Domestic violence has its roots buried deep in various societies across the world of which Nigeria is no exception. As a matter of fact, reports reveal that domestic violence in the country seems to be on the rise. Both the government and the Nigerian society have not paid the required level of attention to the problem of domestic violence which families from different social, educational, economic and religious backgrounds go through in several unimaginable ways. Women continually suffer domestic violence irrespective of their social status, age, class, tribe or religion all over the world.
According to a 2007 Amnesty International report, a third and in some cases, two-thirds of Nigerian women are believed to have been subjected to sexual, psychological and of course, physical abuse meted out by close relations; husbands, fathers or partners. In traditional African societies, domestic violence functions as a means of enforcing conformity with the roles women play within the customary society. The husband is regarded as the head of the family and is responsible for maintaining order in his household. It is then perceived that he has every right to “discipline” his child (ren) and his wife if the need arises. This is terribly reprehensible.
Several reasons amount to the sky-rocketing increase of domestic violence in the country. One of such is the “culture of silence”, inherent in Nigeria especially among uneducated, less independent women, which hinders victims from speaking out in their abusive relationships. These women dread the stigma associated with divorce and the forced independence they fear will follow if they ever choose to seek help and instead, resort to silence. This act of ignorance only gives the perpetrators more room to carry out their heinous acts and revel in sheer inhumane manipulations.
A victim of domestic violence for ten years, Mary Akangbe, shares her experience in an abusive marriage outside the country with me during my radio show Heart Matters on Splashfm105.5 Ibadan. She explained that she got married to a Nigerian in London and suffered her first blow of abuse just six months into their marriage at the time when she was pregnant with their first child. Mary admitted that though her ex-husband was a “helpless romantic” before their marriage, she did notice some ill-behaviour she thought would change over time which apparently didn’t. Mary then resorted to finding help from religious leaders at the church whom she claimed only advised on getting closer to God through incessant prayers and fasting. This, she said only kept her in the marriage for much longer than necessary.
Mary’s marriage produced two sons she had to hide each time she suspected another episode of violence was about to brew. Now an author and CEO of a charitable organization, she says she always sent her children off to her friends’ homes in the neighbourhood during such ungraceful moments but couldn’t prevent them from witnessing the horrible scenes all the time. When her divorce eventually got through over ten years after her marriage, she put her sons through lots of counseling to re-orientate them towards the proper way of relation with members of the society, especially the opposite sex.
From Mary’s experience, it could be deduced that domestic violence knows no bounds. Generally, it is expected that in places like the West, there should be constant monitoring of women who may be going through some sort of violence but unfortunately, not every story gets told. Mary did reach out to friends and family too but according to her, they only showed concern towards the issue on the surface. No one chose to go in deep within to rescue her. Not because they didn’t want to, but they didn’t know how to.
Though the world today just might be sourcing for possible ways to put the menace of domestic violence to the overall psychological, sexual and physical balance of women away and appropriately punish the perpetrators of such crimes, the endangering effects of domestic violence on children seem to be totally ignored. Research reveals that children brought up in violent homes, without proper counseling, risk being violent themselves. The perception such children get about life may only be centred on cruelty, anger and frustration so much that it gets extremely difficult, and sometimes impossible, to make them see things otherwise. The end result of this poses a great threat to the overall development of any and every nation in various terms. Such children just may grow to replicate what they have witnessed in their own homes while others may completely go all out being bullies, robbers and worst case scenario, assassins.
Therefore, if domestic violence must be curbed, the government needs to put all necessary facilities in place to assist victims of domestic violence. This could be in form of comfortable shelter for victims in extremely dangerous situations. Law enforcement agencies must be readily available to swing into action and bring perpetrators to book. The society should, at all times, uphold the principle of gender equality and discourage all forms of gender discrimination. With the strong platform of the media, valuable contents and materials that would campaign against domestic violence should be pushed forward. This would enlighten the populace and paint a crystal clear picture distinguishing between what is right and wrong, what is ethical and what is morally and legally unacceptable.
