ODE TO INDEPENDENCE

 

GOD BLESS OUR HOMELAND GHANA

And make our nation remember Domelevo, who was

Bold to defend the public purse

And cause disallowances and surcharges

Fill our hearts to remember the 67 million Ghana Cedis he recovered from corrupt officials

Make us cherish his fearless honesty

AND HELP US TO RESIST OPPRESSORS RULE

With all our will

And might forever more

SHE

1

 I hated her

 Immediately I saw her, I hated her 

 Young, pretty, fair, skinny, nice bone structure, pretty hair, yes, the works.

 I hated her. Intensely

 I stepped into the consulting room and closed the door silently behind me.

 She looked up from behind the desk, where she was writing with lovely painted fingernails. Pink they were

 She looked up wearing her white coat with that thing they put around their necks She smiled at me.

 Lovely smile, perfect dental structure, white Colgate teeth 

I still hated her

 ‘Good afternoon’, I said 

 She responded in a soft voice. 

The type of voice in CK Mann and Obuors rendition of the song ‘Juliana’. 

Yes, that type of sing song treble voice that replied ‘I yam Juliana’.

 I noted her lovely slim fingers on the computer keyboard. Unmarried as well. 

 I walked slowly towards her desk and took the chair opposite her 

Waaa look! She even had time to put on a soft kind of makeup.

 2 

This is what I could have, should have, may have become 

But diverted paths, unfruitful years, second guessing and just good old patriarchy with a dose of dogmatic religion sealed in King Agorkoli era cultural suppression

 ensured I couldn’t,

 guaranteed that I didn’t, 

certified that I hadn’t 

 I looked at her and smiled. 

 She . 

 This small brilliant, fianga girl who held my future in her hands

 Who looked like she hadn’t missed a single school day in her entire life, 

 Infact, may have even been jumped a few classes due to sheer brilliance 

Not because she had opened her legs for any lecturer 

Hadn’t heard the mantra of can’ts, shan’ts and shoudn’ts and couldn’ts 

Hadn’t spent hours in back breaking unpaid labor of potential wives 

Hadn’t been given off for marriage as soon as she had her first period 

Hadn’t been used as free labour to nanny her younger siblings 

Scrubbing, cooking, cleaning, dusting, selling, buying, changing, peeling, pounding, chopping, hacking, carrying, searching, watching, waiting…waiting…waiting 

She. 

She was my personified outcome statement 

She embodied what I had been fighting for. 

 As it was said, ‘by the year 2020, at least 70% of all Ghanaian girls should have at least 8 continuous years of higher education’. 

 All the equality marches, advocacy campaigns, petitions, strategizing sessions, mentorship meetings, and so on and so forth 

Today, I have met her. 

My impact statement. Personified. 

 Sitting right here in front of me. 

 Young, skinny, pretty, brilliant, confident, professional and free and yes…female.

 African female oh how can I continue hating her? 

This is the Africa I wanted 

The Africa I have been fighting for 

The future of Africa

 XX chromosomes on full blast 

I smiled back at her ‘Doctor,’ I started 

 -end-

(c) Teiko Sabah , 2019

African Woman! Lace up your political boots!

So, for those of us living in Ghana, we have received news of the selection of a woman as a vice presidential candidate for the largest opposition party- the National Democratic Congress (NDC). It has made headlines with many touting is as a victory for womankind. 

 

Personally, I do not rank this feat as spectacular if you compare this to other women breaking boundaries right here in Africa. Far from the myth that many competent women do not want to be embroiled in ‘dirty politics’, prefer to stay passively and submissively in the background, do not perform as required, etc, I note many strong women are making strides in governance and decision making in Africa and with their own track record, not as wives, daughters or assigns of others.  

