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“Small animal”: How language reinforces climates of sexual violence in Uganda - Minority Africa
Natasha Sebunya
April 6, 2024
Thinking back to her first intimate encounter with her husband, Jane, a mother of four in Kampala, Uganda realises the impact of language and culture on attitudes towards sex. She recalls the jumble of thoughts that rushed through her mind regarding how to handle intimacy.
As Jane, a Muganda by tribe, navigated conflicting messages during her upbringing, she faced the challenge of balancing the importance of protecting her “sweet” (a term for female private parts) with advice from her Ssenga, a paternal aunt tasked with educating girls about sex, on how to satisfy her future partner.
In society’s eyes, openly showing desire was considered inappropriate for a woman, yet she was still supposed to be alluring in private. Her struggles with being the ideal partner coloured her experiences.
Luckily, Jane’s husband empathised with her unease and provided support by urging her to accept her sexuality. After years of exploration, their bond has strengthened, resulting in a fulfilling intimate relationship.
Uganda has a rich cultural and linguistic diversity, where words hold great power to inspire or harm. Sexuality plays a crucial role in this situation. Several linguistic traditions in the country, deeply ingrained in the culture, inadvertently contribute to narratives that sustain sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV).
To delve into this complex subject, we must analyse past societal shifts, cultural standards, and the impact of Western influence. Is there a possibility that something got lost in translation? What factors make intimate relationships more susceptible to abuse?
In Luganda, one of the major languages in Uganda, the term “kasolo” (penis) which literally means a small animal culminates in giving men a sense of power in personal interactions. The “small animal” is always on the prowl to attack, contributing not just to narratives of terror but equally socializing the man as animalistic and as the “hunter.” In that sense, violence from the man, the “small animal” is almost expected and perhaps even rewarded. Referring to the vagina with softer terms like “sweet” reinforces a narrative of delicate femininity. These terms are not just flowery; they carry meanings that influence how things are perceived. They set the stage for mistreatment by defining men’s actions and women’s moral duties with their bodies.
This narrative restricts women’s ability to make choices about their sexuality, monitors their behaviour and leads to blaming them when abuse happens. Women might feel pressured to conform without realising it as their roles are predetermined by the language used.
This linguistic framing shines a light on an aspect often ignored when dealing with abuse in relationships. The way language is used not only shows a power dynamic but also dictates how people should behave in romantic or sexual situations. Women’s desires and boundaries take a backseat to societal norms that prioritise dominance and control.
In the past paternal aunties, referred to as Ssengas held a role within the Baganda community when it came to discussing matters of sexuality. Young girls often turned to their aunties for advice on subjects like growing up, sex, relationships, and womanhood. These conversations had an impact on guiding girls into adulthood by sharing knowledge on marriage and gender expectations
. While the Ssengas’ influence was vital in marriage by offering valuable insights, their teachings also inadvertently reinforced certain problematic gender stereotypes.
According to researchers, in certain Ugandan cultures like the Batooro, sex education is primarily provided by paternal matriarchs including the paternal aunt, mother, and grandmother, and post-marriage by in-laws such as the mother-in-law, sisters-in-law, or husband’s grandmother. Historically, and still in some areas today, girls were also instructed on their first night of marriage on how to engage in sexual intercourse.
This education often occurs within specific contexts, such as the akasaka – a private, secured space in the home adorned with a special grass called ekigaasi, where girls receive instruction on sex-related matters. Participation in the akasaka is expected both before marriage (at the parents’ home) and after (at the husband’s). Before marriage, girls are taught about “bad touches,” emphasising that public displays of sexual affection like kissing are prohibited.
After marriage, participation in the akasaka continues, with the mother-in-law helping the new bride navigate her role within the family. While this orientation aids in the bride’s integration into the household, it often reflects the traditional understanding of women’s subservient role within the home.
Sex education for boys is also emphasised and typically provided by fathers, uncles, and grandfathers. Unlike girls, though, boys do not have a dedicated session for sex education but rather receive continuous informal education as opportunities arise.
Sylvia Tamale, a legal scholar, emphasises the importance of addressing discussions on sexuality to fully understand societal norms. Tamale highlights how the dominance of Western colonialists’ language in discussions about sexuality shapes the meanings and definitions of related concepts to reflect experiences outside Africa.
She illustrates this with the example of silence. Many Western cultures often view silence as a sign of submissiveness or conceding to power. Nevertheless, in certain cultures, particularly Ganda, some women have managed to transform silence into a potent form of action. For instance, the Ssenga institution teaches women that it’s better to ask and make requests during sex, highlighting the relationship between expectations and personal choices and showing how cultural environments influence the understanding of actions and enable people to transform conventional roles in significant manners.
Today, Jane is approaching the topic of sex with her children in a unique manner. She openly addresses topics related to sex and abuse and encourages her children to have open conversations with her and her husband about their bodies and relationships.
Jane is a firm believer that leading by example is the most effective way to teach. She and her husband share a strong bond, frequently engaging in conversations about their children’s well-being, family finances, and the future of their family. “We are reshaping gender roles and educating our children about the partnership between a man and a woman in marriage,” Jane says with happiness.
Edited and Reviewed by PK Cross, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Natasha is a writer and policy analyst helping to imagine a better world.

author: Natasha Sebunya


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“Some people never made it out alive”: Tackling endemic trafficking in North-West Nigeria - Minority Africa
Promise Eze
November 1, 2023
Auwal Muntari was filled with joy when three men approached his family, offering to enrol him in a secondary school in Niger Republic, which was located just across the border from his village in Illela, Sokoto state, Northwest Nigeria. It was 2017, and at the age of 17, Auwal had longed to attend a good secondary school ever since he completed primary school in 2013. Unfortunately, there were no operational secondary schools in his village, so the opportunity in Niger seemed promising. Being just a few kilometres away from his village, it felt like a viable option.
A few days later, Muntari, along with two other teenagers who had also been promised a quality education, embarked on a motorcycle journey through a bush path towards Niger. They were hopeful that the journey to the nearest town in the French-speaking country would only take a few hours, but to their surprise, it ended up taking approximately two days. Eventually, they arrived at a village where Muntari was allocated a room with seven other young men.
“It was a very small room with a tiny window. I couldn’t sleep well without discomforting myself and the person next to me,” Muntari recalls.
Soon, Muntari realised that he had been trafficked. The promise of attending school turned out to be a deception, as he was instead coerced into washing motorcycles daily. If he failed to comply, he would be subjected to painful lashings with a cane on his back.
“I couldn’t comprehend what was happening. I felt betrayed and extremely disappointed,” Muntari says. “Whenever I dared to ask about the education I was promised, I was brutally beaten, treated like an animal. The food we received was of appalling quality. We were served rice cooked with dirty water.”
Muntari endured three months of gruelling labour under the watchful eyes of his traffickers. However, one day, he mustered the courage to inquire about the route back to Nigeria. With the help of sympathetic individuals whom he borrowed money from, he managed to escape and make his way back to Illela.
“When I returned, everyone was taken aback. They were relieved to see me after not hearing from me for so long. However, I spent most of my time indoors, crying over the harrowing experience I had gone through,” he says.
A few weeks later, Muntari crossed paths with Aliyu Araba, an advocate against human trafficking in their community of Ilela. Araba introduced Muntari to a shelter operated by Save the Child Initiative (STCI), a non-profit organisation that offers assistance to victims of trafficking. During his three-day stay at the shelter, Muntari received counselling to help him cope with the trauma he had endured.
“I had to share my story with a staff member who genuinely cared to listen. He provided encouragement and emphasised that, despite all I had endured, I should not let my past define my future,” Muntari reminisces. “Their words instilled in me the belief that I could become a vocal advocate against trafficking within my local community.”
Nigeria is known as a source, transit, and destination country for trafficked individuals. In 2017, the U.S. classified Nigeria as a “Tier 2 Watchlist” country. According to a report on The Guardian Nigeria, over 30 million Nigerians have been trafficked in the last decade.
The town of Ilela, located near porous borders, has unfortunately become a hotspot for trafficking. Traffickers take advantage of its strategic location to transport victims to North Africa and Europe for labour and sexual exploitation. They often target vulnerable individuals and those facing difficult circumstances.
In September 2022, two suspects were nabbed in Sokoto for human trafficking. One of the suspects was in Illela making plans to traffic his victim to Libya. According to reports, over 22 victims of trafficking from Nigeria were rescued in Niger and reunited with their families in Sokoto but unlike Muntari, some are unlucky.
Abdulganiyu Abubakar, the founder of STCI in 2001, grew concerned about the government’s lack of action towards addressing trafficking in Illela. As a result, he decided to launch an anti-trafficking initiative in the community. The primary goal was to raise awareness about the dangers of trafficking, while also educating people on how to identify and report traffickers to the authorities.
Jamila Musa, another victim from Illela was enticed to go to Niger in search of a better job two years ago but ended up being exploited as cheap labour. Musa recalls her experience, saying, “My childhood friend tricked me into coming to Niger for a good job.” She later discovered that her childhood friend, who she didn’t name, was part of a trafficking syndicate in Niger. Musa explains, “She would invite young women promising them work, only to use them for hard labour without pay in her cooking business.”
After six months, Musa managed to collect money from customers she had befriended and escaped back to Sokoto. She later sought help at the shelter, where she received counselling. Now, Musa volunteers for STCI and actively campaigns against trafficking in her community.
Abubakar, now the president of the Network against Child Trafficking, Abuse and Labour in Nigeria, says, “I realised a lot of children and young people are trafficked from Nigeria to North Africa and beyond where they’re exploited and Illela seems to be the transit point. This is an area without a significant government presence, and a lot of villagers do not understand how traffickers operate. Though some of them work hand in hand with traffickers.”
Rabiu Gandi, the Head of Migration, Mobility, and Protection for STCI, stated that the initiative partners with different agencies and organisations in West Africa. The goal is to better understand how to address trafficking and repatriate victims to their families.
“We focus on both prevention and response to trafficking. We engage communities to raise awareness about human trafficking, and we collaborate with community and religious leaders to identify victims,” shares Gandi.
According to Gandi, the shelter can accommodate around 25 people at a time. When victims are received from communities or security agencies, they are placed in gender-specific sections for a maximum of two weeks. Initially, they are assessed to determine if any of them require immediate medical attention. They are then provided with food, clothing, and counselling to help them cope with any trauma they may have experienced. Eventually, they are reunited with their families. Victims who were trafficked from other countries are handed over to their respective embassies.
The efforts of the organisation are showing positive outcomes. Gandi shared that just a few months ago, residents of a village in Illela handed over a commercial motorcycle rider to the police for allegedly attempting to collaborate with traffickers, and he was subsequently charged in court.
Gandi also mentioned that the non-profit has successfully rescued, accommodated, and supported no fewer than 3000 victims of trafficking.
Another survivor, Abubakar Hadi, who was once trafficked to Agadez in Niger two years ago, shares, “STCI helped us regain control of our lives and taught us how traffickers operate. I’m now passionate about having conversations with people about identifying traffickers and their deceptive tactics.”
The lack of adequate funds to run its operations, according to Gandi, remains one of the biggest challenges of STCI.
“As a non-profit, we depend on donors for funding, and when we don’t get funded it affects our work,’’ he says.
Changing the perception of community members to see human trafficking as a crime is a battle. Due to the scarcity of job opportunities in rural areas and the limited government presence, numerous unemployed individuals in border communities might be enticed to engage with criminal networks for financial gain. A clear manifestation of this is the surge in kidnappings within rural northern communities. However, Gandi firmly believes that transforming the mindset of villagers in border areas and motivating them to pursue legitimate avenues for earning a living would offer a sustainable solution to this problem.
“That is why we involve traditional rulers, religious clerics and even people we train as community champions to take the fight to their immediate surroundings,” Gandi says.
Deeply moved by his own journey, Muntari has now become a committed volunteer for the initiative. He is actively raising awareness within his community, educating others about the dangers of trafficking and encouraging them to take action against it.
“To be trafficked against your will is to be treated like a slave. Some people never made it [out] alive,” said Muntari, who hopes that sooner or later the government will build schools and provide opportunities for individuals in rural communities so that they’ll no longer be vulnerable to the antics of traffickers who capitalise on their misfortunes.
“I really want trafficking to end. It is destroying lives,’’ he adds.
Edited/Reviewed by PK Cross, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Promise Eze is a young Nigerian journalist passionate about using journalism to improve public discourse and catalyze development.

