Tanzania pushing out Maasai to attract rich tourists
This week, we start in Burkina Faso, which has joined the list of African countries banning homosexuality. Next, we travel to Tanzania, where the government is displacing Maasai herders to expand nature reserves. And finally, we stop in Japan, where queer couples are opting for photo weddings to celebrate their commitment and raise awareness of LGBT+ issues.
But first, in Eswatini, scores of Swazis supported Pride celebrations in the tiny Southern African kingdom. The event started with a march through Manzini city centre to the Swaziland National Association of Teachers Centre (SNAT Centre), featuring contemporary dances, hugs, and kisses.
The celebrations took place against a hostile government attitude. About three hundred people participated in the Pride March, defying the morning’s cold winter weather. Permission for the march was granted at the eleventh hour after tough negotiations from the gender consortium. And despite the early start, attendance improved as the day warmed up.
Many LGBTIQ members saw the early morning Pride march as a government ploy to minimize public attention. An anonymous member claimed, “This was intentional. The management was strict that we start the Pride march early when it was still cold and when many members and people, in general, were still few in the city. It was a sabotage in disguise”
The government had previously refused permission for the gender consortium to march, wanting celebrations behind closed doors.
Sisanda Mavimbela, Executive Director of Eswatini Sexual and Gender Minorities (ESGM), highlighted the importance of the 7th annual Pride celebrations. “This is our second parade since 2018. The city centre march raises awareness of LGBTIQ rights and shows we are here and happy. It emphasizes our rights to associate and assemble,” she said. ESGM is still pursuing official registration, which the government refuses under the Sodomy Act. The Supreme Court deemed the refusal unconstitutional, but the Minister of Commerce and Trade denied registration again. The case is now back in the High Court.
Director and founder of Parents United Care for All Children, Sibongile Mnisi, stressed the importance of parental support. “Parents need to understand and love their LGBTIQ children. It’s not a choice to be gay or lesbian. Our children need love just like any other,” said Mnisi.
Written by Phathizwe Zulu, edited by Toluwani Omotesho.
Stories to read
BBC
Burkina Faso’s military junta bans homosexual unions
The Conversation
Namibia’s sodomy laws have been overturned – what that means for LGBTIQ+ rights in the country
From our site
“I have been treated unfairly”: The harmful traditional practice suppressing women in Nigeria
One Tuesday morning in April 2016, the Easter celebration was around the corner when, at about 3:34 AM, a thunderous knock startled 52-year-old Janet* and her six children. As she struggled with the door bolt, she whispered a prayer to herself, “Lord, not again.”
At the door was Oche*, her 77-year-old husband, who had come home drunk as usual in the company of a strange woman. As soon as he saw Janet, his jaw tightened and his hand curled into a fist. “I told you not to get a job but you are adamant!” he snapped.
Janet was only 17 when she was forced to marry Oche who was 42 in 1987. She had written her Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSCE), the final lap in Nigeria’s basic education system, hoping to be a nurse.
Oche, a civil servant at the time, didn’t allow Janet to learn a skill or further her studies. “Anytime I tried to seek a job, he would threaten me with Aleku, the spirit of justice,” she says.
This prominent traditional practice is prevalent amongst the Idoma people of Benue State, Igala people of Kogi State, and Ekureku people of Cross River State in Nigeria. The Idoma people believe in Aleku to maintain justice in the land. The Igala people believe in Ibegwu to uphold justice, while the Ekureku people believe in Edu-ekolo to protect the family.
The common feature in this tradition is that the spirit oversees women and keeps a tab on whether they are loyal to their husbands or not.
The racist politicization of Black hair in African schools
My love-hate relationship with my hair started when I was six years old and my mom chopped off my hair a few days before I joined grade one. I remember crying and pleading with her while equally asking why I couldn’t just go to school with my long hair.
Eventually, she explained to me that my hair was not allowed in school and that someday when I am older, I would be able to have the long hair I wanted. That never happened. Just like most children who attended public schools in Rwanda, which is where I am from, I had to shave my hair off throughout primary and secondary school.
In a viral tweet in January this year, a young Rwandan student got a “punishment haircut” and it reminded me how this used to be a regular form of humiliation for not shaving your hair during my time in primary school. Yet this occurrence is not peculiar to Rwanda alone and is widespread in public schools across the African continent.
