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“I came out to myself,” What visibility means to lesbians across Africa - Minority Africa
minorityafrica.co
April 26, 2020
For Lesbian Visibility Day 2020, we asked four lesbians living in Africa what visibility means to them. These interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity and some names have been changed.
When danger surrounds using your name and your face, you have no other choice than to make yourself invisible. As much as I have grown accustomed to that question – can your name be used for this? As though the name is a danger in itself – I feel the sadness that comes with namelessness.
It is quite sad that we have to be asked for our names to be connected with our words and voice; I watch my back every day of my life. I try to live my life but it is scary. I have been a victim of a homophobic attack by the police. My friends and I were pepper-sprayed for no reason.
In my profession, as a chef, I have been told not to put “my gay hands’’ in their food. My partner and I were supposed to cook for a funeral. We had been contacted by a member of the deceased’s family and negotiation had reached an advanced stage only for a senior member of the family to breeze in and torpedo our hope of getting a job. I went home crying.
It is painful and stressful at once to be a target, not for having committed a crime. Being a target by nature is traumatic. When you walk and watch your back to ensure nobody is following you, when you take a stroll and check out for whisper, or when you go out with your partner and you look around to see if anybody is looking funny, it gets to you.
Visibility is highly important to me and people must accept that we exist. Others should see us and respect us for who we are.
Visibility to me depends on what you do. It could be work or domestic space. For me who works in an office that is affiliated with queer people, I feel seen and appreciated by people I work with. It is about having a queer desk in the police and other institutions. That is what visibility would be to me at the public level.
It is being allowed to live in different circles. We all have different personalities and these personalities are intertwined. You can be a mother, a daughter, a sister, a sex worker, and so on. All these intersect and maybe queerness is the one thing that holds them up for you, bringing your sexuality into more perspective on a relatable spectrum.
It is, for example, being a queer lawyer, taxi conductor, office clerk, or trader. I go about my work and I don’t want to feel that I owe anyone an explanation for my sexuality.
You can be out in certain spaces and may not be in other spaces. I believe visibility is relative and visibility goes back to the issue of security. As much as there is a need to be totally out, I ask myself if I am ready to have these conversations that would be had with being out in the world.
In Uganda, the laws surrounding queerness are taboo. Last November, when a gay bar was raided, the excuse was that the gathering was unlawful and on the reason that it was promoting shisha (hookah) smoking which is outlawed in the country. Yet, the laws are manipulated to be against queer people and not even your neighbor can or will fight for you. Uganda doesn’t give two shits about us.
I don’t believe in coming out because straight people didn’t come out to me. I don’t understand the entitlement, and the need for gay people to come out to straight people, seeking their acceptance, nobody asked us to accept them.
So I’m myself around everybody, including my parents who saw that one day I had a girlfriend and they couldn’t confront me.
I came out to myself though because when I noticed my feeling for girls, it was very weird and for a very long time, I was ashamed of myself, I hid it, never acknowledging it. But after I got away from family trauma, I had fresh air around me, space, and time to think about what was going on inside of me, acknowledging it and naming it natural, and saying, “I think you like girls.”
Visibility is the ability to see everybody different. I think it’s the ability of others to see what I’ve been seeing all my life: my own consciousness because I’m not just skin. But regardless of the world seeing you or not, you know you are a soul inside a body. I don’t believe that the only way I would have a safe life is by listening to society.
Practice the art of saying “fuck it,” keep saying that till the day you die, at least, you lived a life that is yours.
I went to a missionary secondary school. That was my first encounter with homophobia, how girls who liked girls were ostracized and expelled. I was suspended in secondary school for lesbian-related activities.
The first thing I did when I decided to accept myself was to cut off people who were homophobic. People who were violent not necessarily physically but through their words.
Growing up, I didn’t find a lot of queer people around me but then I got on the internet and I started finding blogs, accounts that centered on queer life. A bulb lit up in my head and I was, “Oh, I can be like this and still be whatever.” Shout out to everybody out there who is working to amplify queer life.
Visibility means being seen, being recognized, being acknowledged. It reflects in the big ways and in small ways. Visibility is representation; reading books where there are characters like you, watching films where there are characters like you. It is policy reforms that center and include lesbians, laws that protect and acknowledge that they exist.
Lesbians are people. They are our mothers, sisters, aunties, friends. They are people.
Shade Mary-Ann Olaoye, Ope Adetayo, and Septemba Olga contributed to this report.
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Editorial.


