

mwandia@yahoo.com

The author works on gender justice and governance.

The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) was represented at the 54^th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) between 27^th February and 7^th March by:

Dr Hilda Tadria – Board Chair

Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi – Executive Director

Sarah Mukasa – Director of Programmes

Roselynn Musa – Programme Officer (Information & Documentation)

Nana Sekyiamah – Programme Officer (Fundraising & Communications)

AWDF also supported a number of African women’s rights organisations to participate in the CSW. These included:

• ABANTU for Development (Ghana)
• FIDA Ghana
• Young Women’s Christian Association (Zimbabwe)
• Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices (IAC)
• Nigeria Gender Budget Network (NGBN)
• Women’s Consortium of Nigeria
• Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT)

Supporting African women’s rights organisations to attend international conferences and convenings is part of AWDF’s remit to promote learning and the sharing of experiences on a local, national and international level.

Highlights of AWDF’s Activities

The New York Launch of Voice, Power and Soul: Portraits of African Feminists

On the 1^st of March 2010, Hon Gertrude Moneglla , the first President of the Pan-African Parliament and Jessica Horn, co-editor of Voice, Power and Soul: Portraits of African Feminists with Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi, Executive Director of AWDF launched Voice, Power and Soul: Portraits of African Feminists at the African Women’s Caucus which took place at the UN Church Centre, New York. Hon Mongella expressed her congratulations on the production of a document that presents an alternative and affirming image of African women. ‘I am happy to launch a book that does not portray African women as starving, helpless, hopeless and suffering. Instead we see strong, happy and resourceful women. And we also see more young women doing positive things. I am very happy about this. It sends a very important message.’

AWDF’s Participation in the African Women’s Caucus

Also launched at the African Women’s Caucus on 1^st March, was the African Women’s Regional Shadow Report on Beijing +15, a consultative document produced by The African Women’s Development and Communications Network (FEMNET) with financial support from AWDF. The report highlighted the key achievements and challenges in implementing the Beijing Platform of Action. In her remarks on the report, AWDF’s Executive Director, Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi that progress in achieving the benchmarks could be summarized under four key areas, those of Celebration Hope, Urgency, and Despair. Bisi pointed out that although there were areas in which African women could celebrate, such as women’s advancement in political spaces in countries such as Liberia and Rwanda there were also other areas such as the continuous conflicts in many parts of the continent that leads one to despair. Bisi however expressed hope in the vibrancy of the African women’s movement to continue to deal with the pressing issues facing the continent.

The African Protocol on the Rights of Women

Roselynn Musa, AWDF’s Programme Officer for Information & Documentation provided an evaluation of the Implementation of the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa (SEDGA) on behalf of the ‘Solidarity for African Women’s Rights Coalition’ (SOAWR). In her assessment Roselynn named 4 gaps in the process of implementation of the SDGEA including a lack of commitment by nations to submit annual reports on progress made in taking account of gender particularities, a lack of political will, a lack of understanding and knowledge about the content of SDGEA and a lack of cooperation between institutions in order to expose threats/abuses and document cases prosecuted.

Centre for Women’s Global Leadership’s 20^th Anniversary Symposium

AWDF’s Executive Director, Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi was one of the keynote speakers who shared her thoughts on movement building and the importance of sustainability for movement building work. In her address Bisi identified three key challenges facing the women’s movement today, which are a lack of alignment between vision, values and practice, a lack of appropriate leadership with some institutions and a sustainability challenge – some women’s organizations exist on shoestring budgets. In her recommendations, Bisi stressed the importance of re-dedication to global movements, and to feminist values and goals. She highlighted the need to make movements more inclusive and incorporate women who may not be part of formal organizations. This could be done by organizing regional spaces where feminists can convene regardless of organisational affiliation, as has been done in the case of the African Feminist Forum (AFF).

NEPAD/Spanish Fund Panel

Sarah Mukasa, AWDF’s Director of Programmes shared details of what AWDF has been able to achieve with support from the NEPAD/Spanish Fund. Support from the NEPAD/Spanish Fund enabled AWDF to scale up grant-making to support African women in the area of Economic Empowerment. Grants were disbursed to 52 women’s organisations in 9 countries, this funding was provided to scale up income generating activities, to increase vocational skills training and to invest in capital resources. As a result of this additional support the income generation activities of groups funded was strengthened and the provision of vocation skills training enabled women to make choices around which income generation activities they would participate in to support themselves and their families. An important outcome was that AWDF also strengthened its own capacities to respond to the needs of its constituents. The impact of this funding has been at a personal and community level – women been able to raise the visibility of their contributions, and have been able to raise their voices within their communities around what their specific needs are. This funding has resulted in a sustainable resource base for women and their families. Sarah however stressed that this should be seen as a beginning rather than an end.