A four year old boy once said ‘I’m nakeding about the house’ when asked why he did not wear some clothes after he got back from school. He used the word ‘nakeding’ as one would say ‘jumping’ or ‘singing’, something along the lines of ‘I’m nakeding because I’m happy’.
One of the pleasures I had while growing up, was that of going about naked in my house. During the usually, hellishly hot, dry season, I could be found playing around the neighbourhood in either a pair of shorts or an underpant, rainy season found me and my friends running around buck naked anytime the rain started. The most cloth I ever wore, while growing up, if I remember correctly, was an undergarment we fondly called a ‘shimmy’ and a pair of shorts. Except it was terribly cold, wearing of clothes was not a prerogative.
I remember being told by my grandmother that she never got to wear clothes until she was about sixteen years old, it was one of her neighbours that actually drew my great-grandmother’s attention to the fact that her daughter now had a pair of breasts and needed to cover them up.
I was at the swimming pool the other day with my children, and was pleased to see a young, flat chested girl, of about eight frolicking in the shallow end with her brothers, in only a pair of shorts, the same type her brothers were wearing.
Shame was not a word I associated with the happy little girl, but in the name of protecting our children, it appears we are teaching them how to be ashamed of their bodies.
A couple of weeks ago, in Kenya, a young lady was stripped naked by a mob of men, because her skirt was deemed too short. This led to a protest hashtagged #mydressmychoice, a simple call for the society to stop what Abimbola Adelakun, in her article titled “How to treat a Naked Woman”, called “legislating the sartorial choices of women.”
Although the stripping and protests took place in ‘faraway’ Kenya, stripping women naked for their choice of dressing, is nothing new to Nigeria.
In the old Yaba, before Raji Fashola brought some modicum of sanity to the place, the traders were known for booing and stripping girls they consider ‘skimpily’ or ‘outrageously’ dressed ,naked, in a lot of cases sexual harassment also takes place while these ‘judges of our morals’ are ‘punishing’ these women.
culled
In a book titled “Nigerian Dress: The Body Honoured”, Dani Lyndersay traced the costume arts of traditional Nigerian dress from Early History to Independence… and I’m sad to say this to the puritans, our ancestors (from the North to the South), except for the very rich, went about stark naked! And I mean men, women and children. They adorned their bodies, beautifully, with tattoos and other things like feathers, cowry shells and even leaves, but the adornment was simply that, not a means of ‘covering up’.
I dare say wearing clothes and shoes, became popular in Nigeria, more of a statement of fashion, of how rich you are, than to cover up in shame.
A few days ago, a young lady took to Facebook and complained bitterly about how an eight year old child, was ‘all over’ some ‘uncles’ thighs all the while wearing ‘only a pant’. She expressed disappointment at how ‘parents’ are no longer ‘raising their children right’ how this child is courting abuse, because a flat chested eight year old should be an object of desire.
When called out on why she would choose to shame an innocent little girl, who was obviously enjoying the relief of not having to wear clothes in the hot afternoon sun, she claimed that the girl was making herself ‘vulnerable’ to abuse.
How in the world does a child go around making his/herself vulnerable to abuse?
Isn’t this the same line of argument proffered by rapists and would-be-rapists, ‘why was she wearing that gown?’, ‘what was she doing in his house?’
News flash – paedophiles(men or women who have sex with children), just like rapists and abusers, do not need provocation, they just are – in most cases – very sick individuals that need to be locked up or psychoanalysed or both.
Your child is at risk in your home, more than in the streets, and their state of dress or undress has absolutely nothing to do with this. Paedophiles are known to rape babies of 6months – can we say it’s because they are sagging their diapers?
Most people who abuse your children are often relatives or close family friends and even people who help out in the house. People in authority such as Imams, pastors and teachers, who have access to your child can also be sexual predators – (a sexual predator hunts down his/her potential victims the same way a frog hunts a fly). Abuse is about power and control.
A lion does not care how a gazelle is dressed, all it cares about is hunting it down and killing it! The same way a sexual predator does not care how his or her victim is dressed and is more concerned about assaulting the child or adult, sexually, expressing his/her power over the victim.