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From a WhatsApp platform to physical sessions, this Nigerian initiative is helping women affected by conflict navigate their trauma - Minority Africa
Yahuza Abdulkadir
May 24, 2023
In 2015, amid the Boko Haram insurgency, Hassana Danyerwa, the founder and creative director of FeelNHeal, was battling a traumatic experience that stayed with her for years. During that time, she had nightmares and would spend the night crying, wallowing in pain, but the next day, she’d wear a big smile and refuse to let her family and friends see she was hurting.
“I was always trying to be in the midst of friends or get myself busy with work or studies to distract myself from my reality,” Hassana tells Minority Africa. “I couldn’t ask for help because I didn’t even think anyone could help me, and I didn’t want people to start feeling sorry for me or make my struggles a topic of discussion.”
In 2019, it dawned on her that she needed to find a way to heal, so she started telling people about what she’d been through on her WhatsApp status. After years of keeping it to herself, it was difficult to do, but she felt healing would be far from her as long as she failed to open up. “There are people who read and judge, but the most incredible thing is that there are more people who relate to the stories I share and even share their own experiences with me,” she says.
Realizing she was not alone and that writing could be a form of therapy, Hassana eventually sought help from a professional therapist and, in February 2020, created FeelNHeal, a local initiative focused on mental health challenges faced by young girls and women living in conflict-affected environments.
The initiative was born out of Hassana finding out that a high number of women in her community didn’t know what mental health was. To combat this, Hassana and her team began going to schools, orphanages, and host communities of internally displaced persons (IDPs), creating awareness about mental health and providing emotional support to people battling mental disorders by organizing physical and online group sessions.
According to Statista, between 2011 and 2022, the northeastern part of Nigeria has suffered deadly attacks from Boko Haram that have claimed thousands of lives. Whereas forcing millions to flee their homes. As a result of the crisis, most conflict survivors who are now displaced suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to the loss of relatives and loved ones. The World Health Organization (WHO) determined that one in five displaced persons is affected by mental health disorders. It is an estimate that translates to over 400,000 internally displaced persons in Nigeria.
Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari signed a mental health bill into law earlier this year after two failed attempts. While there’s hope that the intervention will lead to giant strides in mental health led by the agencies and individuals responsible for implementing it, mental health awareness and care are still in their early stages in Nigeria.
Last December, to mark 16 days of activism, FeelNHeal trained 30 young women on mental health and trauma resilience through a partnership with the Foundation for Alternative Learning in Underserved Communities (FALUC). From online sessions to physical sessions, FeelNHeal has impacted over 800 lives, most of whom are conflict-affected women and children.
One of the physical sessions, tagged “Being a Woman,” was held in June 2022 and left Khadijah Jimeh, a young writer and poet, with a different view of the environment around her. After the session, Khadijah had to call her dad and talk to him.
“When he asked me why I was crying, I told him I missed him and wanted to see him, my mom, and my siblings,” she says. “At that moment, I didn’t care about anything! Not my degree, not my art of creative writing or poetry, not the zeal to strive and be better. Nothing mattered to me! This is to tell you how intense that event was.”
Khadijah found the environment where the session took place comforting and felt safe being in a room with people who were good listeners and had experienced the tragedy of death in their lives. “The next biggest thing I learned was that everyone, every single person I interact with, whether in school, at home, online, or offline, has a battle they are fighting,” she says. “Every human has a battle that’s making them think of giving up or taking a step back, so the best thing I can do is not be part of their misery when interacting with them. I should be the one who makes them smile and make them strive harder. Life is difficult, but I can be the source of someone’s smile in a few seconds.”
“This has made me cautious of how much I respect people, how much I use kind words, and how much I compliment people because I know it will make a difference in their life, maybe for a day or two, or an hour or even five minutes, but it did, right? Actions make differences,” she adds.
Adama Muhammad was six years old when the conflict in Borno State broke out. Before schools in the state were shut down, she went to school to the sounds of gunshots and attended classes feeling scared that something terrible would happen to her, all of which affected her mental health.
Adama started painting to prioritize her mental health and create therapeutic pieces of art and designs for people, so when she came across FeelNHeal’s instagram page, she felt it was the right place for her.
“The session I had was about boundaries. I learned so much more than I expected. A lot of stories were shared. We laughed, some of us cried, and we had fun,” she says about attending a physical session in February 2023. “It was a safe space for self-awareness, expression, motivation, sharing and receiving knowledge. At the end of the healthy session, I learned more about myself, about boundaries, how necessary it is to create boundaries and how important they are to our mental health.”
There is a misconception among some people that mental disorders are spiritual attacks, instead of health conditions that can be treated. Dr Nada Abdulwahab Sa’eed, a physician and mental health expert at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH), emphasizes education as a useful tool to address the misconception.
“This is important because you will find that most ‘common people’ do not argue about the existence of mental illnesses,”she says. “They agree that there are certain illnesses psychiatrists can treat. But they think spiritual illnesses are common while mental illnesses are rarities since they do not know that many of the symptoms they see are those of mental illnesses.”
Dr Nada also explains that radio and TV stations have more awareness than in the past few decades. Even the medical school curriculum has now been improved to help doctors better understand mental illnesses, and it has brought so much growth in reducing stigma and improving the mental health of people adversely affected by the insurgency.
“All we need to do is keep the momentum. Use symptoms that are commonly experienced in our environment to create awareness while at the same time respecting the spiritual beliefs of people and showing them how mental illnesses can be treated without disregarding their beliefs,” she says.
However, acknowledging that a significant proportion of women experience challenges that severely affect their mental health whether they are young or old, employed or not, married or not, mothers or not, Dr Nada highlights the channels to follow for them to improve their mental health. “Placing priority on getting an education, Western and religious, as a means of empowerment and awareness. It is a common misperception in our society that women do not need to pay attention to education since they will not need to work and earn for themselves,” she says. “As a result, even girls who are enrolled in school do not take education seriously. Improving their financial status, actively seeking ways of improving their awareness of mental health, seeking help from professionals when in distress and participating in support groups.”
In these communities where women are often thought of as less, the FeelNHeal initiative is defying societal norms and giving these young women a platform to speak and heal from their past experiences. As the initiative aims to provide them with psychosocial support, its main objective is to champion meaningful advocacy that will encourage resilience in their hearts.
“At FeelNHeal, we also link persons experiencing mental health issues with a professional therapist where they can have their conditions diagnosed and get the help they need,” Hassana says. “We also include painting, writing, and playing games in our physical sessions as a healthy coping mechanism because we believe unless provided with a healthy way of coping, victims of violence tend to resort to violence as their coping mechanisms.”
Making such contributions to these communities through FeelNHeal brings Hassana so much happiness and satisfaction, and she doesn’t think of monetary profit. But with increased funding, Dr Nada feels that the initiative could reach more people and make its projects sustainable.
Edited by Banjoko Samuel and Uzoma Ihejirika
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Yahuza Abdulkadir is a freelance writer and journalist from Northern Nigeria. He reports mostly on solution and development journalism. He has a deep passion for storytelling and literary art, promoting black culture, and voicing minority issues.