The first ever African Women’s Economic Summit was held at the Windsor Hotel, in Nairobi, Kenya from March 18-20, 2010. The Summit was jointly organized by the New Faces & Voices Network (NFVN) and the African Development Bank (AfDB). This initiative brought together African and global leaders, majority of who were women who could influence and effect changes within their respective institutions. And who collectively could influence change through different strategies to bring women in Africa to centre stage, assuming key positions and contributing to the decisions that shape the African continent and a new global financial system.

Participants were drawn from financial services providers, regulatory bodies, development finance institutions, think tanks and advocacy groups, women’s right activist organisations, business and professional organizations, prominent business men and women and government leaders.

The Summit had the following objectives:

• Identify the opportunities and challenges to expand women’s access to financial products and services, and to advance women within the management and leadership structures of financial sector institutions
• Expand innovations to massively expand the amount of finance and scale of outreach of financial services and capital to women, as retail consumers of finance and as owners of businesses.
• Identify measures that will ensure women take their rightful place as decision makers within the governance and management structures of national, regional, continental and global financial institutions.
• Collectively identify the leadership needed to introduce new ways of thinking, and the actions required to build an African financial system that is more inclusive of women

Prominent speakers at the Summit include Hon. Uhuru Kenyatta, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of the Republic of Kenya, Ms Speciosa Kazibwe Wandira, former vice-president of Uganda, Dr. Luisa Diogo, former Prime Minister of Mozambique, Prof. Njuguna Ndung’u, Governor of the Central Bank of Kenya, Ms Linah Mohohlo, Governor of the Central bank of Botswana, Dr. Mamphela Ramphele, a former managing Director of the World Bank, Prof. Wangari Maathai, Nobel Laureate and Founder of the Greenbelt Movement, Mr. Arnold Ekpe, Grouyp CEO, Ecobank, Togo and Charles Abugre, Deputy Director for Africa, UN Millennium Campaign.

The two-day Summit was organised in a practical and participatory manner, encouraged honest discussions between the diverse interest groups present. This highlighted practical experiences and challenges of women in assessing various forms of finances at different levels. It also allowed for responses from policy and decision makers on strategies and commitments that could ensure acceptable access to financial services by women of all categories.

The Summit was very insightful and educative for me, it did not just touch on increasing or making financial services accessible to women, but it also went deep to explore women’s access to finance and decision making positions and its implication on the social structures at the community and household levels. It discussed the cultural and family implications for women in higher decision making positions. This included the ability to detach ourselves from cultural barriers, having fewer prejudices and courage to refuse to pander to stereotypes for example. By the end of the second day these conclusions among others were clearly defined:

• That women should form the centre stage of the financial sector because women bring talent, energy and creativity to the table, women are both policy makers and consumers of financial products and services.
• The need for accessibility to higher education among women; an appropriate level of ethics; and the use of advocacy and activism to improve the visibility of women’s cause.
• The need to have more reliable and prudential regulations in place that are gender sensitive and responsive to women’s needs.
• That while land ownership is crucial for women in many part of the continent, it should not become a limiting factor for women to access financial services. Instead it is important for women to diversify their asset base-one that is dynamic and consists of knowledge, excellence and networks.

So many profound statements were made, very inspirational and action oriented but one that has stayed with me for some time now was made by Donald Kaberuka, president of African Development Bank Group; where he acknowledged the benefits of improving women’s economic opportunities by saying ‘it’s a way to enhance women’s contributions to the growth of our economies and the well-being of our communities”. And that he strongly believes that “investing in women differently is essential to revitalise our economies”. I was not surprised when he put forward a wish list including access to finance, infrastructure, a skilled workforce, and a stable continent without episodic instabilities as the requirements for women to prosper in business.

Moving forward, l hope the energies, rich action plan and commitments will be followed through and the ideals of the economic summit sustained for future generations. I look forward to collectively supporting the agenda of the summit in its future activities.

The New Faces & Voices Network (NFVN) is an association of African leaders in business and finance across the continent that was established under the patronage of the African Women’s Foresight Network and was founded by Madam Graca Machel. The Network is committed to dynamically engaging the relevant institutions to create opportunities for women to contribute to the decisions that shape the African continent.