We need to stop body shaming, we need to teach our children the correct terms for their body parts and not using euphemisms to describe the penis, the vulva, the breasts, we need to show and teach our children about respecting other people, their space, their choices, their lives!
We need to free ourselves from the mental shackles that have held us down for over a century.
Somebody said sex crimes are on the increase and surmised that it’s because more women are dressing more outrageously now, but I put it to you that sexual crimes are not on the increase, the reportage of sexual crimes has.
A few years ago, women would be afraid to point at rapists and call them out, because of the taboos our society has placed on it, because we shame the victim instead of the abuser, but now, more and more women … and children, are coming out and making their voices heard, they have found out that the people who need to be shamed are the men and women telling them to keep quiet about their abuse, the ones that need locking away are the rapists.
In my city, Abuja, an NGO called the Society against Prostitution and Child Labour has been collaborating with the city’s Environmental Protection Board to round up any woman found on a sidewalk after dark and charge them with prostitution. There is rarely any evidence of sexual solicitation in these cases. The only evidence used being the women’s locations (out of the house) and dressing (a vastly subjective “indecent”). These women, usually between the ages of 18 and 30, are often extorted for money with authorities threatening to take them to court if they don’t pay a “fine” of N5,000. There are no opportunities for appeal and no protection from arrest. And this has been happening without comment for nearly two years.
In 2011, a young woman at Abia State University was assaulted by five men who broke into her dorm room and raped her for hours. The assailants recorded themselves perpetrating the act and uploaded the video to the internet. To date, none of those young men have served jail time.
In July, on a 12-hour road trip to my hometown in Eastern Nigeria, I watched four popular Nollywood movies. Each one depicted a scene of domestic violence – from a boyfriend slapping his girlfriend for “disrespecting” him, to a husband shouting abuses at a wife who dared to contradict him and a father hitting his daughter. And in every film the abuse was treated as normal – unremarked upon by any of the characters.
The British Council’s 2012 Gender in Nigeria report shows that these are more than isolated incidents. According to the report “Nigeria’s 80.2 million women and girls have significantly worse life chances than men, and their sisters in comparable societies. Violence compounds and reinforces this disadvantage and exclusion.”
My country has some of the highest rates of gender disparity in the world. Women earn less than men, are less educated, more likely to die in childbirth and are barely represented in positions of power and authority. Many of you might not think this is a problem, but research has shown that excluding women from economic, health, educational and political opportunities costs societies. Our security, growth and long-term welfare are seriously compromised and we doom ourselves to being a less productive, less healthy and ultimately less progressive society than we could be.
Economic Access
Women earn less than men – regardless of their educational qualifications. In Nigeria a woman with a Bachelor’s Degree can expect to earn the same as a man with a secondary school certificate and a woman with a secondary school certificate will earn the same as a man with no education at all. A woman can expect to be paid 20 to 50 percent less for doing the same work as her male counterpart. She can also expect a slower rate of promotion.
Part of this is because gender roles which place the bulk of housework, childrearing duties on women often lead women to choose lower-paying jobs that allow for more flexibility or are part-time. Women spend a much larger share of their time doing unpaid work in the form of informal household chores than men do. But a bigger part of this is gender bias. We have a widespread view that the proper place of a woman is at home under the dominance and care of a man (a husband, father or male relative). So women are not expected to work outside of the home unless there is a familial “need” for it. This is reflected in the Nigerian tax code which taxes men at a lower rate because they can be classified as “breadwinners.” Women with dependents cannot – even if they are the sole earners in their household.
When it comes to owning property and assets which can be used as collateral, such as land, women often face discriminatory inheritance practices which bar them from inheriting land or property from their parents. In many traditions inheritance is patrilineal – from father to son. So you have a situation where, “although women represent between 60% and 79% of Nigeria’s rural labour force, men are five times more likely to own land than women.” This affects women’s ability to access credit. Few banks will grant a business a loan without some form of collateral from the owner. However, even with collateral women have a harder time getting finance as men are twice more likely to get a bank loan than women.