source: news-minorityafrica

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

author: Yahuza Abdulkadir


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Who belongs in Akon City? - Minority Africa
PK Merge
April 7, 2021
About two years ago, I sat in a cinema and watched Marvel’s Black Panther. I remember being excited as I and other moviegoers were introduced to Wakanda, a fictional African country with advanced technology.
Wakanda was meant to be just that, fictional, yet come 2036, Uganda is set to have something similar, pioneered by Senegalese-American RnB star turned mogul, Akon.
On Monday this week, the government of Uganda announced that it has allocated Akon, who was on an investment trip in the country, one square mile of land for him to begin planning Akon City.
Although many details about this project are still unknown, the city will operate on his AKoin currency, a Stellar-based cryptocurrency.
This is not the first planned futuristic city on the continent that Akon is vested in. He is also working on the development of a similar cryptocurrency-based town in Senegal, also known as Akon City.
The high-tech city will feature luxury houses, seaside resorts, eco-friendly tour centers, office parks, shopping malls, a university, and a hospital — all of which, according to the rapper, “may be an hour [or] two-hour flight from anywhere in Africa.”
While the computer model of the $6-billion solar city is certainly mind-blowing, it is important to interrogate who will belong to these futuristic cities, who they ultimately exist to serve, and what the cost of their materializing will be.
The problem with Akon City is that it functions on a premise that cities can only be built with the displacement and exploitation of indigenous people, which is the same framework within which colonialists functioned across the African continent.
The institution of colonialism was upheld by the belief that Africans, especially poor Africans, belonged less in their lands and knew less about the lands than colonialists, merely because of whiteness.
While the dynamics are different in this instance, capitalism normalizes, empowers, and encourages white supremacy; and when Black elites like Akon fight to uphold capitalist systems at the expense of Africa’s most vulnerable people, they are effectively sustaining white supremacy.
There is a need to understand and defend the communities, many of them rural and minoritized, who will be affected and possibly lose their homes to the construction of these cities and yet not be included when it is completed.
In Mbodiene and Pointe Sarene, the rural future home of Akon’s Senegal-based city, for example, farmland has been lost and many villagers who are owed compensation have not been paid.
The government of Senegal declared in 2014 that 1.8 billion CFA Francs ($3.35 million) was owed to 385 people for a total of 504 hectares in Mbodiene and 110 hectares in nearby Pointe Sarene.
For Uganda, my home country, which is still battling with land disputes and grabbing, a replication of this scenario is scary. 73% of Uganda’s population depends on farming, with 83% of women engaged in agricultural activities.
Every time the government gives away land to “investors” without clearly defined projects, this action has severe consequences on the most vulnerable people among us who are dependent on the land.
Minoritized communities and women continue to be placed at the mercy of multinational corporations and, well now, ‘good-intentioned’ Black investors.
It is also not the first time Uganda is gazetting land to build a city. In 2013, the Naguru-Nakawa Satellite City project was launched.
It was dubbed “New Kampala” and the 160-acre land, formerly home to low-cost housing units, was to be redeveloped to comprise newer flats, bungalows, commercial buildings, a five-star hotel, a referral hospital, schools, houses of worship, and recreational facilities.
These housing units were pulled to the ground and in 2019, Uganda’s parliament cancelled the project after the Uganda branch of the UK-based development company failed to set up the city.
Some may argue that futuristic cities like Akon City will usher in development and increase tourism. Of course, if computer impressions of the Akon City in Senegal are anything to go by, then many will flock to the “Dark Continent” to see how such a city can exist in “impoverished” Africa.
Yet it’s important for us to not be carried away with excitement and forget the harm investments like these can cause to indigenous people.
In her famous TED Talk, “Who belongs in a city?” Nigerian writer OluTimehin Adegbeye says, “The “why” of cities is largely the same….the “how” of cities, however, is a whole other story. How are they run? How do they grow? How do they decide who belongs and who doesn’t?”
Many times, the answer to this question is similar from city to city, whether futuristic or in present times: cities decide to take out the most vulnerable demographic it views as its “weakest links.”
With futuristic cities, this is even more visible as any profile that doesn’t fit the projected ideal is discarded while those who can afford it, that is the rich, are retained.
This was the case in the ‘70s in India when a group of white people decided to build a city. The city, Auroville, was portrayed as a utopia and it was designed by French architects and founded on the idea of human unity.
Yet despite the fact that the government of India donates thousands of dollars in taxpayers’ money to the city, it is not accessible to everyone.
If Akon City is necessary at all, then it must happen from the ground up and it must include the experiences and expertise of local people.
We’ve seen this happen in Uganda with Okere City, but the Akon City plan in Senegal is short of the above. The lack of Senegalese names attached to the project has not gone unnoticed.
The firm in charge of construction, KE International, is American, and the architect who sketched the first renderings, Hussein Bakri, is based in Abu Dhabi. These are patterns that reinforce colonial ideologies that the needs and knowledge of indigenous people did not and do not matter.
Akon City in Senegal will start construction this year and is expected to be completed in three years. But I believe there’s a need for introspection at an individual level.
What is the obsession with being a futuristic city as opposed to being a village or town that works? Are we interrogating enough the white supremacy and white organization at the root of some of these drives?
Akon City wants young rural farmers to work in offices but do they want that for themselves? How does whiteness continue to force our alignment in ways that we might not even recognize?
I’ll answer these questions personally and you should, too, knowing that Africa does not have to be futuristic to matter. We do not need to be advanced tech cities to be worthy of humanity, agency, dignity, and respect.
We matter as is and that should always be enough.
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