By: Nafi Chinery

Capacity Building Officer (AWDF)

The New York Launch of ‘Voice, Power and Soul: Portraits of African Feminists’ took place at the UN Church Centre as part of activities marking the 54th session of the Commission on the Status of Women. The book was officially launched by Gertrude Mongella, the first President of the African Parliament with co-editor Jessica Horn

The African Women’s Decade (2010- 2020) to be launched regionally in October 2010, would coincide with the time that the women’s movement worldwide is marking significant landmarks on gender equality and the empowerment of women. This year, the world is reviewing thirty years of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Again Women (CEDAW), fifteen years of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA), ten years of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, six years of the adoption of the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa (SDGEA), and five years since the coming into force of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, just to mention, but a few. A pointer to the fact that as far as women’s rights in Africa are concerned, we have reached a stage where implementation has to be given greater attention.

The Africa review of the Beijing Platform for Action (Beijing +15), which took place in Banjul in November 2009 paints a grim picture of African countries not meeting their commitments on gender equality. The decade presents a new chance for taking women’s rights in Africa to a higher level. One of the first and important steps should be to advocate for the implementation of the mechanisms that our governments have committed to. It is evident that we will make much progress without a framework that highlights what progress if any we are making towards transforming the lives of African women for the better. Advocacy should be accompanied by monitoring progress at different phases of the decade.

Adequate financial and technical resources are very crucial to making dreams come true, therefore approval for setting up a Women’s Trust Fund for African women (as agreed by the Heads of State of the AU under the SDGEA), could not have come at a better time. For the African Women’s decade to succeed the African Women’s Trust Fund should become operational without any further delay. In addition, the gender machineries at the country level, which are mandated with the responsibility of promoting gender equality, should be very well resourced by their governments so that they can carry out their mandates successfully.

Central to these is the need for women to tell their stories themselves. Experience sharing and dissemination of information on good practices would go a long way to avoid duplication. A tracking system to monitor and report on the achievements and progress with regard to the expected output should be developed and shared at the on set for both progress monitoring and evaluation at the end of the decade.

Ten years may give the illusion of a long time, but the reality is that time flies. Before one knows it the decade would have come and gone. It is my sincere hope that at the end of the historic African Women’s Decade we would all look back with pride, congratulate and pat ourselves on the back for having made the best use of this unique opportunity. We should hit the ground running.

Roselynn Musa

Programme Officer (Information & Documentation)

IMMEDIATE PRESS RELEASE

10th February 2010

The Launch of the African Women’s Development Fund’s Resource Centre

On the 10^th of February, 2010, The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) with support from The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) will launch a resource facility for African Women at AWDF House, 78 Ambassadorial Enclave, East Legon, Accra, Ghana.

The establishment of AWDF’s Resource Centre is part of AWDF’s efforts to meet key strategic objectives including:

• To contribute towards building a body of knowledge on gender and development
• To showcase the contributions that African women have made to development in Africa
• To enhance AWDF’s documentation and information dissemination capacity
• To support capacity building initiatives which encourage good practice in NGO leadership and management, learning, networking, partnerships and collaborations

AWDF’s Resource Centre is well equipped with a range of literature particularly suited to women working in the non-governmental sector and women looking to enhance their personal/professional development. According to AWDF’s Executive Director Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi:

“It’s about time African Women have a Resource Centre where women can go to learn, read and develop themselves. A centre where women can meet, share knowledge with one another and network. As part of its capacity building efforts, AWDF is pleased to be able to provide such a space for African women”

ENDS

About AWDF

The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) is a grant-making foundation, which supports local, national and regional organizations in Africa working towards women’s empowerment. AWDF through institutional capacity building and program development seeks to build a culture of learning and partnerships within the African women’s movement.

The vision of AWDF is for African women to live in a world in which there is social justice, equality and respect for women’s human rights. To this end, our mission is to mobilize financial resources to support local, national and regional initiatives led by women, which will lead to the achievement of this vision.

Press Enquiries

Nana Sekyiamah – Programme Officer (Fundraising & Communications)

African Women’s Development Fund

Plot 78, Ambassadorial Enclave, East Legon, Accra

Tel: + 233 21 521257

Fax: +233 21 521257

Email: nana@africlub.net/awdf

Website: www.africlub.net/awdf

I would like to thank the Human Rights and Peace Centre for inviting me here this afternoon to share my views on this bill. It is great that HURIPEC organized this to be a dialogue and not a debate because debates have a tendency to polarize and divide along irrational gut-level responses. A dialogue, on the other hand, usefully sets the stage for people to listen to each other with understanding, tolerance and helps build bridges. I hope that this public dialogue will mark the first stepping stone for all of us to embark on a rewarding journey of mutual respect, simple decency and fairness.