Health
One of the areas with the widest disparity for women in Nigeria is the access to health. Nigeria has one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the world. Let me repeat that: One of the highest rates of maternal mortality. In the world. Our maternal mortality rate means that 144 women die each day and one woman dies every 10 minutes from conditions associated with childbirth. As a woman I am more likely to die giving birth than being shot by a gun or killed in car accident. Childbirth in Nigeria is more dangerous to a woman than smoking or drinking alcohol.
Access to contraceptives and gynaecological care is appallingly poor and often actively discouraged. Our country currently spends 6.5% of its total budget on healthcare, which means that health facilities are often difficult to get to, poorly staffed and barely equipped. And because the major burden of payment for healthcare in Nigeria falls on the individual, the poorest women are the least likely to get proper care. In fact, the poorest women are six times more likely to die when they get sick than the richest women in Nigerian society.
There are also social barriers to women’s health. Many unmarried women worry that going to a gynaecologist or purchasing contraceptives – even when they have access to them – will signal that they are sexually active and expose them to derision and harassment. It is not uncommon for a woman buying a condom to be treated as if she were a moral pariah. Thus, many women leave the decision to use contraception to their partners and even more women’s first visit to a gynaecologist is when they are pregnant. The attitude of healthcare professionals is also a problem. Many doctors still treat their female patients with condescension – often minimising and ignoring their complaints. Nurses in Nigeria are notorious for their insensitivity and outright cruelty – particularly to female patients – making a visit to a hospital a generally unpleasant experience.
This has terrible implications for a woman’s health throughout her lifetime. Infrequent and poor-quality gynaecological exams mean that a woman could be struggling with health issues that she may not know about until they become acute enough to require emergency medical treatment. And since for many women, the decision to visit a doctor is not their own to make, it is not surprising that many women die from easily preventable conditions.
Education
While rates of enrolment for girls has risen worldwide – in some countries there are more women in colleges and universities than men – the gender gap in sub-Saharan Africa, and Nigeria in particular, has stubbornly persisted.
Nigeria has more children of primary school age who are not going to school than any other country in the world and more than half that population are girls. Fewer girls than boys make the transition from primary to secondary education and even fewer from secondary to university level. Overall, more girls drop out of school than boys. Lack of access to education is costly, but for women, it can be deadly. Women with less education are more likely to have more children, increasing their risk of dying in childbirth. And their children are more likely to be malnourished and undereducated themselves.
The poor educational statistics are a direct result of the poor status of women in our society. Despite our claims to free universal basic education, going to school is not free. Most parents still have to pay school fees, as well as the costs of uniforms and books. For most households, school fees are the largest expense in a family’s budget – next to rent and feeding. And for a lot of families that money is better spent on male child who will bring better returns in terms of higher income and carrying a greater burden of parental care. Many families still believe that it is more important for a woman to marry than to have an education and so will withdraw their daughters from school at various levels once they feel they have had “enough”.
There is also a perception that schools are dangerous places for women – and that is not entirely wrong. Nigeria’s educational system still uses corporal punishment which often leads to excess and abuse for both boys and girls. But research has shows that girls from the poorest backgrounds suffer a disproportionate amount of the beatings and public humiliations that come with this system. Girls are often required to do more school chores like sweeping classrooms, fetching water and cleaning school grounds which can cut into their study time. Finally, there are the dangers of bullying and sexual harassment from teachers and older students that can cause many girls to drop out.
Violence against Women
The low status of women in Nigerian society is reinforced through violence and threats of violence. And the violence isn’t just physical. There is the verbal violence of harassment, bullying and intimidation. There is the sexual violence of rape and molestation and there is the “soft violence” of rumour-mongering, innuendo and insults.
The fear of all these things keeps women in their “place”. Many women curtail their social lives for fear of being labelled prostitutes and subject to physical and verbal harassment. Others limit their education and employment opportunities for fear of “overshadowing” their partners and being victims of physical violence. And many more circumscribe their personalities and desires in order to stay within narrow definitions of what makes a “good” woman.