Indeed Africa is one of the few continents to have had several women elected and competent Presidents. Madam Joyce Banda of Malawi comes to mind, then Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia, twice elected, and worked tirelessly to build a healthy and prosperous post-war society in Liberia. Even more spectacular are the successes achieved by Madam Dlamini Zuma as the Chairperson of the African Union between the years of 2012-2017. During her time, I was privileged to be the Mo Ibrahim Fellow with the UNECA also based in Addis Ababa where is supported my Boss, Carlos Lopes on several key projects with the AU spearheaded by this phenomenal woman. These ranged from peace keeping, financing development to pan Africanism and the new African Renaissance. It was symbolic that fifty years after the creation of the OAU, a female chairperson championed the creation of Agenda 2063 with its focus on a strong and prosperous Africa. Madam Dlamini-Zuma continues to be one of my ardent pan African inspirations and I continue to wish her well as she battles the COVID Pandemic in South Africa. I will also add Madam Amina J Mohammed, now a Deputy General Secretary of the United Nations and formerly Nigerian Minister of Environment.

Regardless of the above, the selection of a female vice presidential candidate is gargantuan news in Ghana when taken into context. This is a woman who has credibility, candour and years of competence in her chosen field of experience and most importantly, has accepted the call to political duty to serve her country.  She joins the list of many other women who also accepted the call to political duty in Ghana at legislative and executive level in Ghana. I pay tribute to the late Eva Lokko of blessed memory and currently to Madam Brigitte Dzogbenuku who we hope continues to be the VP candidate for the PPP in the 2020 elections. 

So why is this important? Because it serves to change the narrative of the competent women shying away from politics, and not just any politics, but the type of politics that breeds statements such as ‘all die be die’. Secondly, I sincerely believe she was not chosen for this role simply because she had a vagina but because she has the competencies, skills, experience and emotional intelligence to do this job and do it well. 

So I ask myself again, why is this important? In a country that has never really reached more than 11% of women’s participation in parliament in all our seven elections and placed 150th out of 193 countries by the Inter-Parliament Union as at 1st September, 2016. Indeed, in some regions, there are no female DCEs and at the committee level, women elected officials continue to congregate in the ‘social’ committee leaving the economic and finance committees to the men.

This is more appalling if you note that Ghana’s Affirmative Action Bill sits on the lower rungs of priority for policy makers, having been in parliament in one form or the other for the past 10 years; equitable distribution of spousal rights in land and inheritance continue to be in abeyance at the whims and caprices of a patriarchal society; girls continue to suffer the indignity of early marriages and ‘propertised’ for material gain;  and to a large extent, gender based violence continue to be culturally acceptable.

To make the selection of a vice presidential candidate truly significant, Ghanaians must look at not just the female, but the extent to which the solution of a myriad of women’s issues are vertically and horizontally integrated into our patriarchal governance systems and challenge and change the structures and systems that keep many women far far away from being part of decision making processes that influence their lives, especially now within this COVID era. This is not a silver bullet solution to gender equality but will add on to the building blocks that together will provide the tipping point. But there is much more that has to be done.

Our total aspiration as women continue to be enshrined in various international and local conventions such as Aspiration No 6, goal 17 of Agenda 2063, SDG Goal 5 and found in the 12 critical areas identified in the Beijing Platform for Action. Locally, the Women’s Manifesto speaks to key targets on women in decision making which continuously fail to be achieved in more than 10 years since its publication.

Across Africa, I see a lot more competent women who are warming up on the sidelines, in their afrocentric running boots, and working towards changing the narrative, not as wives, mothers or advisers, but as key decision makers, of high international repute, in politics and governance. I see Madam Dlamini Zuma as President of South Africa, Madam Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala whose accolades and achievement, no one disputes, ready to lead the more than 200 million strong country to their promise land. Both unabasedly clear and direct about their vision.  

Across the continent, more and more women are ready and willing to pick up the baton, throw off the shackles of tokenism and sexism and work diligently to make Africa a better place for their children and their children’s children.

So I ask my fellow women, should you be given the opportunity to serve your country in a political capacity , I hope your answer will be a resounding ‘yes’! African woman! 

Lace up your boots! Lets jump into the river that is called politics!

Tsoooboi!

Beijing+25 – planning for gender equality

Its been a while since I wrote on my blog, so I welcome myself back to the blogosphere. Well, many 

events have passed without my commentary. But it should not be surprising to you the event that has brought me out of my hibernation.  An issue dear to my heart and to the development of our continent. The issue of our progress to meeting the Beijing goals.

Where were you when you first heard of the Beijing Declaration? Do you know its been 25 years since then?