Mr. Chairperson—

My brief talk this afternoon is divided into four sections:

1. First, I will address issues of mutual concern that I share with Hon. Bahati;
2. Secondly, I will open the window of history and offer us a glimpse of the politics of hatred and discrimination that has affected the struggle for human rights over the years;
3. Third, I will highlight the social meaning of the bill; and
4. Finally, I shall put on my legal hat and outline the legal implications that this bill holds for our country if passed into law.

1. I. Common Issues of Concern

I have scrutinized the bill thoroughly and the Honourable Member of Parliament David Bahati will be surprised to learn that I share some of his convictions. For example, Hon. Bahati I share your desires as expressed in the preamble to the bill:

1. To strengthen the nation’s capacity to deal with emerging internal and external threats to the family unit. It is nevertheless important to point out that most of these can hardly be realized through the regulatory mechanism of the law.
2. To protect the cherished culture of the people of Uganda, particularly the positive aspects of it.
3. To protect Ugandan children and youth who are vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation—whether the abuse is hetero and homosexual.

I do not have the time and space this afternoon to engage in a detailed sociological discussion of the concept that the bill refers to as the “Traditional African Family.” However, it is my humble opinion that the concept needs to be unpacked and scrutinized. Mr. Chairperson as you very well know, Africa is a vast continent with an extremely rich and diverse cultural history. Indeed it would be next to impossible to mark a particular institution as the one and only “Traditional African Family”.

I will cite just a few examples to demonstrate that matrimonial relations among various African communities have differed a great deal:-

a) While marriage between first cousins was traditionally taboo among the Baganda, marriages among blood-related kin were considered the best unions among the Bahima here in Uganda;

b) There is the phenomenon of chigadzamapfihwa where the family of a barren wife among the Ndaus of Zimbabwe would ‘donate’ her brother’s daughter to her husband to become a co-wife and bear children on behalf of the barren woman;

c) Practices of non-sexual woman-to-woman marriages among various African customs e.g., the Nandi and Kisii of Kenya, the Igbo of Nigeria, the Nuer of Sudan and the Kuria of Tanzania for purposes of coping with various reproductive, social and economic problems; and

d) Levirate marriages where a man inherits his dead brother’s wife were a customary requirement in many African communities.

While these may have been cultural practices at some point in our history, it is also important to recognize that family institutions all over the world are undergoing rapid transformation. The changes that we see in this basic unit of society are the result of many factors including, economic crises, an increasing number of working mothers, technological advancements, armed conflicts, natural disasters, globalization, migration, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, etc. Many of these changes and indeed the evolution of culture cannot be halted, certainly not through law.

Perhaps the undisputed value that is a common denominator in all traditional institutions of the family in Africa is the group solidarity that we have embedded in our extended family networks. Unfortunately, the support, stability, love and respect that were the hallmark of this family model are rapidly being eroded and will soon become history.

Thus, while I agree with you Hon. Bahati that we must seek ways of dealing with issues that threaten our families, I do not agree that homosexuality is one of those issues. Mr. Chairperson, Ladies and gentlemen, what issues currently threaten our families here in Uganda? I will name a few:

a) Blood thirsty Ugandans and traditional healers that believe that their good fortune will multiply through rituals of child sacrifice.

b) Rapists and child molesters who pounce on unsuspecting family members. Research undertaken by the NGO, Hope after Rape (HAR) shows that over 50% of child sexual abuse reports involve children below 10 years of age, and the perpetrators are heterosexual men who are known to the victims.[1]

c) Sexual predators that breach the trust placed in them as fathers, teachers, religious leaders, doctors, uncles and sexually exploit young girls and boys. A 2005 report by Raising Voices and Save the Children revealed that 90% of Ugandan children experienced domestic violence and defilement.[2]

d) Abusive partners who engage in domestic violence whether physical, sexual or emotional. The 2006 national study on Domestic Violence by the Law Reform Commission confirmed the DV was pervasive in our communities. 66% of people in all regions of Uganda reported that DV occurred in their homes and the majority of the perpetrators were “male heads of households.”[3] The Uganda Demographic Health Survey of 2006 put the figure slightly higher at 68%.[4]

e) Parents who force their 14-year old daughters to get married in exchange for bride price and marriage gifts.

f) A whole generation of children who were either born and bred in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps or abducted by the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) in the northern sub-region of Kitgum, Gulu and Pader districts.

g) The millions of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS. The Uganda Aids Commission puts the cumulative number of orphans due to AIDS at 2 million.[5]

h) The all powerful patriarchs that demand total submission and rule their households with an iron hand.

i) Rising poverty levels and growing food insecurity which lead to hunger, disease, suffering and undignified living. Figures from the latest report from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics show that over 60% of Ugandans living in rural areas live below the poverty line.[6]

I do not see how two people who are in a loving relationship and harming no one pose a threat to the family simply because they happen to be of the same sex. The argument that homosexuality is a threat to the continuity of humankind and that it will lead to the extinction of human beings in the world simply does not hold water because there are too many heterosexuals in the world for that to become a reality. How many of you in this room would “convert” to homosexuality any time soon?… So, just as the priests, nuns and monks who are sworn to a life of celibacy will not cause the extinction of humanity, homosexuals will not either.