Violence against women is a problem all over the world – regardless of education, status and location. According the UN’s 2010 report on Women in the World, most but not all of the physical, sexual and psychological violence experienced by women comes at the hands of family members, especially husbands, partners and fathers – and much of it is normalised. In Nigeria, statistics show that unmarried women between 15 and 35 are the most vulnerable to violence but this masks the fact that married women who experience violence within their homes are less likely to report it.
A high number of women in Nigeria believe it is acceptable for a man to beat a woman if she “disrespects” him. Acts such as speaking out of turn, taking decisions without permission, failing to submit to sexual advances and failing to perform household chores are all grounds for physical violence. And the question of rape is still a hotly contested issue where many regard it as a punishment for the bad behaviour of the victim.
There is also institutionalised violence against women where certain bodies are structured in such a way as to actively discriminate against women. Institutions such as the police, the judiciary, political offices and higher education where there are “entrenched cultures of impunity” for the perpetrators of rape and other violence, all work to harm women. For example, women are not allowed to post bail in Nigerian jails, law courts tend to favour men over women in domestic disputes and sexual harassment and rape is endemic in many schools and universities. Many men in positions of authority – especially in these institutions – regard opportunities to receive sexual favours from female subordinates as one of the privileges of their positions.
Soft violence against women is used to keep women out of patronage networks which disproportionally favour men. Women who try to break into these networks can find themselves the victims of whisper campaigns designed to destroy their reputations – and because the social consequences of a “bad” reputation are higher for women than men, many women simply opt out of the process.
The future of Nigeria
There are many reasons why despite our vast natural resources we continue to lag behind comparable countries but I think it ultimately comes down to one thing. Our society is deeply unequal. In fact, Nigeria is among the 30 most unequal countries in the world, particularly when it comes to income distribution. Yet, studies show that societies with greater gender equity have lower crime rates, fairer distribution of resources, and are healthier and more stable, in general. This is not an accident. Right now, Nigeria is like a runner trying to compete in a race while tying one leg to his back. We simply cannot progress as a country without the full and equal participation of women.
Our political system must be more accountable to women – they must take women’s issues of health, education, economics and violence more seriously. We have to begin by electing and appointing more women into positions of power. The lack of representation by women in political office (just 9%) is one of the reasons why our country has not allocated as much resources to sectors such as health and education that are key to our development.
And our social dynamics need to change. We cannot continue to accept violence against women in any form. We cannot continue to limit the opportunities of women and girls for our own comfort. For when we exclude women from participating fully in society, when we insist on narrowly defined roles for both genders, we are limiting ourselves to using only half of our resources, half of our creative spirit. Ultimately, when we work to hold women back, we are only holding back ourselves.
From the Editor: The housemaid, in Nigeria, encompasses all that is wrong with the way our country is presently structured. She is the avatar of what the patriarch wants a woman to be, cleaner, washer, primary caregiver for the children, often abused sexually and assaulted by family members, the housemaid is the poster child for suffering that the West has embraced as ‘the African Child’. Not that there are no male servants, but the majority of people serving in our homes are girls between the ages of 9 and 16, most people prefer it so because they are easier to ‘control’ and it is not likely that they’ll ‘sexually abuse’ our precious children.
The story you’re about to read is actually more anecdotal than imagined, it is something that was experienced as a child by the author, who was sad that he had not spoken up when as a child he had gone to ‘piss’ inside his aunt’s bath, but the woman had taken out her rage on the housemaid, who of course knew nothing about it. His point was ‘why do we keep quiet in the face of unfairness?’
We leave you to enjoy and maybe reflect on the story of ‘Patience’…
Two slaps landed in quick succession on the younger woman’s face before she could cover it with both arms to deflect a third.
Somewhere in a corner, a fan whirred noisily, periodically flicking the leaves of a stack of papers on a table and raising dusty minions that swam about the small living room around the arms of a madam who was beating her maid with reckless abandon. The others looked on without saying a word.
There were three cushion chairs, two side tables, a television and a fan –witnesses, mute consorts with the people in the room. The madam’s husband, who occupied a sagging chair by the desk that bore the table fan and two little children – the man’s nephews – who had their arms gathered in neats folds on their laps switching between watching the lone bulb hanging above their uncle’s head and the raining blows that threatened to tear the maid to shreds. The oldest of the children – about seven and the younger about four, wore matching pleated white shorts with lilac trimming at the edges that conversed in purples with the permanganate hued ankara skirt the maid wore.