source: news-minorityafrica

created: November 1, 2023

license: Creative Commons - Attribution - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

author: Promise Eze


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“It attracted me”: Inside a fellowship for non religious Nigerians - Minority Africa
Edikan Umoh
January 29, 2023
As a child, Maro Okiti and her family attended a Pentecostal church and would spend significant time at the church’s camp. She joined her mother in being active in church and started teaching Sunday school at a young age. However, as Okiti, now 21, grew in her faith, so did her doubts and questions.
“I always questioned some of the doctrines and it would be shut down by the church. [They’d]say don’t question God or challenge spiritual authority,” she recalls. At that time, she was attending a liberal school, which further fuelled her curiosity. One incident in school that stands out for her was during her A-Levels when she was picked to participate in a debate that posed the question: Is science the new religion?
“I was arguing that science is not a new religion. I knew that this debate would cause some controversy,” Okiti says. “I spoke to the reverend [in residence] for some advice and she said that what most people hate to realise is that Christianity is a spectrum. And that was my big eureka moment. That I don’t need certain dogma to follow Jesus Christ.”
As Okiti began to think about her faith differently, she shared her beliefs online. “I started deconstructing accidentally actually. I always had unconventional views about Christianity but I had a core fundamental in the two commandments – love thy God and love thy neighbour,” she says. “My Christianity is very affirming. So I started using my Instagram as a platform to share my views on certain aspects of Christianity and one of my friends asked if I was [a] deconstructionist and not knowing what it meant I said yes.
“I researched it after, went down this rabbit hole and I realized that’s what I was doing, I just didn’t have the language. There’s a lot of beauty with deconstruction that I’m so in love with. It’s given me a lot of freedom.”
Okiti’s journey has led her to other people who, like her, “loved Jesus but rejected dogma.” Among these people was Kamsy Anyachebelu, one of the founders of The Table Community. The virtual group was born in 2021 as a result of the need for a community of people who, according to Anyachebelu, want a safe place for nuanced conversations.
“Ore [Eni Ibukun], my co-founder, would always talk about the lack of community and how we only had individual friends we could talk to,” Anyachebelu says. Following a Twitter conversation, the duo decided to start The Table, which was inspired by the writings of Laura Jean Truman, an Atlanta-based queer writer, preacher and former chaplain.  “In June of 2021, we sat down in three days, built the website and wrote everything. We went on to our online platforms and invited people we knew were going through the same, and that’s how it started.”
Having gone through their deconstruction journeys by themselves, Ibukun and Anyachebelu wanted to create a welcoming place that didn’t exist at the beginning of their journeys.  They also wanted to make a home for the people living on the outskirts of acceptance in a highly religious country like Nigeria.
“Nigeria is a very religious country so most people are coming out of the trauma of that faith system. So we created a space for that healing,” Anyachebelu says. “Healing in community feels safer.”
Nigeria has three main religions: Christianity, Islam and Traditional Religion. Of these, Christianity and Islam are the most popular and everything else, including traditional religion is mostly frowned upon. Last year, Mubarak Bala, a self identified atheist was sentenced to 24 years in prison for “blaspheming Islam” after being in detention since 2020.
This harsh blow on religious objection makes the space the Table community provides even more poignant. Today, the online community has about 95 members. Most of the growth has been organic and has come as a result of the connectivity from social media and word-of-mouth referrals. Anyone can join their WhatsApp or Geneva groups through their Instagram account. The community is hosted on these three platforms: Instagram, WhatsApp and Geneva.
Each The Table Community member cherishes the community for different reasons but it all cuts across having a space with people who share similar religious experiences and a desire for critical conversations.
The community usually holds online gatherings on Sunday evenings of every month on Geneva; there is always a theme for every month, which guides the discussions as people share their experiences.  The community is a fellowship where different people with different points of view and different spiritual backgrounds meet to tackle issues important to their moral and spiritual growth.
The Table Community is now transitioning to new activities. They held their first physical event in May 2022 and they are currently running a new speaker series where they invite people to talk about finding self, deconstructing theology and growing spiritually outside religious walls.
Daniel, one of the members of The Table Community, says that the objective and nuanced conversations they have is what attracted him to the group in the first place. “Every time I had to express an opinion, I had to do it through a certain lens and filter to avoid upsetting religious sensitivities. I had to find an accepting and open-minded community,” he says.
Daniel was first introduced to the community in 2021 by a work colleague who was a member. “At the meeting, they were talking about sexuality. And it was weird to see a religious group talk about sexuality through such a  different lens. It attracted me,” he recalls.
He remembers a thread on Twitter where a guy was on a bus and some Christians, recognizing their worship as default, began to pray. He didn’t join in the prayer and began getting funny stares. Afterwards, he decided to pray traditionally; he muttered their religious prayers and incantations. After he finished, a woman that was praying with the Christians hissed and said something nasty in Igbo. This, for Daniel, was a clear example of how anything different from the religious norms is seen as something to pity or frown upon. Yet, Christianity, one of the most practiced religions in the world, intersects with a lot of society structures, policies and lifelines that it shouldn’t have to.
“In religion, highly educated people forcibly suppress their intelligence and training to believe in certain things. But people in this group [The Table Community] tend not to do this. They kind of marry it,” Daniel asserts.
However, Daniel doesn’t consider The Table Community as only just a safe space. ”I look at it as a space where people are beginning to ask questions and I can say certain things I won’t say in public because I consider it less painful for the people in [The] Table Community than the everyday person outside,” he says.
This encapsulates the entire concept that Anyachebelu and Ibukun are trying to create with the community. “Other spaces tell you what to believe or construct your theology for you,” Anyachebelu says. “We believe we’re a priesthood of believers. Nobody is above anyone. We’re just sharing what we know as truth, what we’ve come to understand and trying to understand.”
“No one here has a shared belief. People are coming from all these different thought processes and mindsets to learn from each other. It’s interesting to just learn and unlearn. There’s this Jewish thing called Midrash where people sit around and debate things all day. They don’t necessarily conclude but learn from the experience of the conversation. And that’s what we’re trying to do here.”
Today, the fellowships with The Table Community have changed the way Daniel relates with other people around him and how he even approaches relationships. “My parents were not fanatical but my mum is emotionally connected to her faith so there’s a limit to what I can say,” he says. He once lost a romantic relationship due to his spiritual beliefs. However, through the different connections and interactions with the different members of the community, the topic of religion is something he now even anticipates when meeting someone new.
“Most people are religious so it’s difficult for me to find personal connections because sooner or later it becomes a problem,” he says. For friendships, Daniel employs a new tactic. “I used to avoid these conversations but I noticed that eventually, a conversation will go in that direction. So now I tackle them as soon as they come up. I prefer the animosity and shock to come in the beginning stages.”
Maro Okiti also felt a strain in a couple of her relationships after she shared her views about Christianity. “Normally I talk about social issues and feminism on my Instagram. I was posting resources and one of them was called Queer Theology. They dragged me. They said I can’t serve two masters and that I was leading people astray,” she says. “I was so triggered because I genuinely felt I was doing a good thing. But people felt that queer people finding a space in God was provocative and that the only way they can do it was through a homophobic lens. My friends insulted me and I started to question if I was wrong. So that was painful.”
“I remember one incident where I posted about not believing in submitting to my spouse. Then one of my friends posted that feminists can’t have a godly marriage. And I just knew that post was concerning mine. People were taking digs at me.”
Despite these incidents, through her interactions with other members of The Table Community, Okiti admits that she has grown and evolved in regards to her faith.
“I’ve come to the point where I realize who I’m talking to are not the orthodox Christians or the people who don’t need to question dogma,” she says. For Okiti, the people she seeks are those who are inquisitive and refuse to be held down by societal and religious constructs.
Edited and Reviewed by: PK Cross, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.