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Why are affluent Zimbabweans cornering shops meant for low-income families? - Minority Africa
Kudakwashe Magezi
May 6, 2022
Image description: An illustrated infographic highlights the sharp difference in prices between two suburbs in Harare, Zimbabwe: 2 dollars gets you 10 eggs in Harare South, but the same 2 dollars would get you only 5 eggs in Harare North. The illustration shows this through a gray tray of brown eggs sitting on a map. On the top side of the map is Harare North and Harare South lies at the bottom. The background is a pattern fusing colors of the Zimbabwean flag including red, yellow, green, and black.
Harare, Zimbabwe (Minority Africa) — The mid-morning Saturday sun is still weak in Stoneridge Park Township, south of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital. Kiosk stores are already filled with smokers, bargain hunters and noisy street touts. Today is unlike weekdays when buses with city-center-bound commuters race past kiosk stores without dropping off passengers.
The sprawling township is home to Pamacongo, one of the cheap food markets in Harare, located in a low-income neighborhood where many residents supplement their food needs via home gardens. Because of this, food prices are relatively low, attracting many city dwellers.
Among these is 41-year-old Samy Jangwa, a resident of Borrowdale, Harare’s most glamorous neighborhood.
“My family lives in Borrowdale. For our staples, we drive 20 miles to forage in townships [and]food stores and restock our kitchens,” the software teacher at an upscale private school in Harare says.
This food migration began to gain steam four years ago as Zimbabwe’s inflation started climbing worryingly again after brief years of a lull.
It resulted in middle-class suburban supermarkets and food stores like SPAR, Bon Marche and those located in city-centres becoming incredibly expensive.
“Two dollars buys five eggs in Harare´s northern suburbs; two dollars fetches 10 eggs in the southern townships. Do you see this yawning gap?” Jangwa asks.
Cheaper grocery prices in low income southern-lying townships are drawing affluent shopping “migrants” from northern suburbs looking for bargains in so-called ‘poor folks’ shops. They spend several hours browsing different markets for prices before actually buying the food.
According to Daryl Nota, an economics teacher at Rusitu Theological College in eastern Zimbabwe, the differing food prices are creating arbitrage within the country. Small food kiosk owners are buying cheaper food from the low-income parts of the city and selling it for an exorbitant markup in wealthier suburbs.
“It’s some sort of interesting intercity price-gouging going on; buying a cart of oranges for $100 from the townships and selling off the cart for $150 in Harare’s nicer northern suburbs,” Nota says.
This has upset local activists like Dairi Moyo, the chairperson of Stoneridge Park Community Livelihood Association. He critiques wealthy shoppers for preventing low-income township residents from accessing formerly affordable shops.
“Townships are to serve low-income dwellers,” Moyo insists. “Posh [suburban] folks are encroaching onto our affordable food turf; restocking [their] built-in food pantries.”
Carter Mavhiza, an independent economist and public accountant in Harare, explains that middle-class shoppers from the northern suburbs get paid in US dollars because they have high-paying jobs, like IT professionals or lawyers.
They use the coveted US dollar to buy cheaper food in townships, while low-income township residents use Real Time Gross Settlement dollar (RTG) notes or mobile money to buy food.
The distinction between US dollar notes and RTG notes has created a dual pricing phenomenon. Formerly cheap township kiosks reserve high-quality beef portions or rice varieties for US dollars-paying shoppers hailing from northern suburbs.
“We see the little injustices. Sometimes choice beef steak is hidden, reserved for northern town shoppers who pay with US dollars,” says Brenda Musukutwa, a 31-year-old resident of Stoneridge Park Township.
Her viewpoint is echoed by Gladys Sinyama, a mother of two also living in Stoneridge Park Township.
“I understand that affluent shoppers with US dollar bills get preference – but for critical stuff like low-cost baby powder, I’d wish our kiosks would prioritize township mothers,” Sinyama says.
Mavhiza, on the other hand, describes this as ‘food gentrification,’ a situation in which formerly cheap food in townships is now out of the reach of residents.
Jangwa, the bargain hunter from the affluent Borrowdale suburb admits that food gentrification is an outcome of individuals sourcing foods from low income communities but he says, “This is a necessity,” adding that “With our US dollar bills we are stepping on the toes of townships residents.”
Decades of debilitating US sanctions have left Zimbabwe with the unenviable tag of being one of Africa’s expensive food destinations. Coupled with the country’s inability to pay back debts, Zimbabwe cannot borrow easily from bilateral organizations like the IMF.
O’bren Nhachi, a social scientist with the Centre for Natural Resource Governance (CNRG), explains that the US has designated Zimbabwe as a high-risk destination. According to Nhachi, this is a direct result of Zimbabwe’s domestic governance problems, which deepen its financial misery.
Consequently, private lenders from China or the Middle East, who take chances with Zimbabwe, impose excessively high-interest rates on their loans. Nhachi describes Zimbabwe as “a difficult country to lend to,” as “foreign money attracts high-interest rates which are passed down to domestic consumers.”
Musukutwa who lives in Stoneridge Park recalls a time when food prices in the township were reasonable.
Because of the economic status of the residents of these townships, kiosks supplied by local informal farmers ensured that the residents were able to purchase commodities, rendering products and services cheaper.
“Prices would stay calm for up to 12 months until posh northern suburb shoppers began to arrive,” Musukutwa explains.
The Zimbabwe government’s chaotic drive to grab white-owned commercial plantations in the early 2000s severely damaged food production and downstream industries. A further driver of high food prices is the gross corruption that consists of parceling the best farmland to ruling party elites and the pilfering of billions in taxpayers’ money under the guise of agriculture subsidies.
Urban food hunger is a troubling feature in Zimbabwe every year. In 2019, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food declared that Zimbabwe is on the cusp of man-made starvation, with 60% of the population getting by on few meals.
“US sanctions; climate disasters; the pegging of prices in US dollars; massive agricultural corruption are fueling punitive food prices in Zimbabwe,” says economics teacher, Nota.
Low food prices in Zimbabwe’s low income townships have also been attributed to demographics and municipal laws.
In Stoneridge Park, the abundance of food shops run by Congolese immigrants living in Zimbabwe, according to residents, partly explains why prices are affordable there.
“The refugee-run food shops sell us a packet of frozen chicken for just $3; however, the high street city center of Harare supermarkets offer the same chicken for $5.50,” says Gladys Sinyama, a mother of two living in Stoneridge Park Township.
Hundreds of Congolese refugees in Stoneridge Park and Township can afford to operate low-cost grocery kiosks because they receive monthly cash grants from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and business startup loans from agencies like the World Food Programme (WFP).
“We can keep our prices so low compared to northern suburbs stores because humanitarian cash grants boost us,” says Antonio Kiliwa, a Congolese refugee entrepreneur running two grocery stores in Stoneridge Park.
Urban farming regulations are loosely enforced in Harare’s poorer townships. In places like Mabvuku or Stoneridge Park, fields of arable land are aggressively farmed by low-income residents who grow rice, maize, cabbages, vegetables or tomatoes.
The same fallow land is packed with pens for raising poultry and even goats.
Lancet Mhlanga, an entrepreneur gardener and goats breeder, speculates that the authorities tolerate urban farming in low-income areas as urban gardens assist with combating food insecurity.
Whereas, in wealthy suburbs, like Borrowdale in Northern Harare, urban farming is frowned upon and clamped down on by municipal officers.
“By-law officers get tough on anyone wanting to farm open spaces. The assumption is if you live in northern suburbs you can afford posh supermarket food,” says Nota.
In Mabvuku Township, kiosk owners source a large amount of their produce from urban farming. The maize grown in its own spaces and poultry raised in backyards means that food kiosks can be supplied with cheaper food. Points out that while agricultural activities among informal growers might not be licensed, it does help to keep township prices low.
The contrast is visible with wealthy suburbs, where supermarkets often have to import food from South Africa and put a markup on the products.
“It’s better to farm abandoned open lands than sleep on hunger because supermarket foods are costly,” says Mhlanga.
Samy Jangwa is conflicted about urban dwellers like himself cornering cheaper township shops ‘reserved’ for poorer residents, but he says this is a matter of pragmatism.
As for Musukutwa, she wants township stores to stop demanding US dollar bills and insists that the RTGS Zimbabwe currency is at par with the US dollar.
Jangwa would also like to see a variety of shops set up in posh northern suburbs with some offering the affordable prices found in townships and thus stem the migration of the middle-class to hunt for bargains in townships.
“Middle-class northern suburbs or township dwellers, we are all Zimbabweans united by one need – lower grocery prices,” he says.
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.
Kudakwashe Magezi is a freelance journalist from Zimbabwe, essayist and poet. His writing has appeared in Daily Maverick South Africa, The New Arab, Rest of World and The New Internationalist. His focus topics are culture and economics.