1. II. Lessons from History

Anyone who cares to read history books knows very well that in times of crisis, when people at the locus of power are feeling vulnerable and their power is being threatened, they will turn against the weaker groups in society. They will pick out a weak voiceless group on whom to heap blame for all society’s troubles—refugees, displaced populations, stateless persons aka illegal immigrants, minorities with no status, children, the poor, the homeless, commercial sex workers, etc. I will offer a few examples to illustrate this point:

• In Uganda, colonialists at various times blamed traditional chiefs and elders as well as Muslims as the main impediments to progress and civilization.
• Dictator Idi Amin blamed Asians for Uganda’s dire economic problems and expelled all Indians in the early 1970s.
• When Milton Obote’s political power was threatened during his second regime in the early 1980s he embarked on a deliberate campaign of hostility towards refugees in Uganda, particularly those of Rwandese extract. Obote’s persecution of the Banyarwanda in Uganda and the whipping up of anti-Rwandese sentiments included the constant reference to his political opponent, Yoweri Museveni as a “foreigner from Rwanda.”
• In the 20 years that northern Uganda faced armed conflict, the NRM administration pointed fingers at Kony and the LRA was blamed for all the atrocities and suffering of the people in the north.
• The transmission of HIV/AIDS at various points in our history has been blamed on different “weak” constituents including commercial sex workers, truck drivers, young women aged 15-23, and mothers to babies.
• When native South Africans faced dire economic crisis they turned against black “foreigners”, blaming them for the high unemployment rates and sparking off brutal xenophobic attacks against helpless immigrants/migrants and refugees in May 2008.

The lesson drawn from these chapters in our recent history is that today it is homosexuals under attack; tomorrow it will be another exaggerated minority.

Homosexuality has troubled people for a very long time. Some religions find it distressing and there are many debates around it. Mr. Chairperson and distinguished participants where did the idea of destroying homosexuality come from? As his excellency President Museveni pointed out at the inaugural Young Achievers Awards Ceremony last weekend, homosexuals existed prior to the coming of Europeans to Uganda. According to the President: “They were not persecuted but were not encouraged either” (Daily Monitor Nov 16, 2009 at p.2). The idea of destroying homosexuality came from colonialists. In other words, homosexuality was not introduced to Africa from Europe as many would want us to believe. Rather, Europe imported legalized homophobia to Africa.

Homosexuality was introduced as an offence in Uganda directly through laws that were imported from Britain during colonialism. And what did these same colonialists think of the “African traditional family” in Uganda? They certainly did not introduce sodomy laws in order to protect the traditional African family. In fact they believed that the traditional African family was inferior to their nuclear monogamous one and considered the former barbarous and ‘repugnant to good conscience and morality.’ This colonial attitude was well exemplified in the infamous 1917 case of R. v. Amkeyo, in which Justice Hamilton dismissed customary marriages as mere ‘wife purchase.’

Today, with all the economic, social and political crises facing Uganda, homosexuals present a convenient group to point fingers at as the “biggest threat” or the “real problem” to society. Mr. Chairperson, ladies and gentlemen, the re-criminalisation of homosexuality is meant to distract the attention of Ugandans from the real issues that harm us. It conveniently diverts the attention of the millions of Ugandans who have been walking the streets for years with their college certificates and no jobs on offer. Ladies and gentlemen, homosexuals have nothing to do with the hundreds of thousands of families that sleep without a meal or the millions of children who die unnecessarily every day from preventable or treatable diseases such as malaria, diarrhea, measles, pneumonia, etc. Homosexuals are not the ones responsible for the lack of drugs and supplies at primary health care centres.

1. III. The Social Implications of the Bill to the Average Ugandan

You may think that this bill targets only homosexual individuals. However, homosexuality is defined in such a broad fashion as to include “touching another person with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality.” This is a provision highly prone to abuse and puts all citizens (both hetero and homosexuals) at great risk. Such a provision would make it very easy for a person to witch-hunt or bring false accusations against their enemies simply to “destroy” their reputations and cause scandal. We all have not forgotten what happened to Pastor Kayanja and other men of God in the recent past.