created: January 29, 2023

author: Edikan Umoh


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“Tag the trees”: The disappearing Kenyan Language being saved with afforestation - Minority Africa
Shadrack Omuka
March 2, 2024
A stroll through Mukogodo Forest in Laikipia County, Kenya’s largest national and dry forest reserve covering landmass of over 30,000 hectares, reveals a sight: metallic tags adorning the trees, each bearing two words. One word is in English, while the other is its translation into Yaakuntee, the indigenous language of the Yiaku people.
The tags, with the English word ‘Elephant,’ and its counterpart in Yaakunte ‘Sogomei,’ are an initiative of Ann Naibini and Juliana Kageni, sisters working hard to revive their dying Yaakuntee language and traditions. They are the grandchildren of one of the three remaining elders of the Yaakunte tribe.
“The words are in English and their translations are in the Yaakunte language to make it easier for the young learners to understand,” says Kageni.
In the year 2020, Yaakunte was declared among the critically endangered languages in Kenya by UNESCO.
The Yiaku people were a traditional hunter-gatherer community that migrated from Southern Ethiopia to Mukogodo Forest more than a century ago. They settled in Laikipia County, Mt Kenya region. The Yiaku resemble the Rendille and the Somali people living in northern Kenya.
Migrating away from the forest in 1977 after the government banned all kinds of hunting in the forest affected the community’s way of life. Since then, Yiaku people have been losing their cultural identity to the neighbouring Maasai community and other tribes like the Kikuyu. Today, many of them cannot communicate in their own language.
“[We have] been assimilated by the neighbouring Maa community, therefore [slowly] killing away our traditions and language,” says Naibini.
Her sister, Kageni, 30, a teacher by profession is using her skills and knowledge to revive her forefathers’ language by teaching the community members how to write and pronounce the language.
Kageni has a total of 390 learners in her classroom consisting of adults and children. There are 100 adults and 290 children in her class. She conducts her weekly classes in Mukogodo village, near Mukogodo forest. According to Kageni, on average, a person can speak or write Yaakunte after six months of learning.
”As a teacher, I ensure that by the end of the week, at least [the] majority of the attendees can add a Yaakunte word by knowing how to pronounce it and maybe how to write for those who can write,” says Kageni.
Kageni further explains that the higher the number of children who are willing to learn, the greater the chances of the revival of the language in the future. It is similar to the sisters’ own experience where they developed an interest in learning Yaakunte while living with their grandfather, Lerima Letiko, following the death of their parents at a tender age.
“Children are the pioneers of future generations of any community, so when we see them coming here in large numbers we see and we believe that our traditions and language will be revived very soon as this shows some interest in young people which will be transferred to the many generations to come,” Kageni says.
This mirrors a similar sentiment shared by their grandfather Letiko, who is approximately 110 years old and is now the pioneer of Mukogodo Location Resource Center, a community-based organisation championing the revival of Yaakunte and conservation of Yiaku traditions.
Since leaving the forest over four decades ago, the elder looks back with a sense of satisfaction on the progress made.
”Living outside the forest really affects our traditions and the way of life,” says Letiko, who remained after the Yaiku people left the forest in 1977.
He notes that thanks to the efforts of Naibini and Kageni, some people have started to understand words in Yaakunte and he firmly believes that as time goes on more people will be able to have conversations in Yaakunte.
“None of my sons can speak the language but I applaud my granddaughters for learning the language and now teaching others,” he says.
According to local historian and linguist Peter Chamasuet, many young people think that using English and Swahili is a way of modernising but this mentality has a huge impact on the local languages.
Chamasuet believes that Yaakunte is not the first language to vanish. “Many have gone and many are yet to follow due to the way of life people are embracing foreign languages,” he says.  “When Yiaku found that their numbers were declining, they decided to intermarry with [the] neighbouring Maa community and accepted to be assimilated and this has really affected their traditions.”
But today this story is changing. The classes and the tags in the forest are turning the tide.
According to Kageni, people herding livestock or collecting firewood from the forest also have an opportunity to learn the language without necessarily attending classroom lessons.
“We’ve decided to tag the trees because not all people will be able to attend classes,” says Kageni, “and I’m sure many access the forest while herding their livestock in the forest or collecting firewood or just touring the forest they will be able to learn the language while there.”
Beyond reviving the language, this initiative has also taken on the mantle of reviving the forest that was originally home to the Yiaku people.
In 2010, the Yiaku community under the guidance of Letiko and supported by Yiaku Laikipiak Trust, embarked on an initiative to plant more trees. This initiative has already planted about 600 tree seedlings in Mukogodo Forest from their tree nursery and has pinned the tags with different names.
So far, more than 300 trees have been tagged. Their target is to plant, tag and transfer to the indigenous forest more than 3,000 trees annually.
In this exercise, well-wishers have donated more than 50,000 tree seed balls and in the coming years, they will ensure that all these trees are tagged and planted inside Mukogodo Forest.
“I am optimistic that one day, the Yiaku community will be like other tribes that enjoy and are proud of using their language,” says Kageni.
Edited/Reviewed by: Patricia Kisesi, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.

author: Shadrack Omuka


text: Take Action - Minority Africa


text:
Tanzania’s crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights: “The government is making [us] hide” - Minority Africa
Mzizi Dawa
August 3, 2023
On April 22, 2023, Milembe Suleiman, a 43-year-old Tanzanian lesbian, was brutally killed and mutilated in a suspected homophobic attack. Suleiman’s death has its roots in a long history of discrimination, which for her started with getting arrested in December 2017 for proposing to her girlfriend.
“She was married to a Rwandan man, but they separated due to abuse. She later married another man and had a child with him. They also separated, and she continued with her life,” Paulina Seleman, Suleiman’s sister, says about Suleiman’s challenges in the pursuit of a life true to her identity.
Her death also closely follows the widely publicised homophobic investigation by Catherine Kahabi. An investigation that received the endorsement of Dr Harrison Mwakyembe, a former minister and representative at the East African Legislative Assembly.
As a result of her investigation, Kahabi submitted a list of those involved in corrupting the nation’s youth: the names and contacts of people advocating for LGBTQ+ rights in Tanzania. One of the names on the list was an American, who Kahabi asserted used toothpaste and perfumes with pride colours to induce homosexuality by increasing feminine hormones in men.
Only two days before Suleiman’s death, a Tanzanian court ordered the invasive examination of the anuses of Noel Ndale Mushi, Kelvini Maliki Ngao, and David Brayan Johnson to determine if they engaged in homosexual acts. The court order is one of the extreme measures Tanzania has been taking against LGBTQ+ people.
It is part of the state’s sanctioned margnialization and oppression against LGBTQ+ Tanzanians that traces back to 2016 when Paul Makonda, Dar es Salaam’s Regional Commissioner, launched an anti-gay surveillance force amidst other human rights abuses that saw him get banned from the US.
In April, Muharami Hassan Nayonga was sentenced to 30 years in prison after a court convicted him of violating the country’s sodomy law and a month earlier, the women’s wing of the ruling party called for the castration of homosexuals.
Due to the increased dangers of being queer in Tanzania, Soma, who is in his late 20s, has been forcing himself to become straight.
“It was easy before 2015,” he says, “There was some freedom then. Even though we could be judged wrong by society, law enforcement was not involved.”
Beyond Dar es Salaam, police intimidation contributes to the feeling of uncertainty a lot of LGBTQ+ individuals face.
In May, Wilbroad Mutafungwa, the Mwanza Regional Police Commander, reported the arrest of various individuals engaged in same-sex relations across the region. One of these women was Salome Rashidi, who was arrested after reports from her neighbours.
Two others, Ismer Abdalah and Jeremiah Elkana were also arrested for wearing female clothing.
“I fear trying to find a partner because it may turn out to be a misfortune,” Soma says.
The misfortune Soma talks about could range from being arrested by law enforcers pretending to be queer or heterosexual men who blackmail gay men, a practice that is widespread in other parts of the continent such as Nigeria and Egypt.
Badibadi, a bisexual man, shares the same fear as he knows someone who was recently blackmailed and had to pay $3,026.75.
Despite recently divorcing his wife, Badibadi is hesitant to openly express his sexuality.
“I am a bottom, I love it that way, but I won’t show my sexuality,” he says, adding that he still tries seeking partners, but is more conscious.
“Living without frequent hookups makes me think I am wrong and feel guilty, especially as the government continues to make LGBTQ people hide,” he says.
A recent government crackdown on websites and social media accounts that promote LGBTQ+ rights, has further isolated the community from the online groups that were used by the community to meet and mingle, forcing them into public spaces.
“I use Grindr, but it does not have as many people as we used to have in a Telegram group,” says Bone, a gay man in his early 40s, who lost access to the Telegram group he used as a result of the crackdown.
“It is risky. We are just aware of the famous people who are getting arrested. There may be some other people arrested or killed without us knowing,” Bone says. “I have to show only masculine traits to be safe, so I start by having stories about LGBTQ before mentioning I am looking for a relationship.”
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Mzizi Dawa is a human rights defender. He has strong biblical knowledge and he likes discussing contemporary issues from all perspectives including religious perspectives.