author: Kudakwashe Magezi


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Why “Omo Igbo” is problematic - Minority Africa
Ebube Ilo
May 1, 2023
It is often said of Nigeria that our diversity unites us, but the recently concluded general elections suggest otherwise.
Ethnic animosity, hate campaigns and religious dichotomy characterized the build-up to the elections. In Lagos, the gubernatorial elections that followed saw targeted violence and disenfranchisement of voters based on ethnicity. Not exactly a picture of a people united in diversity.
Ethnic baiting and weaponization of tribal sentiments during elections in Nigeria are not new. In Lagos, it is normal for Igbos to be scapegoats in every election.
In the build-up to the 2015 gubernatorial elections, a traditional ruler in Lagos was reported to have warned a group of Igbo leaders that if the Igbos do not vote for Akinwunmi Ambode, they will perish in the river within seven days. During the 2019 Lagos gubernatorial elections, a sitting senator reportedly said, “We will invoke all the deities of Lagos to chase Igbo people out. Igbos who refuse to learn our language. Igbos who didn’t marry Yoruba, we will inherit them.”
More recently, the 2023 Lagos gubernatorial elections highlighted how easily tribal sentiments can be incited. During the campaign, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour (GRV), the Labour Party governorship candidate, was targeted by opponents who used his Igbo middle name, Chinedu, to stoke anti-Igbo sentiments among voters.
The All Progressives Congress (APC), the party in power, claimed that GRV was not a true Lagosian and would be more loyal to the Igbo people, referring to him as “Omo Igbo.” This use of tribal identifiers further emphasized his mother’s Igbo heritage and painted him as an outsider, leading to a flawed narrative that a vote for the Labour Party is equivalent to voting for an Igbo takeover of Lagos.
A Yoruba phrase meaning “Igbo person,” “Omo Igbo” has other meanings depending on the context and is often used as a tribal slur. “Omo Igbo” is an all encompassing-basket into which all the negative stereotypes about Igbo people are dropped. A negative experience with one Igbo person is used to develop a mental model of all Igbo people, which they generalize with the term “Omo Igbo.”
“Omo Igbo” is also used to easily identify someone of southern extraction. But while using “Omo Igbo” as an identifier might seem innocuous, it emphasizes the difference between me, an Igbo person, and the Yorubas around me. This emphasis on difference reinforces tribalism and creates divisions.
Despite being born in Lagos and schooling in Akure, Benjamin has always felt like an outsider when people call him “Omo Igbo.” “One time in school, when I got to class late, some of my classmates started to speak in Yoruba, saying ‘Omo Igbo ti de (the Igbo boy has come).’ It got me very irritated,” he says. Benjamin’s experience is just one example of how tribal slurs can create feelings of exclusion and reinforce harmful stereotypes.
Yorubas sometimes use “Omo Igbo” to say that you are a lesser being and that they are superior to you. Chizaram, an Igbo boy who lives in Lagos, has been called “Omo Igbo” all his life. Growing up in Lagos, he says, “I was called Omo Igbo by people in my neighbourhood as a way to describe or identify me. I’ve come to accept it, and some of my guys even call me  ‘Omo Igbo.’” He also says people in his neighborhood used to call him “Omo Igbo” whenever he did something clumsy. “I distinctly remember one day, while walking along my street, I stumbled and fell into a gutter in front of a line of shops owned by Yoruba women. Instead of offering to help, they burst into laughter and started calling me ‘Omo Igbo’ in jest. I found their comments offensive and hurtful.”
Although “Omo Igbo” can be used innocently and even affectionately amongst friends. It can easily lead to stereotyping and prejudice towards people of southern extraction. It can also perpetuate the harmful notion that people from different regions in Nigeria are fundamentally separate and cannot coexist.
Mary, a young Igbo girl studying in Ife, Osun State, experienced a similar feeling recently. She was listening to the radio in the lead-up to the general elections in Nigeria when she heard derogatory remarks about the Igbo presidential candidate. He was called an “Omo Igbo Oloriburuku” who would take everything the Yorubas had if he became president. It was also suggested that  Igbo people return to where they came from. Mary says she was heartbroken to hear these tribalistic comments. She grew up in an environment she thought was accepting and welcoming. Now, as she grows older and learns more about Nigeria’s history, she sees how the same prejudices and exclusionary attitudes are being replayed over and over again.
Ultimately, using tribal slurs like “Omo Igbo” speaks to a deeper problem in our society – a lack of understanding and empathy for those different from us. In relating with each other, Nigerians have developed stereotypes about each other, narrow-minded conceptions that often find expression in the words we use to refer to each other.
One such word is “Aboki,” a Hausa word that translates to “friend” in English but is used derogatorily, primarily by Southerners, to refer to people of northern extraction. Another is “ndi ofe mmanu,” an Igbo term for the Yoruba people. It translates to “People of oily soup” and stems from how the Igbo find soups made by Yorubas to have been cooked with too much oil. You might also hear “Nyamiri” (the Hausa word for Igbo) and “Bayarabe” (the Hausa word for Yoruba).
Sometimes, these “mere words” trigger offline violence. For example, in a community in Lagos, suspected political thugs attacked non-indigenes for voting against the incumbent party during the concluded general elections. It was reported that over 20 people were injured, and properties worth millions of naira were destroyed.
People who use words like “Omo Igbo” don’t get to decide whether it is offensive, instead they should look to understand how such terms are used to reinforce negative stereotypes. “Omo Igbo” is not just an innocent label; it is evident that it reinforces harmful stereotypes and promotes divisions. These negative stereotypes only serve to perpetuate the cycle of hate and violence. The tragic events during the Nigerian civil war should serve as a reminder that tribalism and bigotry can have devastating consequences.
*Name changed to protect the identity of the interviewees.
Edited and Reviewed by Caleb Okereke, Samuel Banjoko and Uzoma Ihejirika.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.