Moreover, the bill imposes a stiff fine and term of imprisonment for up to three years for any person in authority over a homosexual who fails to report the offender within 24 hours of acquiring such knowledge. Hence the bill requires family members to “spy” on one another. This provision obviously does not strengthen the family unit in the manner that Hon. Bahati claims his bill wants to do, but rather promotes the breaking up of the family. This provision further threatens relationships beyond family members. What do I mean? If a gay person talks to his priest or his doctor in confidence, seeking advice, the bill requires that such person breaches their trust and confidentiality with the gay individual and immediately hands them over to the police within 24 hours. Failure to do so draws the risk of arrest to themselves. Or a mother who is trying to come to terms with her child’s sexual orientation may be dragged to police cells for not turning in her child to the authorities. The same fate would befall teachers, priests, local councilors, counselors, doctors, landlords, elders, employers, MPs, lawyers, etc.

Furthermore, if your job is in any way related to human rights activism, advocacy, education and training, research, capacity building, and related issues this bill should be a cause for serious alarm. In a very undemocratic and unconstitutional fashion, the bill seeks to silence human rights activists, academics, students, donors and non-governmental organizations. If passed into law it will stifle the space of civil society. The bill also undermines the pivotal role of the media to report freely on any issue. The point I am trying to make is that we are all potential victims of this draconian bill.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told us many years ago, “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.” Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights instructs us: “All Human Beings are Born Free and Equal in Dignity and Rights.” Many great people that we respect and admire have spoken out for the rights of homosexuals. These include international award winners and champions of freedom and humanity—President Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and President Barack Obama. Just yesterday, it was reported that former president of Botswana, Festus Mogae added his voice to those who have come out in opposition to the Bahati Bill (Daily Monitor, November 17, 2009 at p.10).

We must remember that the principal message at the heart of all religions is one of LOVE (And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love– 1 Corinthians 13: 13). All religions teach the virtues of tolerance and urge their followers to desist from passing judgment. Ladies and gentlemen, this bill promotes hatred, intolerance, superiority and violence. Even if you believe that homosexuality is a sin, this bill is not the best method to address the issue. It is valid to have religious and spiritual anxieties but our jurisprudence has a long history of separating the institutions of religion from the law. The law, Mr. Chairperson, does not seek to ally any legal principle with a particular religion. Mr. Stephen Langa is free to deliver his lectures on morality but it is unacceptable to reduce what his is preaching into law. In my final submission I want to turn to a legal analysis of this bill.

1. IV. The Legal Implications of the Bill

Mr. Chairperson, ladies and gentlemen, the Anti-Homosexuality bill has a total of 18 clauses. 12 of these 18 clauses (i.e., 67%) are not new at all as they simply replicate what we already have on our law books. So the first point I want to highlight is that Parliament has been given a bill two-thirds of whose content duplicates existing laws.

So, let us examine the content of the remaining 6 clauses that introduce new legal provisions.

• Clauses 6 provides for the recognition of the right to privacy and confidentiality for the victim of homosexual assaults. This is a procedural issue that no one can dispute and it can easily be inserted in the Penal Code provisions that criminalize rape and aggravated defilement.

Nevertheless, the remaining 5 clauses are extremely problematic from a legal point of view. They violate Uganda’s constitution and many other regional and international instruments that Uganda has ratified.

• The interpretation section (Clause 1) replicates several definitions that are provided for elsewhere. Its novel provisions lie in the attempt to define homosexuality and its related activities. I have already alluded to the potential danger that Ugandans face in the threatening and broad fashion that the bill defines a “homosexual act.”

• Clause 13 which attempts to outlaw the “Promotion of Homosexuality” is very problematic as it introduces widespread censorship and undermines fundamental freedoms such as the rights to free speech, expression, association and assembly. Under this provision an unscrupulous person aspiring to unseat a member of parliament can easily send the incumbent MP unsolicited material via e-mail or text messaging, implicating the latter as one “promoting homosexuality.” After being framed in that way, it will be very difficult for the victim to shake free of the “stigma.” Secondly, by criminalizing the “funding and sponsoring of homosexuality and related activities,” the bill deals a major blow to Uganda’s public health policies and efforts. Take for example, the Most At Risk Populations’ Initiative (MARPI) introduced by the Ministry of Health in 2008, which targets specific populations in a comprehensive manner to curb the HIV/AIDS scourge. If this bill becomes law, health practitioners as well as those that have put money into this exemplary initiative will automatically be liable to imprisonment for seven years! The clause further undermines civil society activities by threatening the fundamental rights of NGOs and the use of intimidating tactics to shackle their directors and managers.