created: August 3, 2023

author: Mzizi Dawa


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The 2022 IPCC report is grim. So also is its scarcity of African authors. - Minority Africa
Ray Mwareya
August 23, 2022
Humanity has crossed Code-Red. This is how UN Secretary-General Mr. António Guterres described the 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 6th Assessment Report. The report paints a future of catastrophic heat, floods, sea rises, droughts, and irrepressible fires.
Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, very few African authors feature in the final report.
I have taken the time to analyze the fantastic IPCC report and have no qualms about its sobering warnings. However, I couldn’t help but spot one disappointment: only 27 African authors were part of the report’s total haul of 337 authors!
There’s no prize for guessing who monopolized the authorship. True to form, Western scientific authors, dominate the list with Canada, the USA, and the UK gobbling the bylines.
A visitor from Mars would be forgiven if they thought that climate change is a bigger worry in North America, Europe, and Australia and less of a thing in Africa. The West’s monopoly of the climate narrative flies in the face of two major realities: that the West is primarily culpable for driving the climate crisis due to relentless fossil fuel burning in the last 100 years, and that climate impact is already hitting Africa—‘the least’ culpable continent—hardest.
First, as the report reveals, the climate change research in the North African countries, in the so-called Maghreb, is the most underfunded in the world despite the region being one of the most vulnerable to incoming superheat and droughts.
At most, only 3.8% of global climate research funding is spent on African topics. Seventy-eight percent of global climate research funding has gone to researchers in the US and Europe, leaving climate researchers in a highly water-stressed North African region grappling with less than 4%.
This climate research money-grab by the US and Europe would be crudely laughable if it was not tragic.
The lack of funding for African scientists has wide-reaching implications. It impoverishes the development of accurate, localized climate models and early warning systems. More than half of African urban citizens live in dense coastal cities like Alexandria, Lagos and Durban. As the climate crisis deepens, sea level rises will be devastating. But little climate funding has been directed toward ensuring resilient coastal African cities. This, already, has a deadly on-the-ground impact in Africa. For instance, my report in the European Geosciences Union revealed that European nations can foresee deadly climate phenomena like cyclones due to superior forecasting technology while African nations limp on, blindly, into harm’s way. This was due to my dismay that in 2019, on the onset of Tropical Cyclone Idai (the worst weather disaster ever in the southern hemisphere), the Météo-France weather office on La Réunion started to watch the cyclone as it moved from an elongated circulation in the Indian Ocean. In addition, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) in the USA had a front-row vision of the tropical cyclone formation. None of this information was relayed in time to Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
This is the human cost of Africa getting by with little climate research money and her scientific authors cast to the margins of crucial IPCC reports.
Secondly, the inclusion of just a few African scientific authors in the final IPCC report is vintage double standards. Western Europe and North America are the chief culprits behind spewing greenhouse gas emissions. The US has spewed more than 509 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide since 1850 and is the chief culprit responsible for the biggest portion of historical emissions. In contrast, sub-Saharan Africa’s contribution to greenhouse gasses in 2019 was a minuscule 0.7 metric tons per capita, the lowest on earth. Yet, Africa is the continent most vulnerable to climate shocks under scenarios that predict global temperatures to rise above the feared 1.5 degree Celsius red line. Why the IPCC report minimizes the scientific authorship from such an at-risk continent is baffling.
The funding and scientific authorship of climate change modelling must be democratized to fairly include Africa’s scientific authors because they speak for a continent that is going to suffer the biggest climate injustice.
Failure to democratize climate change scientific authorship leaves us with no option here in Africa. Our cynical definition of the global urgency behind the climate drive is that the earth needs to be saved because the exploitation of it has reached a point where it disrupts the entitled privileges of white Westerners.
Edited by Cassandra Roxburgh and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Ray Mwareya is an international affairs journalist contributing to Al Jazeera, Buzzfeed, China Dialogue, Fast Company, Reuters, The Financial Times, and a dozen other publications. He is fascinated by the partisan political-financial private interests surrounding the climate debate.

author: Ray Mwareya


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The app bringing affirming and discreet healthcare to LGBTQ+ Ugandans - Minority Africa
minorityafrica.co
February 10, 2022
In the East African country where homosexuality is illegal, access by LGBTQ+ persons to healthcare remains low in part because of actual or perceived homophobia among health workers.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Editorial.

created: February 10, 2022


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“The country has rejected me”: The ‘Nigerians’ born and bred in Cameroon, yet not Cameroonians - Minority Africa
Shuimo Trust
July 27, 2023
Stella Ogunsemore, 31, was born in the small island community of Mbomo, 20 minutes away from Kangue Island. 50 years ago, Ogunsemore’s parents migrated from Nigeria and settled in Mbomo. While the mother of three sees herself as a Cameroonian — given that she was born and raised there — Cameroon doesn’t recognize her as such.
“I was born and bred in Cameroon but I don’t have a Cameroonian nationality,” Ogunsemore, who is also a seamstress, tells Minority Africa.
She has made several attempts to obtain Cameroonian nationality but has failed.
“I have compiled my documents several times and dropped them in Buea to get a nationality as a Cameroonian but I have never succeeded.”
Because of this, Ogunsemore has to reserve 150,000frs (about $250) of her small income to acquire a residence permit every two years.
“From time to time, Cameroon’s forces of law and order visit our community and if you are caught without a residence permit, you will be arrested and you will pay a lot of money to gain your freedom,” she says.
At the time of the interview, Ogunsemore could not travel to any nearby town to get supplies for her business since her residence permit had expired.
“I am still raising money to acquire a new residence permit. I pay people to go to town to get supplies for my business for fear of being arrested for non-possession of residence permit if I am to go myself.”
Cameroon shares a long border with Nigeria and is among the countries hosting a large population of Nigerian diasporas in Africa.
Since the independence of the two brotherly nations in the 60s, they have enjoyed peaceful bilateral relations until the 80s and 90s when a border dispute over the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula broke out. This was however settled amicably by the International Court of Justice in 2002 and right up till now, the two countries have maintained peaceful ties.
Nigeria hosts over 66,000 Cameroonian refugees fleeing the armed conflict in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon and about 4 million Nigerians live in Cameroon, an estimated 109,000 of them being refugees fleeing from the Boko Haram hostilities.
Some of these Nigerians were born in Cameroon and have lived all their lives in Cameroon but in most cases haven’t gained Cameroonian nationality despite their wish to be Cameroonian citizens.
The story of Ogunsemore is not any different from that of 45-year-old Adeniyi Jones. After several attempts to get Cameroonian nationality, the father of four decided to give up on his ambitions and accepted his fate.
“I see myself as a Cameroonian, though I don’t have ‘papers’ to back that up. I have tried severally to acquire the Cameroonian nationality but unfortunately, it has never been successful,” says Adeniyi.
He laments that the procedure of acquiring nationality has been made unnecessarily long and costly.
“I guess they don’t want us to ever acquire Cameroonian nationality.”
One of the provisions of law No. 68-LF-3 of 11th June 1968, which spells out the procedure of acquiring Cameroonian citizenship, gives foreign nationals the right to acquire Cameroonian citizenship if they have been living in Cameroon for at least five years, have no criminal records as well as health issues. While Adeniyi insists he fulfills these conditions, the dream of getting Cameroonian citizenship is still a far-fetched reality for him.
Vevanje Cedric, a paralegal who works with Spiral Solicitor Law Firm in Buea, says it is comparatively easy for foreigners with deep pockets to get Cameroonian citizenship given that the process is costly especially if you were to hire the services of a legal expert to follow up the process.
“I was following up the process of acquiring Cameroonian citizenship for a certain Nigerian lady but could not continue because she didn’t have the necessary finances to proceed with the process,” says Vevanje.
Another hindrance to acquiring Cameroon citizenship, Vevanje continues “is that some foreign nationals applying for Cameroonian citizenship are not willing to give up the other citizenship. This becomes impossible because Cameroon doesn’t accept dual nationality.”
While the process of getting Cameroonian nationality remains cumbersome for foreign nationals, it is fairly easy for women, unlike men. According to Article 17 of the Cameroon nationality code, a foreign woman who marries a Cameroonian may acquire Cameroonian nationality based on her express declaration which takes effect on the date of marriage.
Dodoirety Jennette, 30, gained Cameroonian citizenship when she got married to a Cameroonian. Dodoirety, who is a teacher, confesses that she didn’t get married to her Cameroonian sweetheart as a means of getting Cameroonian nationality but she is very happy that she found love and nationality at the same time.
“Before getting married to my husband, I tried severally to obtain Cameroonian citizenship without success. I am very happy that I am now a Cameroonian citizen,” says Dodoirety as she flaunts her Cameroonian identity card, which she now refers to as her Green Card.
The challenges of Nigerians in these island communities are not only limited to the level of acquiring Cameroonian nationality. Chief Eteli, a fisherman and also the Quarter Head of Ijaw Mabeta, a small Island community on the southwest coast of Cameroon says they suffer constant harassment from Cameroon marine forces that extort money from them regularly. Ijaw Mabeta is inhabited by Nigerians chiefly from the Ijaw ethnic group.
“To avert harassment from Cameroon marine forces, all the fishermen in my community have agreed to pay some money (XAF 6000, about 6$) to them every week,” Chief Eteli tells Minority Africa. This is aside from the money they pay to the local council as fishermen. This weekly payment, according to Chief Eteli, is affecting their incomes which have been dropping continuously as a result of poor catch.
These island communities also lack basic public utilities like pipe-borne water, electricity, and many more. Furthermore, inhabitants most of whom are engaged in artisanal fishing live in fear: fear that their community will one day be submerged in the Atlantic Ocean as a result of climate change.
Today, Ogunsemore considers herself a stateless person.
She says, “The country I consider mine has rejected me and I have never considered going back to Nigeria for permanent residence.”
Edited by Caleb Okereke, PK Cross, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Shuimo Trust is a Cameroon-based journalist with a BSc in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Buea, Cameroon. He has 5 years of progressive experience as a journalist. His interests cut across environment, politics, and entertainment. He has served as editor-in-chief of the Cameroon-based environmental newspaper, Green Vision Newspaper. He is also the Founder of a political and culture blog known as Shuimo News. Shuimo Trust has also served as a communication officer for one of the leading conservation organizations in Cameroon, the Environment and Rural Development Foundation (ERuDeF). He has also written for the leading pan African Newspaper, The Continent.