author: Ebube Ilo


text:
Why our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians - Minority Africa
Nadege Bizimungu
May 30, 2021
In his 1997 address at International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian People, Nelson Mandela, the late South African president, reaffirmed his support for Palestine in famous words we have seen on posters and social media for the past two weeks.
“But we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians; without the resolution of conflicts in East Timor, Sudan, and other parts of the world.”
These words remind us of the parallels between the Palestinian struggle, the Black South Africans’ fight against apartheid, and the global solidarity among colonised peoples.
South Africa’s political apartheid ended in 1994, three years after Mandela gave this famous address. Unfortunately, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has not stopped since 1997; if anything, it has only been worse.
As I write this, at least 248 Palestinians, including 66 children, have been killed in Gaza and Israeli-occupied West Bank since the latest violence escalated on May 10. In Israel, 12 people have died, including two children.
Although Israel and Hamas confirmed a ceasefire last Friday, the blockade on Gaza is still ongoing; Israel continues its illegal occupation of Palestine and abuse of international law.
On the African continent, we have seen ongoing pro-Palestine protests and solidarity statements from artists, politicians, intellectuals, and other ordinary Africans on social media. However, we cannot ignore the increased Israeli presence on the continent for the past decade.
Israel’s Zionist propaganda comes dressed in military training and trade deals, which normalizes relations with this apartheid regime.
To restore African solidarity with Palestine, we need to acknowledge the role our countries have played in the current violence against Palestinians, and unpack why our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians.
Israel has been developing diplomatic ties around the world since the start of the illegal occupation of Palestinian land in 1948, in an attempt to scam the international community into legitimizing its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Most Global South countries, including African countries, have occasionally supported Palestine in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
This relationship was completely changed in the late 60s. The end of the Six-Day  War in 1967 marked Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. It became clear to most African countries that Israel was a colonial state.
When the recent Israel assault on Gaza started on May 10, Moussa Faki Mahamat, the African Union Commission (AUC) chairperson strongly condemned the Israeli forces’ violent attacks against worshipers in the Al-Aqsa Mosque and bombing of the Gaza Strip, in a statement that  was released on May 11.
However, although the African Union claims to support Palestinian people, African countries have normalized and allowed Israeli presence on the continent for the past decade, which directly legitimizes its settler colonialism.
The extent of normalization varies from country to country, but we cannot deny Israel’s growing quest to develop diplomatic ties in different African countries. This normalization has detrimental effects on both Palestinians and ordinary Africans.
Israel currently has full diplomatic relations with 41 out of 46 sub-Saharan African countries and embassies in 11 out of 54 African countries, including Rwanda, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Cameroon.
This support for Israel can be partly linked to the rise of Pentecostalism and evangelical Christianity in some Sub-Saharan countries.
We have also seen a rise in the growing cooperation of Israel with different African countries in the areas of technology, defense, and counterterrorism projects. The Israel Defense Force (IDF) trains the police and military of countries like Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania, and Israel is a major supplier of arms and military tech to most African countries.
“Most of these African countries have relations with Israel in order to have more weapons; more military training and more policing to suppress their own people,” says Rabab Abdulhadi, Palestinian scholar and founding Director of the Arab and Muslim Ethniticities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies at San Francisco State University.
“What they get from Israel is not actually something that improves the lives of the people. So when some African leaders develop these relations with Israel, some of them just want tools they can use to suppress opposition and stay in power.”
We must understand that any country that has normalized relations with Israel directly contributes to the ethnic cleansing, apartheid and aggression against Palestinians.
There is no doubt that Palestinians have long supported struggles everywhere. Palestinians have also taken explicit inspiration from the US civil rights movement and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa in developing their Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
In her 2015 book, Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson , Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement, Angela Y. Davis draws the parallels of the struggles in Ferguson and Palestine to illustrate the necessity of transnational solidarity between movements.
In 2014, during the Ferguson uprising in the US, as those protests erupted, Palestinian activists were the first to express solidarity, which helped strengthen global solidarity for Black Lives Matter.
At the same time, Palestinian activists started sharing tips with protestors in Ferguson on how to deal with tear gas. This moment reminded the rest of the world of the connections between police brutality in America, US imperialism, and Palestinian resistance.
“Anytime people rise up to liberate themselves, it is another loss for the colonial project, and another win for Palestinians,” says Abdulhadi.
There are a lot of pro-Palestine grassroots movements and activists on the continent who are currently organizing in different ways. One of these is Kenya-Palestine Solidarity Movement (KPSM), a group  founded in 2015 to create awareness about the struggle in Palestine.
“The biggest fight ahead for us is the fight of delegitimizing and exposing Israeli colonialism, racism and apartheid. For this to happen, every vote counts, be it that of India, Brazil, Portugal or Botswana. And Israel perfectly understands that,” says Ramzy Baroud, a Palestinian-American journalist and editor of The Palestine Chronicle.
There is equally a need for us to hold our governments accountable.
“The more the governments are accountable, the more they are representative of the people, and the less they are going to engage in hidden secrets deals and military training behind people’s backs. It becomes more in the open,” added Abdulhadi.
The Israeli Zionist propaganda is very much strengthened by the way we talk about what’s currently happening, and there is vital work to be done on decolonizing the narratives we learn in churches and mainstream media.
“We must keep up with what’s happening in Palestine and share this information, set political education sessions and educate members of our communities,” said Suhayl Omar, a Kenya-based community organizer and researcher.
“We must actively win against Israel in the propaganda war they have launched. This also means using the correct language; let’s not pacify Israeli aggression against Palestinians.”
The ongoing Israeli apartheid is not “a religious conflict,” and defining it as such further erases the fact that this is settler colonialism vs. indigenous people, not Islam vs. Judaism.
“It is not enough to be anti-Zionist, we must actively be abolitionists, we must understand that there is no winning if all we want is to reform the Israeli occupation forces; what we want is an end to Zionism, the fascist Israeli regime, and all its tools of aggressions,” concluded Omar.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Nadege Bizimungu is an editorial intern at Minority Africa. She is a Rwandese journalism student at Northwestern University in Qatar who is deeply passionate about writing and multimedia storytelling, particularly about issues that involve African politics, race, and women’s rights. Her work has been featured in VOA-Africa and the Daily-Q, among others. Nadege is the co-founder of the People's Colony, a pan-African news platform that prioritizes African voices on global issues.