“Why did you piss in the baff? I say why did you piss in the baff?”
The madam in her mid-forties, had a yellowing complexion that bore a sharp contrast to the fading black hue that was the colour around her ears, her knuckles and the back of her ankles. Her small haloed eyes sparkling with rage, lent her narrow bony face more depth. Her braids flew in the face of fury and wrapped around the beaded neckline of the green kaftan she wore. She wasn’t asking the questions expecting answers but the maid persevered all the same.
“Madam I say it is not me!”
“You say it is not you … Is it me you are talking to like that? Is it me you are talking to?” Her questions were accentuated by further slaps that sounded like thuds against a shield of arms.
“It is not you, it is not you then who is it? How many of us are in this house you useless girl. Is the baff where to piss? Ehn…Is the baff where to piss? And you,” she turned towards where the children sat “… what are you children just sitting and looking at like mumu. Oya get inside!”
The children scurried towards a bare door.
The maid called Patience – in her early teens, by now was negotiating her way slowly towards the nearest the door, away from her domestic assailant. The blows hurt but what hurt more were the words of her mother – words she still remembered before leaving their little hut in Otupko in Benue State. Words that gave her hope that she would ‘only’ be travelling to ‘help’ these people. A hope that died when her mother paused to count the money the agent had paid in return for her service as maid for one year. Patience smarted at the sting of the madam’s ring as it caught her right knuckle in searing pain that ran up her forearm.
She couldn’t hold up much longer. She made a dash for the entrance door which was open wide but barred by the net shutter that prevented mosquitoes from entering, she tore away from the arms of her madam, as the older woman tried to pull her back by the neckline of her tee shirt. The black tee shirt gave way too easily as Patience hauled herself against the net shutter. It wasn’t bolted and yeilded to her weight, she stumbled her way to freedom on the two steps that led to the bare earth of the outside and the wide boughs of the almond tree that shaded the front of the unpainted bungalow she called home.
“Where are you going?” The woman screamed from inside. “Don’t come back into this house today. If I see you in this house I will kill you.”
Patience ran a couple of metres away from the house – out of earshot, turning to face the receding house before she finally stopped. She then folded her arms in defiance and began breathing hard as the pent up streams of tears she had held back for so long began to flow easily now that their dam was broken. She hadn’t done it. She hadn’t urinated in the bath. She didn’t know who did it.
She couldn’t help but wonder whether her two elder sisters – Ene and Florence, who had also ‘travelled’ the year before her were facing the same things. She wondered if they ate dinner before going to bed. She wondered if they slept on the bare floor beside an empty bed no one ever slept in. Maybe they had more caring madams.
She missed their mischievous trio and battles with their other brothers. Even in lack, the company of all seven of the kids was all the home that mattered to her and the brief moments with her father, in the little time she got to know him before he left home and never came back. Patience looked around the alien surrounding she had lived in for almost 6 months now, the trees, the grass, the idling livestock, the people and their strange language.
She looked up at the wide skies and imagined she was a bird. She would fly away and see blues and greens in its splendour, the wind beneath her wings.
She imagined herself in far away lands where she was queen and had numerous servants and vasals tending to her every wish. She would not be a wicked woman like her madam. She would be kinder, more considerate, more human.
She ran her gnarled fingers through her matted hair down the nape of her neck. It was thick with sweat and hurt badly. She couldn’t see the scratches and the little welts that had begun to form just below her hairline. She couldn’t see the blood either.
OIO
We leave you to enjoy and maybe reflect on the story of ‘Patience’.
From the Editor: If we had followed the age old fashion of giving sensational titles to stories the title of this piece would have been ‘Botswana Diplomat assaults female journalist’, because that was exactly what happened on the 28th of September to Michaela Moye, a writer and journalist who works with a radio station in Abuja.
Michaela Moye at the birthday party .