author: Shuimo Trust


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The cracks in LGBTQ+ legislation in Mauritius - Minority Africa
minorityafrica.co
February 25, 2023
Written by: Alisson Bezuidenhout and Produced by: Jamie Intwari
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Editorial.

created: February 25, 2023


text:
The ever-changing lens on gender diversity in South Africa - Minority Africa
Saif Arbee
May 25, 2022
“‘If we had to make ourselves, we would all have been perfect men – or women.’ When we got into town, they spotted two of their friends who had been in exactly the same position but now have had their sex change operations. They are sisters Muriel and Sharon (formerly, Peterson) and were on their way to buy air tickets.”- Drum Post, September 1965
Without digging into the archives, it’s easy to believe that this era is the first time in history that LGBTQIA+ visibility in South Africa is making headlines. Growing up without elders and icons that represented me, I latched onto any semblance of diversity that I found in the Western media.
As activists, archivists and researchers work to reframe history, audiences like ourselves are astounded to discover the generations of gender diverse South Africans, who were always a trending topic in the media. From pre-colonial records to Apartheid and Post-Apartheid South Africa, the media’s lens on queerness and transness is everchanging. What is a constant is the existence and resilience of people of diverse gender and sexual identities.
Age-old  biases that claim LGBTQIA+ experiences are ‘un-African,’ Western innovations are far past their expiration date. Earlier this year, Minority Africa’s Cassandra Roxburgh exposed the colonial influences of the constructs of transphobia and homophobia, which continue to prevail in contemporary society.
While these biases have been long-standing in South African culture, the existence of gender diverse people in historical media also points out a societal tolerance and interest.
South African archival evidence of same-sex relationships from pre-colonial times is hard to find, partly due to the way data is categorized or uncategorized. On a quest for evidence of gender and sexuality diversity in pre-colonial times, author of Hungochani: The History of a Dissident Sexuality in Southern Africa, Marc Epprecht hunted between an array of records on Shona culture.
In a 2013 seminar for the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), Epprecht describes the treasure he discovered in his research: “I stumbled upon a hidden gem – documented proof of the first known use of the word nkotshane more than 100 years ago (from which today’s word for homosexuality in chiShona derives), and transcripts of trials where African men speak to us from generations past to tell of their love for each other.”
Across the African continent and  throughout history, gender and sexual diversity have existed without being labelled under the same constrictive language that we employ today. While it’s encouraging to think of the endless pool of evidence in the archives that confirm the rich LGBTQIA+ history in South Africa, it often poses a challenge to researchers like Epprecht, since little of the evidence is categorized or indexed.
Before the establishment of criminal labour systems, same-sex relationships were not criminalized in South Africa. As colonial rule was established, laws developed, becoming increasingly prejudiced towards queer people.
As Apartheid laws progressed, the atmosphere of homoantagonism became more rampant. In 1966, the South African police force raided a gay party in Forest Town, Johannesburg, serving as the impetus to create the first explicitly anti-homosexual legislation.
Author of the acclaimed book Defiant Desire: Gay and Lesbian Lives in South Africa, Mark Gevisser’s work reveals another event that year that contributed to the increasingly queer antagonistic policy changes. In the book, he explains, “On a weekend in January 1966, police arrested nine men for masquerading as women and participating in ‘indecent activity.’ The raids and arrests at this time had gained public and media attention, further contributing to colonial-enforced gender and sexuality biases.’
Three years after the Forest Town Raid, the Immorality Amendment  Act, 1969 was put in place. Featuring an explicitly anti-homosexual agenda, Section 20A, commonly known as the ‘men at a party clause’ remained in place until 1998, at which point, the Act was ruled unconstitutional.
While the LGBTQIA+ community in South Africa has always included a spectrum of diverse identities, the framing of the Act was centered on cisheteropatriarchal biases that further enforced rigid gender identities. In reality, all the ‘men at the party’ could have included a spectrum of non-male attendees, including non-binary people and women who were misgendered as male.
Further, Section 20A of the Immorality Amendment Act outlined prohibitions for ‘males’ only, highlighting the erasure of gender and sexual diversity in legislative framing.
During the 1940s, District 6 (or District Six) in Cape Town was a flourishing hub of culture that housed diverse people from across the Asian and African diasporas. The close-knit community was normalized to gender non-conformity and sexual diversity, with residents living beside LGBTQIA+ in the neighbourhood. Queer couples lived in partnership and were recognized as respected members of the community.
The Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action (GALA) Queer Archive has extensively demonstrated the gender and sexuality diversity in District 6 through exhibitions and educational programmes that bring the archives to life. The 2018 public unveiling of their archives exposed the social visibility of gender non-conforming people in both the media and public gaze. Their ongoing acclaimed exhibition, Kewpie: Daughter of District 6 features a collection of images that document the life of a gender non-conforming hairdresser in the 1950s, stirring up media attention and stealing the hearts of contemporary audiences across the world.
The images illustrate the illustrious and vibrant experiences of diversity in District 6. To see LGBTQIA+ people living in their truth in the 1950s was surprising to witness in black and white. It served as evidence that we have always been here, despite the common notions that this generation is the first to live so freely.
Stumbling across the Kewpie exhibition was the catalyst that retriggered my obsession with archival research. As a queer, trans non-binary journalist and artist, I was touched to connect with a generation of elders, expressing queer joy and resilience amidst the violence of the Apartheid state. I quickly noticed how language has changed significantly over the decades since I had become normalized to western language and contemporary gender discourse. While non-binary people certainly existed in District Six, there was no fixed term to describe them. Language ranged from nicknames to derogatory terms such as ‘moffie.’ Even the derogatory terms were reclaimed by the community themselves, launching them into headlines and iconicism.
It’s difficult to weigh the cultural and political impact of The Drum Magazine in South African history. At the height of apartheid, the first issue of The African Drum was published in 1951, building an international legacy for African journalism and birthing the careers of literary heroes such as Nat Nakasa.
As I flipped through The Drum archives at The National Research Library in Cape Town, I was astounded to see how the publication was used to connect South Africans to the Afro Diasporas in the USA, UK and Europe. With an established international readership and a network of pen pals  abroad, the publication both educated readers and helped them establish political coalition and allyship.
While many contemporary readers may not realize the cultural significance of a Drum feature in the 1960s, it was such a cultural centerpiece to the Afrodiasporas that Muhammad Ali wrote for The Drum on three occasions. The Drum was the pinnacle of media coverage during its era, and without fail, LGBTQIA+ people were making headlines too.
My jaw dropped when I saw Kewpie in The Drum Magazine. I nudged my colleague, “She really was famous. Kewpie’s legacy expanded beyond District Six.” I wondered if Muhammad Ali saw Kewpie in The Drum Magazine and whether she was networking with pen pals  abroad.
A Drum article titled ‘Heartache behind the frills and fun’ was published in April 1968. While the story offers a necessary platform to highlight the plight of trans exclusion within communities, the language and framing can be seen as derogatory and unsavory to contemporary audiences. The introductory excerpt of the story reads,
“All this results in 99 percent of the Cape Town moffies living away from home. In small upcountry towns with limited populations, moffies are few and attract derision. The only recourse is to get away to Cape Town and seek obscurity by emerging into the mass. There they find understanding in the company of the local transvestite clique, stepping smoothly into their established odd-sex community.”
The framing of the trans community is jarringly problematic to readers who are familiar with contemporary gender discourse. While derogatory terms may have been reclaimed by LGBTQIA+ people at the time, the framing of trans people as obscure is a microcosm of the type of media representation gender diverse people experienced in the media during this era.
Caption: This is “Joan” and “Sonia”. They are misfits in ordinary society, mocked at, maligned. They are men who feel, think, act, dress like women, and so are insulted, ridiculed. “Please,” they simply say. “We can’t help the way we feel. Blame God, who made us, if you must.”
The title and caption of this story and image employ an editorial tactic referred to as sensationalism, which seeks to excite the audience through wording and framing. It’s clear that Drum Magazine pays homage to the LGBTQIA+ community in its efforts to offer a consistent platform for underrepresented issues of marginalized people, including transantagonism.
However, without exposure to the necessary gender diversity reporting tools or established industry standards around reporting on marginalized people, journalists throughout the ages often reiterate violence against the same community they are trying to represent. By labeling them as misfits and misgendering them in the framing, the article creates a spectacle of their transness rather than framing the focus on the obscurity of transphobia.
Even more astoundingly, this type of representation did not die out in the 1960s, as contemporary journalists continue to deadname, misgender and cause trans erasure to their sources in the hopes of visibility. With the modern addition of social media, newfound  vectors of misrepresentation of queer/trans people are found online. While many might argue that the issues of misgendering, transantagonism and dysphoria affect queer/trans people as a minority population, these systems have a chokehold on everyone including cisgender people.
Platforms like Twitter have been used to reinforce binarist antagonism, creating guidelines of what a ‘real’ woman looks like. Just last month, a heated gender-related attack arose and trended on South African Twitter, surrounding an up-and-coming Amapiano DJ who has been making waves across the world. A cisgender woman and ally to the LGBTQIA+ community, Uncle Waffles spoke out about the antagonism she received about her body type. Antagonistic Twitter users questioned her gender assignment and made remarks about her physique. She responded in a tweet, “You can’t always have something to say. I’m a proud ally of the trans community, always have been. Yall, without fail will always have something to say.”
The framing of gender in this twitter debate highlights how contemporary South African media is still hypercritical of gender across the spectrum, prescribing norms that lean towards cisheteropatriarchy. Using transness or gender non-conformity as a vehicle for antagonistic jokes and insults is a common way cisgender people experience glimpses of the system of cisheterosexuality failing them. Other common embodied examples include the experience of cisgender women who fear looking masculine by not shaving their legs, having biceps, etc. Over time, lenses in the media have been used to reinforce what a proper cisgender person must do to uphold their manhood or womanhood, placing an enormous amount of pressure to not appear trans and face public scrutiny.
Despite the ripple effects of these antagonisms on all identities under the spectrum and the constitutional pledges towards equality, South African media outlets still promote narratives that belittle the weight of erasure. In January this year, The Mail and Guardian published an Op-ed that sparked a wave of social responses. Titled ‘A weird new sort of fascism,’ the article criticizes the normalization of trans-inclusion, problematizing people who speak up for trans rights.
In a response piece, Zama Ndlovu explained the experience of engaging with this media for readers,
“When I saw Drew Forrest’s piece that argued that fighting against trans-exclusionary views is a type of fascism, I was appalled that this piece would run in my beloved M&G. By publishing a piece that equated the protection of human rights to fascism, this publication failed the trans community, its readers and our hard-fought Bill of Rights.”
While these historical archives may be more blatantly problematic to readers, contemporary journalists may be well versed with dialect and misuse terminology. A common example is when journalists introduce a non-binary person’s pronouns as “She uses they/them pronouns.” It’s easy to criticize a previous generation’s reporting on marginalized people because we are at a distance, however, it’s important to acknowledge that representation is relative and there is a lot of work to do in our own media depictions.
Before the end of apartheid, the first pride parade was held on October 13 1990 in Johannesburg. Four years later, apartheid ended  and a new constitution was formed. Since ‘the birth of the new South Africa,’ people across marginalized groups have raised questions about the legitimacy of the rainbow nation and an equal South Africa.
While laws created more allowance for LGBTQIA+ people to live freely, the legislation does not always lead to automatic changes in community stigmas. South African artists like Zanele Muholi have been building bodies of works for over a decade, establishing new modalities for queer South African representation on a global scale. While queer artists like Muholi have received accolades across the globe and are iconized in the West, South Africa still frequently ignores and oppresses gender minorities daily.
One example that gained media attention is the uproar over Jade September, who won her case to be transferred to a women’s prison. While at a glance the South African constitution advocates for equality for all people, many gaps excluding and marginalizing citizens like September. In her case, the legislative erasure led to her receiving violence and human rights violations, as she was forced to be in a male prison. In September 2019, the Equality Court of The Western Cape handed down a judgment that would impact the lives of trans-South Africans.
Lawyers For Human Rights reports, “In a ground-breaking judgment, the Court held that refusal to allow a transgender person to express their gender identity is unfair discrimination that violates both the right to equality and section 8 of the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act. The Court therefore ordered prison officials to allow Ms. September and others similarly placed to wear female underwear, keep her hair long and wear make-up. It also ordered officials to address her as a woman through the use of the female pronouns when referring to her. The Department of Correctional Services was also ordered to introduce transgender sensitivity training for current and new employees.”
This ruling highlights constitutional and legislative gaps that incite violence against trans and queer South African, and simultaneously points out the labour that is required from oppressed and marginalized groups to maintain their basic human rights. Undoubtedly, September was not the first woman that was wrongly placed in the male prison system. Her case shines a light on the innumerable and underreported number of people who quietly face antagonism under the blanket of erasure.
In 2017, The National Geographic Magazine released a special issue titled The Gender Revolution, highlighting trans and non-binary identities. The issue of this international publication circulated in South Africa as social media users reposted the covers and new-found rhetoric. Looking at the scale of gender diversity throughout history, it’s fair to say that framing a gender revolution as a 2017 concept employs a level of sensationalism. With a longstanding history of gender diversity in media, it is evident that gender is as ever-adapting as the lenses we frame it through. What’s evident is that queer and trans people have been making the headlines for a long time.
Whether erased, celebrated or sensationalized in the media, South Africans have been familiar with gender non conforming community members for all of history. From family members to neighbors and the icons we’ve come to know in each era, LGBTQIA+ people living in their truth have had a radical intergenerational effect on creating room for future generations to live with more freedom.
“Recently, three of them caused a sensation when they appeared in court, dressed in women’s clothes on charges of masquerading as women.” – Drum Post, September 1965.
This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Gender Justice Reporting Initiative.
Edited by Cassandra Roxburgh, PK Cross, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Saif Arbee is a multimedia artist and writer from Durban, South Africa. Their work expands across a vast array of mediums including journalism. Their passion for storytelling stems from their mission as a decolonial activist. They are currently based in Cape Town.