author: Nadege Bizimungu


text:
Why “Why” is crucial in telling minority stories - Minority Africa
Caleb Okereke
November 19, 2019
I have spent the last year working as an independent journalist for some of the world’s biggest news organizations. From Aljazeera to BBC, and DW.  Splitting my time between Lagos, Nigeria, and Kampala, Uganda, both cities I hold close to my heart and doing this journalism work.
Before going solo, I served as an Editor with First Culture for nearly three years, a role that howbeit challenging was one I thoroughly enjoyed. I realize in retrospect that it was because First Culture gave me the space to write and edit the Africa I wanted.
Not necessarily the Africa that was or the Africa that was supposed to be, but the Africa I wanted.
At my interview for the role at a bar in Lekki, Lagos, I remember looking into Jeffrey Daniel’s eyes and seeing passion; here was a man who in his 60’s had choreographed Michael Jackson and was part of a largely successful band but who through it all believed in a version of Africa, and who was willing to start a media company just to propagate this version.
I remember him saying to me and I paraphrase here, “There’s so much we don’t know as Africans, so much history has been erased.”
Three years down the line, it is clear to me that I am now in many ways like Jeffrey. I have started Minority Africa and serve as Managing Editor primarily to propagate the version of Africa I want because I too believe there’s so much the world doesn’t know about African minorities.
When people ask me, what I say is that Minority Africa is a digital publication providing multimedia solutions content on African minority communities and persons using an approach that is data-driven and highly interactive, but it is a lot more than that.
Minority Africa is at the rudiments the “Why.” Journalism fundamentally teaches us the five W’s and H and although none is supposed to be more important than the other, I have nonetheless in my personal experience learned the “Why” to be of most value.
It is because “Why” lets us question the intent, it allows for introspection, for going back to the drawing board, it is the dock of context, the beginning of innovation. But we aren’t asking Why in Africa as often as we should, and a quick evaluation of google searches shows that we are a continent driven by asking “How?”
France, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, and Malaysia are the top five countries that google the term, “Why.” “How” on the other hand is googled most in Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia, Ghana, and South Africa. This ranges from search terms like “Why were cornflakes invented?” to “How to vote #india.”
I am from Nigeria and still live there for at least three months a year, so I know that this is true. And there is nothing, I must add, innately wrong with asking How, it shows that one is interested in finding out new information, a new way to approach a problem. But the challenge with how is that it predicates on the solutions and innovations of others without giving room to deduce your approach.
Why on the other hand can give a deeper look at a situation and allows for one to think up an intervention. It is Why that is most important when I report on how bicycle ambulances are saving lives in Uganda, Why that is most essential in this story I write from Lagos on how LGBT Nigerians looking to find love online are duped instead.
So, there is a place in the world for where, when, what, who, and how, but none of these are contextual without the why.
In this vein, why Minority Africa?
The most common answer to this type of question I have heard from the bulk of conferences I have attended even from veterans and whenever a marginalized group is brought up is “To give them a voice,” or “To give a voice to the voiceless.”
This is a train of thought I find incredibly disturbing. Not least because it connotes that a certain class of people are voiceless but even more so because it implies that you, because of some level of privilege, are the voice.
What we provide as Minority Africa is a platform for minority stories, we are not the voice, we are never the voice, the voice is personal, it is speaking and it is loud.
It is the half a dozen Ugandan trans men and women who sit with me at a table in an Ethiopian restaurant and tell me how they are challenging a system designed to kill them, that mellifluous sound is not voiceless, it is snaking its way into parliament, into the minds of policymakers and platforms like ours.
The voice is the thousands of persons living with albinism from Congo who have fled home fearing death to build a new life in Uganda, the voice is this new life that is being built.
And so, the pertinent question at this point becomes, “What is this voice saying?” Why brings us to the What.
Our perception of minority groups means that most people expect this voice to be pity laden, soliciting for help because being marginalized surely must mean that one cannot engineer any interventions? We think otherwise.
From Lagos to Nairobi, to Windhoek, minority groups and persons are chairing solutions, but these interventions are under-reported or not reported at all.
What is this voice saying? This voice is speaking about the conflict, but it is also venting about the solutions, we just don’t hear the latter. This is where we come in, to through examining the Why then being able to provide content that caters to an overlooked side of the What.
We are not speaking, we are merely amplifying. That is not to say that you will not hear our voice in these pages, we acknowledge our biases and we now well know that objectivity is not giving a platform to your oppressors.
But even if you hear us, may it be the faintest sound, for we are not the voice, and through constantly asking Why, we are reminded of Who the voice is, of What the voice is saying, When that voice is speaking, from Where it is speaking, and How it is speaking.
Every editor whether or not editing Africa or minorities must learn to return to the Why. Why should I run this story? Why should I take this angle? Whose voice am I suppressing so that this voice can rise? Is that a voice that should be heard?
With Minority Africa, we are suppressing the conflict. Is it a voice that should be heard still? Yes indeed, I do not think that solutions journalism needs to replace regular journalism as we know it, I, however, think they should co-exist.
And so even with minority stories, there is a place for conflict, there is a place for solutions and there is the Why somewhere in between.
Caleb Okereke is the Managing Editor at Minority Africa. Read about our mission here.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Caleb Okereke is the Managing Editor at Minority Africa. He is a Nigerian journalist and filmmaker working out of Kampala, Uganda, and has written and produced features for the BBC, CNN, Aljazeera, NPR, and Deutsche Welle. Caleb is a 2019 Media Challenge Fellow, One World Media fellow, and a Solutions Journalism Network, LEDE fellow as well. His works have been translated into Spanish and German.