• Clause 14 introduces the crime of “Failure to Disclose the Offence” of homosexuality. As I have noted above, under this provision any person in authority is obliged to report a homosexual to the relevant authorities within 24 hours of acquiring such knowledge. Not only does this infringe on the right to privacy but it is practically unenforceable. It dangerously opens up room for potential abuse, blackmail, witch-hunting, etc. Do we really want to move sexual acts between consenting adults into the public realm?
• Clause 16 relates to extra-territorial jurisdiction, and basically confers authority on Ugandan law enforcers to arrest and charge a Ugandan citizen or permanent resident who engages in homosexual activities outside the borders of Uganda. This law enforcement model is normally used in international crimes such as money laundering, terrorism, etc. The Ugandan Penal Code already provides for crimes that call for extra-territoriality. All these touch on the security of the state e.g., treason, terrorism and war mongering (see S.4 of the PCA).

When it comes to offences committed partly within and partly outside Uganda, the Penal Code provides:

When an act which, if wholly done within the jurisdiction of the court, would be an offence against this Code is done partly within and partly beyond the jurisdiction, every person who within the jurisdiction does or makes any part of such act may be tried and punished under this Code in the same manner as if such act had been done wholly within the jurisdiction. [Section 5—Emphasis added]

Note that clause16 of the Bill employs the disjunctive “or” which gives it wider reach than S.5 of the Penal Code that uses the conjunctive “and”. Therefore, what the Bill proposes to do is to elevate homosexual acts to a position of such importance that they appear to be at an even higher plane than murder, rape or grievous bodily harm for which no such provision is made. It is difficult to see any rational basis for such inordinate attention to homosexuality. And how exactly will they enforce this provision? Is the government going to storm the bedrooms of consenting adults, or deploy spies to follow them when they travel abroad in order to establish who they have slept with and how they did it? Does this include heterosexual couples that engage in anal sex? What about our constitutional right to privacy? In short, this provision of the Bill is a gross abuse of the principle of extra-territoriality. But more importantly, the bill carries hidden venom that is bound to spread beyond persons that engage in homosexuality.

• Perhaps the most shocking aspect of this bill is Clause 18, which requires Uganda to opt out of any international treaty that we have previously ratified that goes against the spirit of the bill. Article 287 of the Constitution obliges Uganda to fully subscribe to all its international treaties obligations ratified prior to the passing of the 2005 constitution. We cannot legislate or simply wish these obligations away. Indeed, international law prohibits us from doing such a thing. Article 26 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties clearly sets out the pacta sunt servanda rule which requires that “Every treaty in force is binding upon the parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith.”

Article 123 (1), a provision deliberately placed in Chapter Seven of the Constitution (dealing with the powers of the Executive) says:

The President or a person authorised by the President may make treaties, conventions, agreements, or other arrangements between Uganda and any other country or between Uganda and any international organisation or body, in respect of any matter.

This is a wide power that can only be limited by express language under the Constitution itself. A major procedural limitation is found in the next clause of the same article, which provides:

Parliament shall make laws to govern ratification of treaties, conventions, agreements or other arrangements made under clause (1) of this article. (Art. 123.2)

Another substantive limitation is to be found in the Bill of Rights found in Chapter 4. In effect, the President cannot by the mechanism of Article 123(1) sign treaties whose effect would be to amend the Constitution. Indeed, any such treaty would be, as a matter of municipal law, null and void to the extent of such inconsistency, in terms of Article 2 (2) of the Constitution.

Parliament therefore has only a procedural role to incorporate treaties into Ugandan law – and that is the full extent of its powers. It cannot purport to proscribe ex ante (before the fact) the limit of the President’s treaty making powers. Nor indeed, can parliament bind its own future action by purporting to exercise in advance its power to scrutinize treaties signed by the President and determine which of them to ratify. All that Parliament can do is to either ratify or refuse to ratify a treaty after it is signed, and in the latter case such treaty does not become part of Ugandan law. This is the balance of executive power and democratic input achieved by Article 123, and one that clause 18 of the Bill is incompetent to amend.

Mr. Chairperson, distinguished participants, I wish to end by appealing to members of parliament and all Ugandans that believe in human rights and the dignity of all human beings to reject the Anti-homosexuality bill. I am imploring Hon. Bahati to withdraw his private members bill. Do we really in our hearts of hearts want our country to be the first on the continent to demand that mothers spy on their children, that teachers refuse to talk about what is, after all, “out there” and that our gay and lesbian citizens are systematically and legally terrorized into suicide? Ladies and gentlemen, you may strongly disagree with the phenomenon of same-sex erotics; you may be repulsed by what you imagine homosexuals do behind their bedroom doors; you may think that all homosexuals deserve to burn in hell. However, it is quite clear that this Bill will cause more problems around the issue of homosexuality than it will solve. I suggest that Hon. Bahati’s bill be quietly forgotten. It is no more or less than an embarrassment to our intelligence, our sense of justice and our hearts.