From the Sudan to Timbuktu, Zimbabwe to Zanzibar, our reality as women is the patriarchy, which has eaten so deep into our society that we have all been crippled. Women are the ‘softer sex’, the ones expected to smile at catcalls, assaults, violence. We are the ones expected to forgive and forget because men are the ‘hard sex’, the ones that do not cry, men are children, mere babies who ‘cannot’ control their impulses.
When a woman is assaulted or insulted, you were asked ‘what did you do to warrant this?’ When you were raped you were asked ‘why did you go to his house in the first place? Why were you dressed like that?’ Nobody asks these men ‘what the fuck is wrong with you?’ In most cases, these psychopaths literally get away with murder.
From childhood, you are socialized to be ashamed of your body. Your body is inherently sinful, so you need to cover it up in order not to ‘tempt’ boys, but there are times that your covering up might be ineffective, in this case a man may be ‘pushed’ by your ‘ethereal beauty’ to invade your personal space and touch you (inappropriately), in this case you’re supposed to smile indulgently, pat them on the head and coo ‘boys will be boys’ (giggling also helps).
A recent article examined the Nigerian Constitution and concluded that the Nigerian Justice is no Lady’ It is apparent from the tone of the constitution (which uses he for ‘everybody’) that the Nigerian woman is considered (or not considered at all) as a second-class citizen. This is predominantly the stance of the constitution on women all over Africa.
So when Mr Motlaleng, decided to touch Ms Moye’s body without her permission he was affronted that she would protest, the question he and other men present during the assault asked was ‘what is wrong with you?’
Read Michaela’s account of the incidence.
Marang Motlaleng
On Saturday 28 September this year, I went for a birthday party. In the wee hours of Sunday, while the party was still grooving, I decided to take a break and workaholic that I can be, I was checking my emails. Suddenly, this chap, called Marang Motlaleng materialized in front of me. He’s someone I have mutual friends with so I thought he wanted to talk to me. I lowered my phone and in that moment, he reached forward, grabbed and squeezed my breasts and started running away. I gave chase and caught him. We both fell and I tried to get in some punches and kicks but I was lifted off him. I must tell you that I have NEVER been more disappointed in Nigerian men as on that day. They were actually telling ME to calm down, that such behavior is expected. I was so mad. I couldn’t believe what they were saying to me.
One guy, who I had never seen before, kept on saying, “I saw what happened, just let it go. Man!” Even thinking about it now annoys me no end.
Anyway, there was a lot of ruckus. In the midst of it, Marang even threatened to beat me up – he and a bunch of guys he was hiding behind. I dared him to bring it on but he didn’t.
I made up my mind to write to his consulate – Botswana High Commission – and inform them of their staff’s assault on my person. Fortunately, a lawyer offered his services pro bono. We wrote the letter to the consulate, copying Marang. The only thing I asked for was a formal apology from Marang and a statement printed in a national daily about Botswana’s commitment to gender quality.
Neither the apology nor the statement have been forthcoming. In fact, Marang hired a lawyer, who wrote to my own lawyer citing Diplomatic Immunity.
My lawyer says that we cannot sue. I was hoping that there would be some provision that states that diplomats/consular staff, that commits an offense outside the course of official duties, will be liable. I am considering embarking on a campaign for some policy amendment.
My plan is to continue engaging the Botswana Consulate and of course, harnessing the power of the internet until some proper action is taken against Marang. I am told that he has acted inappropriately to several people and I am hoping that they will stand with me.
A victim of domestic violence for ten years, Mary Akangbe, shares her experience in an abusive marriage outside the country with me during my radio show Heart Matters on Splashfm105.5 Ibadan. She explained that she got married to a Nigerian in London and suffered her first blow of abuse just six months into their marriage at the time when she was pregnant with their first child. Mary admitted that though her ex-husband was a “helpless romantic” before their marriage, she did notice some ill-behaviour she thought would change over time which apparently didn’t. Mary then resorted to finding help from religious leaders at the church whom she claimed only advised on getting closer to God through incessant prayers and fasting. This, she said only kept her in the marriage for much longer than necessary.
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