author: Saif Arbee


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The glitter and the grit: Inside Nigeria’s queer ballroom subculture - Minority Africa
Opeyemi Rasak-Oyadiran
May 11, 2024
When Countess Sasha Seduction, a Nigerian non-binary drag queen, got to attend their first ballroom experience, a 2022 Halloween ball in Lagos, Nigeria, it felt like a dream. This year, they got to attend two and were excited about how amazing the underground community was and the warmth that the space provided.
“As a drag queen, it gives me somewhere to be, to inspire people, to perform. As a queer person, it gives me a family and a safe space. We’re almost forced to live in fear all the time and the ballroom is just a fantasy island where everything doesn’t matter but the people you are with, who are [also] queer! [This] is important because we don’t have that in Nigeria.”
The global ballroom scene can be traced back to the 1960s in the United States. It was a form of refuge for African American and Latino drag queens, and trans-women who were often ostracised from mainstream society due to their gender identity and sexuality. They also faced racial discrimination within white-dominated balls – so much so that they had to wear pale make-up to make them look lighter-skinned and increase their chances of winning competitions. These minorities eventually found refuge in Harlem, where they gathered in ballrooms to organise and compete as a way to express their identities and find acceptance. The ballroom competitions were a way for the participants to showcase their talents in various categories, including modelling, voguing, and dance.
However, this was by no means the birth of ‘drag’ as a concept. One of the first known persons self-described as ‘a queen of drag’ was William Dorsay Swann. A black man born on a plantation before the Civil War and freed under the Emancipation Proclamation, Swann threw elaborate balls in Washington DC with many other black men participating. Swann’s balls were raided multiple times and usually ended up with him and others being arrested, making him one of the earliest arrests on record for female impersonation in the United States. When he was arrested in 1896, wrongfully convicted, and sentenced for running a brothel, he became the first American on record to protest and seek legal action against the discrimination and criminalisation of queer people. Even after Swann retired from the drag and ballroom scene years later in his old age, his brother Daniel J. Swann was still a part of this community.
The ballroom scene has since evolved from a form of entertainment into a cultural phenomenon and subculture across the world, transcending borders and customs. As a safe space for queer people, it is significant as a space for self-expression without fear of prejudice or discrimination; it is also a place where members of the LGBTQI+ can come together and celebrate themselves.
In Nigeria where same-sex marriage is criminalised and the larger part of society is openly discriminatory and violent to queer folk, the underground ballroom scene provides a community for queer Nigerians to discreetly gather to express themselves through dance, fashion and language. While ballroom in Nigeria was quite a thing in the early 2000s, the passing of the same-sex prohibition act in 2014 which prohibits the meetings of gay clubs, societies, and organisations, saw its vibrancy clamped down.
Young queer Nigerians are now actively trying to rekindle ballrooms, albeit inconspicuously. Fola Francis, a Nigerian transwoman and activist told Minority Africa that the underground ballroom scene in Lagos was born out of the need for queer people to have spaces where they could not only feel safe but also have fun.
“That was why I threw my own ball [in 2022], it was an attempt to create a space for self-expression in our way. At first, the balls set out to mirror the New York ballroom scene but over time, it became amped up with that Nigerian extra-ness. Now, it’s like an Owambe party infused with actual ballroom. Attendees come to the venue with their outfits in their bags, and there are also changing rooms for them to get dressed and get their make-up done,” she said.
Francis passed away last year.
Participants and attendees at these balls are thoroughly vetted to avoid the events from being penetrated by kitos or even law enforcement officers.
One of the most significant aspects of the ballroom scene is the way it has influenced fashion and style. The fashion of ballroom is known for being ‘out there’ – its extravagance and creativity, big hairstyles, and outfits that feature bold colours, glitter, and intricate designs – helping many LGBTQIA+ individuals to stand out and express themselves in a society that can be hostile to their lifestyle. This vibrant fashion has had a major impact on the fashion industry, with many designers drawing inspiration from ballroom culture.
Nigerian designers like Oshobor, Manell and Taofeeq Abólárìnwá Yahaya are boldly making space for queerness in their designs. While this is not apparent in most everyday apparel, it’s a sight that is colourfully on display by attendees during fashion events like the Lagos Fashion Week and the GTB Fashion Week. Men, women, and non-binary people can be found expressing themselves in styles, colours and cuts that might be usually too outlandish or found questionable in their regular lives. There is also a safe space for queer people who do not necessarily want their sense of style to flashily draw attention but simply look to the fashion of Nigerian designers like Emerie Udiahgebi and Vangei for the inclusion that society denies them.
Vicwonder, Nigerian activist and head stylist of House Vicwonder finds fashion to be a tool of expression and activism for queer people and one of liberation for him. “Fashion allows me to feel things and so if I’m feeling a feminine energy, I can channel that through my fashion, vis-à-vis masculine energy. The universe thrives on these energies and so I thrive on it because I don’t shy away from any of it.”
Language is also an important part of ballroom culture. The ballroom community has seen a chunk of its vocabulary transition into mainstream culture. In May, X (formerly known as Twitter) was awash with variants of a ‘serving cunt’ trend which had multiple parties (irrespective of their sexual orientation and gender identities) interacting with it. Phrases like “throwing shade,” “slay,” “eat,” “mother” and “reading” all have their origins in drag queen competitions and interactions between different houses but have now become common parlance, thanks to ballroom culture. This unique language, which might have been adopted by many who do not understand its significance, has helped to bring the community together and create a sense of belonging among its members.
The ballroom scene represents a cultural affirmation of the queer identity and has provided a platform for self-expression and creativity. The origins of ballroom in the United States are rooted in marginalisation and a search for acceptance. Similarly, the ballroom scene in Nigeria has emerged as a response to discrimination and violence against the queer community. As the ballroom scene continues to evolve and gain momentum in Nigeria, it represents hope for the queer community in a society that can be hostile to their existence. It is a celebration of individuality, self-expression and creativity, and it represents a continued fight for acceptance, tolerance, and inclusion for Nigeria’s LGBTQIA+ community.
Reviewed by PK Cross, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.