Thank you for your attention.

Response after the Q & A Session

Mr. Chairperson, in the interest of time I will respond to only three issues:

• “Mad people” “like bats seeing the world upside down” “animals” “wicked”… These are some of the words used to describe homosexuals by the audience. All the heckling and vicious jeering… Mr. Bahati you commenced your talk this afternoon by saying, “We are not in the hate campaign.” Well, if you were in any doubt about the fact that your bill is whipping up hatred and violence against homosexuals, just reflect back on the discourse that transpired in the room this afternoon.

• Secondly, Mr. Chairperson I think it is the height of paternalism and arrogance for Hon. Bahati and Mr. Langa to stand here and say they are legislating against homosexuals because they love them, they feel sorry for them, they face the risk of cancer, their lives are reduced by 20 years, etc. Homosexuals are not asking for your pity, love, approval or redemption. They only want you to affirm their humanness and their right to exist and be different.

• Finally, Mr. Chairperson, Hon. Bahati asked the question, “Tamale, do you support homosexuality?” I would like to tell Hon. Bahati that I am a simple woman that recognizes all human beings as worthy of dignity and rights and I am not obsessed with how people have sex in the privacy of their bedrooms. I support the rights of all human beings regardless of how and with whom they have sex as long as they are adults and are not harming anyone. So, the question should not be whether I support homosexuality, or heterosexuality for that matter.

Thank you very much Mr. Chairperson

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[1] Study cited in Uganda Youth Development Link, Report on Sectoral Study on Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in Uganda, Commissioned by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development (January 2004).

[2] See Raising Voices and Save the Children (edited by Dipak Naker), Violence Against Children: The Voices of Ugandan Children and Adults. (2005). Available at http://www.raisingvoices.org/files/VACuganda.RV.pdf

[3] See Law Reform Commission, A Study Report on Domestic Violence, April 2006 at p.112

[4] See http://www.measuredhs.com/pubs/pdf/FR194/FR194.pdf

[5] See Report by the Office of the Auditor General, Value for Money Audit Report on Uganda AIDS Control Project, October 2007. Available at http://www.oag.go.ug/docs/UACauditreport.pdf

[6] See UBOS, Spatial Trends of Poverty and Inequality in Uganda: 2002-2005, February 2009.

Lesbians have always been present in various civil society movements, with gay men’s organizations, in feminist groups, as well as in the artistic sphere and in the fight for decolonization and independence of their country. In recent decades lesbians have been present in the fight for equal rights for women of colour, aborigen women, and more broadly with feminist movements.

The present publication, in English, is a collection of experiences from individuals worldwide involved in lesbian movements, civil society and human rights organizations. Credit was given to those lesbians* in many parts of the world who have led the way and those who are actively involved in fighting for the wellbeing and recognition of their rights.

Some of the positive examples illustrate that “history can be changed” and that some lesbian groups have managed to mainstream their concerns with those of other movements. Some have fought against apartheid and are denouncing racism, others are working towards building peace in their regions, some others are joining different discriminated and vulnerable groups. Lesbians have shown more solidarity than other groups and the recognition of this fact must follow.
Lesbians apply a revolutionary way of thinking that can be beneficial to all actors within our society fighting for equal rights and justice.

Sharing experiences and knowledge is a way to develop skills and being aware of those achievements is the first step towards empowerment and pride.
The report has a positive imprint and is aimed at strengthening the future of the lesbian movement rather than lingering on victimization.
This publication will also leave a lot of questions open such as: “What is feminism?”, “Are lesbian concerns more closely related to women issues or to gay issues?”. Here and there you will find an answer that may be contradicted a few pages later by an opposite experience. This is probably the indication of the diversity and complexity of lesbians’ movements.

This piece of work will hopefully raise your curiosity to learn more and be inspired about these different but closely related movements. It can also be used as a training tool to empower young, lesbian feminists within the LGBT movement and to raise awareness of mainstream organizations on the importance at dealing with lesbian rights.

Please do not hesitate to disseminate the publication, post it on your website and, above all, use it to get inspired and empowered in all your actions.

“Lesbians are everywhere” and we can be very proud of it.

Patricia Curzi
Women’s Project Coordinator
ILGA

The term “lesbian” refers to any person who identifies herself as a lesbian, bisexual, butch, femme, androgyn, dyke, trans, queer or does not wish to be identified at all.

Hard copies can be ordered upon payment of mailing costs. Please order or send your suggestions and comments at women@ilga.org.

View the publication Here