created: November 19, 2019

author: Caleb Okereke


text:
“I wasn’t scared of being groped,” Women only parties are creating safe spaces for Nigerian women - Minority Africa
Ope Adedeji
April 1, 2020
Lagos, Nigeria (Minority Africa) — On November 26, 2018, Ugochi*, a 24-year-old writer was walking to her office along the streets of Lagos, Nigeria when a man popped his head from behind the bonnet of a car, gave her a quick look and said, “I’m going to suck it very well.”
By ‘it,’ the man meant her breasts.
Ugochi’s first reaction was confusion, followed by anger; she remembers being unable to work for the rest of the day.
“[The experience] made me feel completely dirty,” she says. “I felt the need to have a bath, to wash off myself.”
“I started thinking, ‘maybe I shouldn’t have had breasts at all’ because I have no agency over who looks at it or who talks about it. I felt helpless and enraged.”
That incident was the first of many different forms of harassment Ugochi would come to experience in Lagos, a city she had then just moved to, yet she wouldn’t be exactly shocked. It was the same even in Enugu, a state in Eastern Nigeria, 567 km from Lagos, where she had moved from.
On some days, Ugochi was called Naira Marley, a Nigerian musician who wears longer but similar-looking dreadlocks and on other days, strangers questioned her gender.
“They want to figure me out, because they know I don’t tick their normal box,” she says.“If I don’t answer, they follow me and yell the questions after me until they’re tired.”
This harassment happened at parties too — especially at parties. When Ugochi danced with her partner who is also a woman, men came between them or behind her, groping her and making her feel mentally exhausted, she says.
It was thus only natural that when Ugochi learned about Wine and Whine— a party strictly for women — from a flyer she saw circulating on social media, she was delighted.
“I’m always comfortable in women-only spaces,” she says. “So there was no second thought about attending Wine and Whine.”
Founded in October 2018  by Dami Odufuwa and Odun Eweniyi, Wine and Whine is an organisation centered on creating safe spaces for women to converge, discuss issues that affect them, and then execute relevant solutions.
“The goal is to create a women-focused network that will eventually have physical spaces all over the country where women can learn, relax and more importantly connect with other women,” says Odunayo Eweniyi, co-founder of Wine and Whine.
Before she founded Wine and Whine, 26-year-old Eweniyi studied engineering and she now works in technology — both heavily male-dominated fields. She says that the thinly-veiled misogyny she had to overcome made it imperative for her to hold the door wide open for the women coming after.
Since its inception, the organisation has successfully hosted a series of women-only events, including a self-defense class for women. The women’s only party which held in November 2019 in Lagos was nonetheless the first of its kind.
Over 300 women were in attendance and everyone from the bouncers to the bartenders was a woman.
“It is exhausting being on-guard every minute of every day,” Eweniyi says.“[It is] something that all women are familiar with, and we wanted to do something about that.
In Nigeria, women continue to face various forms of sexual harassment and violence. One in four Nigerian women report experiencing sexual violence as children and almost 25% of women within the ages of 18 to 24 say they experienced sexual abuse before they turned 18.
Omolara Oriye, a human rights lawyer believes that the creation of safe spaces for women and girls is an important strategy in their protection, especially for a group who she says would otherwise be exposed to issues brought on by social inequalities.
“Public spaces are sacrosanct to the existence of societies but in many cases, public spaces are unsafe for women because of sexual harassment and violence,” says Oriye.
Just in April 2019, police officers in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, raided a nightclub during which 65 women were either sexually assaulted or injured.
Yet, things seem to be changing with women at the reins. With the rise and popularity of feminism among a young generation of Nigerian women, years of harmful gender norms, stereotypes, and behaviours rooted in misogyny are being unlearned and protested against.
The adaptation of the  #MeToo movement to suit cultural and religious contexts— #ChurchToo and #ArewaMeToo—are pointers to this change. These campaigns counter the problem of sexual assault in multiple settings.
Other organisations take a more specific approach in their attempts to counter the problem. Market March was organised to protest sexual harassment specifically in Lagos markets.
But with all its advantages, is Wine and Whine creating a safe space for just cis and heterosexual women?
The organisation says its events are open to all women.
“Intersectionality and intersectional feminism are a big part of our belief system,” says 29-year-old co-founder, Odufuwa. “We believe that we are not free unless all women are free and transwomen and the LGBTQ+ community are our allies and are important to us.”
In Nigeria, members of the LGBTQ+ community are subjected to widespread homophobia, much of it stemming from religious and cultural perceptions. 49% of Nigerians are estimated to be Christian and another 49% are Muslim.
In Northern Nigeria where Islamic Sharia law is implemented, gays and lesbians can legally be stoned to death. The Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act (SSMPA) passed in 2014 further fanned this flame by criminalizing certain homosexual relations with up to 14 years in jail, a law that Ugochi says made her feel like a criminal.
“It made me always look over my shoulder and was a real part of my existence,” she says, “I was very paranoid that people could tell I was gay.”
She adds that this fear has decreased with time, saying she has found comfort in an understanding of the law and in the people working to have it repealed.
“I realised that the law does not criminalize being gay, it criminalizes the marriage of homosexuals, while this is still a problem, it doesn’t make me feel as bad as I used to feel.”
For Oriye, the greatest gift Wine and Whine might have given women is more mental than physical.
“Women often have to negotiate their bodily autonomy with society,” Oriye says. “But in safe spaces such as Wine and Whine, the mental burden is taken off. This contributes to the overall wellness of women either queer or otherwise.”
The feedback following Wine and Whine, both online and offline was immense.
For Ugochi, it is the most powerful event she has been to. “I didn’t have to second guess anything. I wasn’t scared of being groped or that my drink would be spiked.”
Sophia Essien, a 29-year-old heterosexual woman, and lawyer who also attended Wine and Whine echoes Ugochi’s sentiments as well. Having lived in Lagos for over a decade, Essien says she doesn’t remember ever attending a party in Nigeria and not being groped by a man.
“The last time I attended a safe party must have been years ago when I was a child,” she says. “There was even a time a man forcefully kissed me at a party.”
Hence, she is thankful for Wine and Whine. “Partying as an adult has been the most difficult thing ever,” Essien says. “I’m so glad that Wine and Whine happened.”
Many of the attendees also praised the event online.
Bruhh last night was mad! I had soooo much fun. Ate and drank so much. It was such an amazing vibe with only women around. I haven’t partied in almost a decade because men are scary. I had the very best time. My knees be crying today but I have zero ragrets.@wineandwhineng
— Petty (@malikah_maryam) December 1, 2019
@wineandwhineng yesterday was amazing, I’ve never seen women party so hard and be so free. Women were free to just be.
— Deola Omo Olugbon (@thedeolabee) December 1, 2019
So many cute moments today. From @OdunEweniyi handing me her glass of wine, @iamrenike asking “have you had anything to eat?” and giving me her snacks because I came late, and @urfavegurl offering me a ride when she didn’t even know who I was. ❤❤ @wineandwhineng
— phiphi (@the_phidelia) November 30, 2019
“The aftermath of it is that we realised that women wanted and needed this, so we have now added it to our offerings,” Eweniyi adds.
But for all its good, putting together Wine and Whine has not been hitch-free.
In the days that followed the third edition of Wine and Whine, there was criticism across social media from both men and women who opined that women already owned their space in society and thus did not need a break from men, a viewpoint that Oriye disagrees with.
“In human rights, the creation of safe spaces are not only legal, they are very important to the enjoyment of fundamental human rights to which women are entitled,” Oriye says.
The organisers say, however, that critics are the least of their problems. According to Odufuwa, a lot of the challenges are structural and financial. They range from finding the right space and raising the required funds, to locating partners and sponsors.
“Nothing in life is without a cost even when it is tied to activism,” she says.
Yet, both Odufuwa and Eweniyi are spurred by the impact Wine and Whine has had, and rudimentarily by their understanding of why women need safe spaces.
“Existing as a woman is having an innate understanding that anything could jeopardize your wellbeing at any time,” Eweniyi says. “And who doesn’t need a refuge from that?”
*Name changed to protect identity
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.
Ope Adedeji is a lawyer, writer, and editor managing things at Zikoko mag. Her work has appeared in Catapult, McSweeney's Quarterly and Barren Magazine. She's is a finalist for the 2020 US National Magazine Award and the winner of the 2019 Brittle Paper Award for fiction.

author: Ope Adedeji


text:
Your guide to abolishing oppressive language - Minority Africa
minorityafrica.co
July 1, 2020
To remain mindful of the ways in which our language can other minorities is to consistently interrogate our word choices and actively commit to changing or abolishing them. This happens with sexist language, ableist language, homophobic language, transphobic language, racist language, and in every system of oppression.
Our ability to wield words whether intentionally or unintentionally in a manner that erases or complicates history, attempts to minimize harm or injustices, and recasts the oppressor as the victim, is a wrong we must confront with each passing day.
Toni Morrison says: Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.
We must be devoted to examining how our vocabulary can inadvertently cause or sustain harm and oppression, and this devotion, whatever form it takes, must culminate in a resolution to do better.
As a publication by and dedicated to various African minorities, we do not exonerate or absolve ourselves from this possibility. We see the ways in which stories, the words they carry, the angle they take, can further perpetuate oppression and we are very committed to ensuring this is not the case.
We make important editorial decisions about language and framing each day, we learn along the way, and we know that regardless, we remain on the side of the oppressed and our language must reflect this.
We also believe in the ability of people when confronted with their own biases, to learn and evolve, we believe language can change as we have in many ways changed ours in the few months we’ve been here.
And we want to explore this change with you. Through the month of July, we’re running an editorial Language Series, it will focus on some of the different forms of oppressive language and their intersections. We will delve into the history of some of this language, give context to them, and analyze the means in which they can cause pain.
The series spearheaded by our Social Producer, Florence Kakatshozi, and Editorial Assistant, Muhammed Akinyemi will beyond the English language also touch on several indigenous African languages.
Follow us, follow this. To ensure you don’t miss a post, please subscribe to our newsletter here. Like our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter, and on Instagram.
Much of the content for this series will be developed in-house and some of it sourced from our existing network but if you’d like to contribute, inquire, partner, or just drop us a line on this series, please email language@minorityafrica.org.
Features a roundup of fresh MA reports, announcements, events/workshop listings, and minority content curated from across the web.
Editorial.