author: Opeyemi Rasak-Oyadiran


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The minorities missing from the data - Minority Africa
Farida Adamu
November 17, 2019
Early in September, a popular Nigerian news site made a post on Twitter that had an exhaustive list of all the tribes in Nigeria. Like every excited Twitter user, I went on the thread to find my tribe on the list and then quote for my friends to see, but it wasn’t there.
In what was meant to be a well-researched representative curation of all the tribes in Nigeria, my people got no mention.
I am not ignorant of the fact that we represent less than 0.1 percent of Nigeria’s population, I just didn’t think we had disappeared. I didn’t think while minority tribes were mentioned, we still will not be found. We were lost in words and lost in the numbers.
This occurrence made me recall the words of Nigerian media entrepreneur, Chude Jideonwo who said: “When there is no Data, the people perish.”
To complement that, I’d say, when there is no data, anything and anyone can disappear. When there’s no data, people disappear, cultures disappear, minorities become non-existent.  A Google search of my tribe reveals nothing but a blogpost my late uncle made in December 2010, and a few other blogs who copied that post without acknowledging him.
This is why the Data Editor position at Minority Africa remains one of the most important roles I have ever taken. It gives me the opportunity to effectively use data to understand and report marginalized populations, identify their needs and answer the most relevant questions about them. My task involves harnessing data to give perspective to the solutions stories of African minority communities and persons.
But data extends beyond just numbers. Data is the soul of the world as it is. Every person and event is a data point; every death, every birth, every migration, every marginalized or neglected individual. This is even more relevant in Africa at this time as a lack of accurate data makes it difficult for policymakers to make sound decisions.
With data, we are not only able to identify minorities in Africa but we equally provide insight and context into who they are and what they represent thus making them visible. People see the numbers, people recognize them and regardless of the ways in which visibility has been trivialized on the continent, I do think that there are fewer greater forms of resistance than being seen.
This is what Minority Africa intends to do, to ensure that you see us, whether it is my minority tribe or the estimated 19 million disabled persons in Nigeria, we want you to see us.
And not to stop at seeing us, because besides telling factual stories, shaping narratives, and enhancing visibility, data remains one of the most effective tools in advocating for the rights of marginalized minority groups and speaking truth to power.
In Nigeria, civil society organizations like BudgIT and FollowThe Money have used data to hold government leaders accountable for funds meant to serve marginalized communities. Their impact has seen abandoned projects completed and platforms were given to communities that were otherwise not recognized.
In the blog post my uncle wrote, he attempts to tell a story of where we came from. He is not quite sure how many we are, he just knows we aren’t so many, and he calls us Lilliputian. In his mini research, we migrated from the far east and came to Africa through Egypt. He says we are beautiful, enthralling and industrious; he says our culture is rich and colorful and vibrant, he says we are friendly. But that is not all we are.
And so, who better to complete the story than the ones who come from there? The ones who embody the data?
Farida Adamu is the Data Editor at Minority Africa. Read about our mission here.
Why “Why” is crucial in telling minority stories
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Farida Adamu is the Data Editor at Minority Africa. Farida is a Data Analyst, Writer and Social Entrepreneur based in Abuja, Nigeria. She spends her time turning opinions to Data at ResearcherNG, while using data to report global Elections at The Election Network. She features occasionally on Stears Business.

created: November 17, 2019

author: Farida Adamu


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The need to see Black women’s breasts outside of the white gaze - Minority Africa
Funmi Lijadu
April 3, 2022
Image description: An illustration appearing to be a collage of images including frames containing a camera as the main background, a masculine presenting caucasian person peering through a camera, and a bra in the bottom left corner.
As one traverses many parts of Africa, especially the rural areas, the sight of bare-chested women going about their business is quite common. Breast-feeding mothers do so at their convenience, and the people around them are unbothered. Here, the shape and size of one’s breasts are not issues that concern many of these women. However, some kilometers into the urban areas, the narrative changes.
Breasts take on a different picture altogether. Push-up bras and any other accessories women can get a hold of to enhance their breasts become part of a woman’s wardrobe.
Breasts become public secrets, symbols of sex appeal, and particular sizes and shapes become the standard for beautiful breasts.
Breasts are ancient mammalian organs – not unique to human beings. But history has proven that breasts have an abundance of meanings attached to them, often outside of the will of the people who have them.
As regards  male desirability, breasts are often defined in relation to the sexual attraction they may generate. There is a widespread sense that breasts symbolize  femininity, a visual cue representing womanhood.
However, the symbolic link of breasts to womanhood as a body part has been proven superficial with evidence of cancer survivors who have had their breasts removed and trans and non-binary people.
Beyond this, there are huge considerations regarding breasts in a racialized context especially as the discourse moves towards societal perceptions and constructs around the breasts of African women.
Black women’s bodies have been scrutinized for centuries, often through the eyes of white men. The context of white men often needing to dehumanize and sensationalize the presence of Black bodies reveals African breasts to be a site of external fetishisation.
To create a new conversation around Black women’s bodies, we must also profoundly examine the specific impacts of the white gaze. The white gaze can be summarized as the viewpoints and judgments involved in the perspective of white people. Literary journalist, David Spurr has defined the white gaze as an outlook that is one of ‘surveillance’ in which the white authority projects their biases onto the objects they encounter.
In attempting to make the world ‘stable’ and ‘predictable,’ this gaze produces a multitude of stereotypes, attaching them to Black bodies. In the words of postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha: ‘Black skin splits under the racist gaze, displaced into signs of bestiality, genitalia, grotesquerie, which reveal the phobic myth of the undifferentiated whole white body.’
This idea of ‘bestiality’ is fundamental when regarding the myths around the form of the African woman. White male imperialists or ‘explorers,’ as they often called themselves, perpetuated very harmful stereotypes of the black female body as grotesque.
A specific explorer Richard Ligon wrote an account that included a detailed description of the bodies of African women he saw on his voyage. Part of his account showed evidence of his attraction to black female bodies.
He wrote about a Black woman he saw in Barbados as being a ‘Negro of the greatest beauty and majesty…that ever I saw in one woman. Her stature large, and excellently shap’d, well favour’d, full eye’d, and admirably grac’d…greater Majesty and gracefulness’.
Ligon’s descriptions reveal the reality that Black women’s bodies provoked desire in the eyes of those who viewed them. However, this desire was often quickly replaced with racial dehumanization. It soon became apparent that these white men desired people whose humanity they were still unwilling to accept.
Ligon represents this contradiction of the white gaze as he swings between admiration and disgust for the Black women he encounters. He later represents the Black female body as deformed and undesirable.
Ligon suggested that African women’s breasts “hang down below their navels, so that when they stoop at their common work of weeding, they hang almost to the ground, that at a distance you would think they had six legs,” revealing Ligon’s view of Black women’s bodies as inferior sexual objects and tools for economic productivity.
This exaggerated description was typical of colonial white men describing Black bodies. They attempted to make the bodies appear alien, weaponizing physical difference as a tool of dehumanization.
Fast forward to the modern-day world, and black women’s breasts are still under surveillance and judgment by society.
In 2017, TV Yabantu, an online streaming service providing indigenous African content, decried being censored by big tech giants such as Meta and Google because they showed African women with breasts dressed traditionally, never mind that the display of breasts was part of the dressing and culture.
“They started removing advertising from our videos, then the views started dropping, the revenues started dropping. We don’t care about the revenues, we care about the insult to our culture,” Lazi Dlamini, who was the head of the platform at the time, told the Mail and Guardian.
He added, “You talk about community standards, but you’re only talking about western community, not African community.”
The censorship culminated in protests with women posing bare-breasted and lifting placards that read “Google a racist” and “My breasts are not inappropriate.”
Today, white and western actresses have appeared on the big screen and exposed their breasts in many western blockbusters. Unlike women in some places in rural Africa, these actresses have had their breasts shown in a particular light – as a symbol of sexuality and womanhood. And that seems to bestow acceptance on it.
We share this example to illustrate the ongoing tussle that the breasts and in general bodies of Black and African women continue to face in a eurocentric world. This view of white bodies and correspondingly breasts as the center and standard continually feeds into how African women with breasts interface with society, technology and even healthcare.
True decolonization and deconstruction of these ideals begin with a realization of the extensive policing that the bodies of African women have been subjected to through time and a corresponding resolution to do away with it. There is no agency for the bodies of Black and African women if we continue to be viewed through the aperture of the white gaze.
This post is published as part of Minority Africa’s Breast Series, a collection of reports, analysis, and opinions aimed towards demystifying and decolonizing the discourse around breasts for African women. To view more in this series, click here.
Edited/Reviewed by: Cassandra Roxburgh, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Funmi Lijadu is a freelance journalist, with work seen on Cosmopolitan UK, Meeting of Minds, Gal-Dem, Black Ballad, The Tab, Ours To Save and more.