Yes, next year 2020 will be twenty five years after the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BfA) was passed. Even as a fifteen year old in 1995, I recognised the importance of the event. And it would take another 10 or so years before I sat in Prof. Dzodzi Tsikata’s Gender and Development Class (popularly called from WID to GAD) at ISSER, but even then, I believe this event is what made me a feminist. For us young girls growing up in the post Beijing era, we were identified by how vocal we were in which case, we were labelled as feminists and thus ‘hard aka talkative’ girls.

I am happy to note that the values and commitments made at the Beijing platform continue to be held in high regard and continue to shape the feminist discourse on the African context. I am happy also to note that there exists a group of hard working and committed feminists and activists across the continent who continue to work tirelessly for the implementation and recognition of all the critical areas under the Beijing Declaration.  This does not surprise me at all as African women have a strong history of mobilising themselves across the continent. See my earlier post on the Pan African Womens Organisation (PAWO), which is older than the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).

The African Union Agenda 2063 makes a strong case for the role of women, young women and children in shaping the destiny of Africa as actors and not as passive recipients of aid, training and charity. So to see a pan African wide effort at consolidating our gains towards the 2020 event was indeed heart warming.  In the workshop which took place in Accra in August, I identified myself as the ‘slim middle’ a generation between the ‘elders’ or those who were actually at the help of planning and attended the 1995 event itself and the ‘digital generation’, the current force for change who use technology to achieve their aims. 

As we work towards planning the Beijing+25 event in 2020, these are my top 3 recommendations to ensuring that the Declaration continues to exist and makes a lasting change.

Number 1- the intergenerational torch hand over. 

We need to create and maintain an intergenerational link between the generation of women activists who were actually in Beijing and the new digital feminists. We need to identify the common threads connecting our generational narratives – that patriarchy is still very much intact- and use that as a rallying point for sustaining the changes gained and creating new standards for women’s rights. Without this focus, we run the risk of Beijing becoming a theoretical paper based document that does not resonate with the rest of the continents women. One way to do this is the realisation that there are different representations of feminism but one overall goal- to break the hold of patriarchy. 

Number 2- the hard facts and the figures.   

We need to consciously build a robust and strong global data collection and analysis system that monitors and tracks and analyses the progress towards the achievements of the BPfA. This system should be globally agreed and form the basis for sharing of anecdotal stories, qualitative and quantitative changes, key success stories and challenges. An example of such a global data system is the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under which each goal has specific indicators, targets and milestones for achievements. We are aware of the successes achieved in the past 25 years- first woman this and first woman that. My personal favourite being Madam Zuma and her time at the African Union Commission. But are they enough? There continue to be more women in slave bondage now than any other period in history, technology has made it easier to traffic women and girls across the globe; climate change and rapid urbanisation has changed the situation for pastoralists and traditional communities; wars and famine affect women and girls the most, with deplorable living conditions in refugee camps. Rape continues to be a weapon of war. We need an audacious agenda for societal transformation- now and soon. And require the skills to be able to tell the world what has changed positively, what is still yet to be transformed and this transformation will look like. Enough of the rhetoric.

Number 3- linkages, networks and connections. 

We must focus on the intra connectedness of the 12 critical areas and not see them as stand-alone  deliverables. I will be the first person to confess to an unfinished understanding of the full picture in relation to the 12 critical areas identified in Beijing. But my layman’s reading shows a leaning towards ‘siloism’ or the temple analogy where the critical areas stand as columns with no interlinkages. But as I said, I stand to be corrected. The interconnectedness of the critical areas must also be linked up strategically to other more recent conventions such as the SDGS and in the case of Africa, the almighty Agenda 2063. How do we carve out the areas of convergence in a manner to supports the overall objective? This is important to takeing forward the discussions.

In conclusion

 The asks in Beijing do not need to be overhauled, they do not need to be revamped or changed. All those ideas continue to be relevant to the feminist struggles today as they were 25 years ago. We just need to keep our eyes on the ball and ensure the next generation have the tools and the interest to keep the fire burning. Kudos to our elders who took the bold steps. As they say somewhere ‘Aluta Continua’. 

About the author:

Teiko Sabah is the 2013 Mo Ibrahim African Leaders Fellow with the UNECA. She is interested in Africa and pan Africanism. She writes a monthly blog on pan Africanism on https://teikosabah.blogspot.com