Just recently, the Achimota School, one of Ghana’s most prestigious public senior high schools, refused to admit two students because of their dreadlocks and in Kenya, a schoolgirl nearly lost her education for a similar reason.
“I [was] forced to cut my hair when I was in school back home,” says William Lugolobi, a Ugandan student at Northwestern University in Qatar. “I went to a school which had Indians, Arab people and some white people, and they never had to cut their hair. It was only the Black kids…officials would come and ask you to cut your hair, and if you didn’t cut your hair, they would slap you and beat you.
Around the world
DW
Tanzania pushing out Maasai to attract rich tourists
Life is becoming ever more difficult for Tanzania’s ethnic Maasai, as a representative for the group’s women told DW. She did not want her name to appear in print over concerns for her safety. Numerous representatives of the ethnic herding people have been arrested over the past several years whenever they have criticized the policies of the Tanzanian government.
“Two pregnant women recently died,” said the representative. She reported that there had been heavy rain and roads were impassable. “Nearly every week there is a pregnant woman dying in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and in Loliondo,” she said. Other DW sources have confirmed the statement. The Maasai say the government of Tanzania is to blame.
Medical flights that used to transport patients to hospital emergency rooms were shut down by the government a couple of years ago, for instance, purportedly over licensing problems. Still, there are suggestions that this is simply part of a larger plan to shutter all health and education services in areas populated by the Maasai in order to get them to leave the savannah in northern Tanzania for good.
The Conversation
Young children with disabilities are excluded from national physical activity monitoring. That needs to change.
Physical activity is important for children; it supports improved health, development and sleep. However, children in the early years (from birth to age five) with disabilities are consistently underrepresented in national monitoring, and are subsequently excluded from intervention efforts promoting physical activity.
The ParticipACTION Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth (the most comprehensive assessment of child and youth physical activity in Canada) was released in May, and again reported a noticeable lack of available data for children with disabilities. As researchers in the Child Health and Physical Activity Lab in the School of Occupational Therapy at Western University, we focus on promoting physical activity for all young children.
New research conducted in our lab shows that young children with disabilities have markedly low levels of physical activity. These children are missing out on the numerous benefits of engaging in physical activity.
Reuters
Frustrated by Japan’s same-sex marriage ban, LGBTQ couples opt for ‘photo weddings’
Unable to get married legally in Japan, LGBTQ couples are celebrating their special bond by donning traditional kimonos and fashionable formal wear for elaborate “photo weddings”.
But these carefully choreographed images are often kept hidden in this conservative society where many LGBTQ people say they face prejudice and stigma, even from their own families.
Reuters spent eight months documenting photo weddings by studio Onestyle in Tokyo and neighbouring Yokohama. The couples spoke to Reuters and allowed their pictures to be taken on condition their identities were protected due to concerns they may face discrimination.
“Not everyone, like my parents or friends, know about our relationship. We thought it would be nice if we could leave a tangible memory just for the two of us,” said a 40-year old female office worker who posed with her 35-year old partner in matching wedding dresses at a studio in Yokohama in November
Stories we’ve enjoyed reading
BBC
Forget Ethiopia’s Spice Girls – this singer salutes the true queens
Gabriella Ghermandi recalls with laughter the annoyance she felt about the so-called Ethiopian Spice Girls – charity-backed pop group Yegna that hoped to change narratives and empower girls and women through music.
The all-female group sparked controversy in the UK because it was partly funded by British aid and some say it was a waste of taxpayers’ money. But for Ghermandi, assumptions that Ethiopian women had to be taught by outsiders was the issue.
“I was like, what?” Ghermandi tells the BBC. “They want to teach us how to empower women? Ethiopia? With all its epics of women?”
So, Ghermandi – an Ethiopian-Italian author, singer, producer and ethno-musicologist – also turned to music as a way of “saying to the world that we have a huge history about brave women who had as much power as men”.
The result is a nine-track album called Maqeda – the Amharic name for the Queen of Sheba, a hugely important figure in Ethiopian history.
Every song is an homage to female figures, communities, rituals and musical styles.