author: Funmi Lijadu


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The Nigeria Prize for Difference and Diversity launches today - Minority Africa
minorityafrica.co
July 1, 2020
The Working Group for The Nigeria Prize for Difference & Diversity has announced the launch of the initiative today, with its first edition to hold in late 2020. The new prize is dedicated to identifying and celebrating people championing difference, diversity, inclusion, and immediate impact on the African continent. It is co-presented by YNaija.
The Nigeria Prize for Difference and Diversity seeks to celebrate people who are creating safe spaces for difference and diversity in the culture on a macro or micro level, through their persons or by building communities/organizations. The thematic focus for the Prize is in the areas of mental and emotional health, sexuality, gender, special needs, art, faith and spirituality, and human rights (prisoners, rape, sex workers).
The mission of the Prize themed this year as “Difference Matters,” is to open up the voices, hearts, and spirits of young people across Nigeria, for them to embrace their true identities and accept their uniqueness without feeling suppressed, oppressed, or misunderstood.
“At great personal sacrifice, these young Africans are choosing activism and advocacy as their life’s work,” said Edwin Okolo, who is YNaija’s editor.
“They are leveraging social media and offline communities to propagate their causes and forcing governments to engage in discussions about reform and reject harmful laws while pushing for widely beneficial policies. The imperative for people of influence and platform at this moment is to help curate and amplify this advocacy.”
The first edition of the prize is endowed by journalist and entrepreneur, Chude Jideonwo – whose platform #WithChude is focused on curating safe spaces in the media and the culture for mental, emotional and spiritual health.
“Nigeria will change, whether we like it or not,” Jideonwo said in an article announcing his endowment. “That is the inevitable nature of society. In 50 years, many of these rights I fight for will be enshrined because the moral arc of the universe bends only one way: towards justice. And when that time comes, our children will wonder if we had lost our minds when we insisted on this exclusion and oppression—the way many today wonder at history’s legacy of slavery, child marriage, and the suppression of voting rights for women.
“Nigerians and Africans cannot be fighting for Black lives—which are a minority in the West and the East—while oppressing their own minorities here at home, and resisting the urgency of diversity. No. Black lives matter. Gay lives matter. Trans lives matter. Women’s lives matter. Atheist lives matter. Agnostic lives matter. Autistic lives matter. Neuro-divergent lives matter.”
Public nominations from across the six regions of Nigeria are set to be received starting from the 30th, June 2020. 10 individuals – who make their voices heard, light the unique fires of other people, and are creating the space for people to be or express themselves – will be selected into the residential fellowship, and will have the opportunity to interact with authentic leaders from across the country, who are advocates for inclusivity.
All finalists will also get one-year media amplification support for their work from YNaija.com through its Non-Binary vertical.
The winner will also be entitled to a One Million Naira grant, to be awarded after the one-week residential fellowship. To nominate someone and for more information, please click here.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Editorial.


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The Nigerian film depicting queer masculinity in a new light - Minority Africa
minorityafrica.co
March 16, 2022
Femme queer men are typically portrayed as “weak”, but Wapah Ezeigwe is here to change that perception with their film “Country Love”. Filmed in Nigeria where queer-phobia is rampant, it sets out on a hefty task,- to challenge restrictive stereotypes and expectations.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Editorial.


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The Nigerian woman calling out sexism one tweet at a time - Minority Africa
PK Merge
March 8, 2021
On May 23, 2020, an account on Twitter named  “cannonball” posted these words: “Beginning tomorrow, everyday, I will tweet one law that discriminates against women, especially in African countries. I want to see when I run out of material,” which she suffixed with #everydayfeminism.
With these words, “cannonball” started a conversation about sexism and how the law enables it.
It’s been almost a year now and Amarachi Nickabugu, the 23-year-old woman behind the account, is still going at it: finding laws not just in Africa but across the globe that undermine women as human beings and dictate their citizenship, marriage, business, industry, inheritance, and movement.
With her tweets, the Law student in Nigeria wants to create awareness. She wants people to discuss sexism openly, she says, and to call out this It’s not that bad tone that underlies conversations about gender equality.
“A typical example would be someone responding to ‘We need to give women their full rights’ with ‘What rights do women not have?’” Nickabugu says. “Not only does it irk me that someone would pose like they can’t see how women are treated in society; ultimately, it bothers me that the state itself played a huge role in depriving women of actual basic rights.”
Nickabugu has witnessed these laws play out in her home country, Nigeria.
“The most commonly occuring instance of legal discrimination is women being unable to pass their citizenship to their husbands,” Nickabugu says. “The constitution of Nigeria grants men the right to transmit nationality to a foreign spouse, upon marriage. The reverse is not the same for women.”
“So the [Nigerian] women I know who have husbands from other countries have, even without thinking of it, been affected by that discriminatory constitutional provision,” she adds.
In January 2021,  an officer in the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), Olajide Omolola, was dismissed for getting pregnant while unmarried. Astonishingly, Nickabugu had tweeted about the law in July 2020.
53. According to the Nigeria Police Regulations, an unmarried female Police Officer who becomes pregnant shall be dismissed from the Force and will not be re-enlisted unless the Inspector-General of Police so approves. #everydayfeminism https://t.co/mOYp4cM02c
— cannonball (@a_nickabugu) July 14, 2020
When the incident broke, Nickabugu made another tweet announcing the woman’s dismissal and interrogating how it managed to happen despite the fact that the law had been repealed in September 2020.
“You see, there is an additional layer of recklessness here. For an institution of the state to revert to an inapplicable law just so they can maintain their discriminatory practices,” Nickabugu tells Minority Africa.
When Nickabugu started listing laws that discriminate against women, she did not know how much impact her tweets would have or how long she would do it.
Her first tweet—about tweeting one law a day that discriminates against women—has been retweeted over 6,000 times, has over 6,500 likes, and has over 940 quote tweets.
Since starting this thread, the response to her tweets has been a mixture of surprise and objection. Each tweet generates a debate on inequality; there are many tags by people who want others to read the tweets and often other people put up the tweets in response to a question or an argument on social media.
In her day-one tweet, for example, Nickabugu quoted section 55(1)(d) of the penal Code (applicable in Northern Nigeria) which makes it lawful for a man to beat his wife for the purpose of “correcting” her.
While many users were shocked and revolted by this law, one user defended it saying, “Beating is often seen as a way of setting one in the right path, that is why it is allowed. It is not as a form of brutalisation or violence, but to correct and set right.”
Comments such as this do not deter Nickabugu. Instead, they fuel her to further expose these oppressive laws.
Although she started out tweeting about laws in Africa, she was surprised to find such discriminatory laws were present in other parts of the world too.
Women in Russia, for example, were until recently banned from working 456 jobs across 38 industries. They could not work in exploratory drilling of oil and gas wells or carpentry, and could not be employed as ship captains, firefighters, train drivers, or drivers of buses with more than 14 seats.
The legislation was updated in September last year and with effect from January 2021, granting women the right to drive buses and trains in Russia, but 98 other industries remain closed to them.
While many may argue that such laws that ban women from working certain jobs or working certain hours are there to protect them, Nickabugu calls that line of thinking sexism in disguise.
“You find that in countries that say a woman should not engage in some occupations because they’re arduous, they have a good population of women in farmlands working several hours with a baby strapped to their back,” she says. “When women work at home, it is excused. In fact, the work is expected of them, even where it is heavy and difficult, and the effects are obviously unhealthy.
“But let a woman say she wants to be a firefighter or a ship captain, then suddenly, it’s too much for women. It’s laughable, to be honest.”
Nickabugu’s outspokenness and zeal when she is talking about feminism and equality are in tandem with her Twitter username.
“I am often calm and largely ‘uneventful’ until I have to do something I like, then I’m loud and unapologetic and full of verve,” she explains. “I reckon that’s what a cannonball would be like if it were a person.”
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Journalist at large.

author: PK Merge