Ayesha Imam (Senegal) is a member of DAWN’s Executive Committee and is on DAWN’s Political Restructuring and Social Transformation (PRST) team.
This article is an extract from a keynote speech given at the inaugural joint conference of the American Anthropological Association and African Studies Association “Innovation, transformation and sustainable futures in Africa” in Dakar, Senegal, June 1-3, 2016. Hosted by the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) and the West African Research Center (WARC).
Innovation – not the same tired old ways of doing things.
Transformation – implication of change for the good.
Sustainable – able to continue, not going to run out or run down.
I thought about a major and terrifying social transformation that at least in the presentations and abstracts I’ve read so far has not been a theme in this conference
The spread of religious conservatism, shading into fundamentalisms, and extreme violence
Social transformation in growth of fundamentalisms – Muslim, Christian and neo-traditionalist – across Africa.
Religious Extremist Coercion
There are increased initiatives to codify religious extremist ideology in legislation and public policy, giving legal force to discrimination, and blocking proposals for equality and choice. Laws criminalizing blasphemy, apostasy and defamation of religion are current in 47% of all countries, which are frequently used by religious extremists.1 Examining blasphemy laws in Pakistan, Indonesia and Nigeria, Khan2 argues that legislation against blasphemy gives religious extremists legal cover to engage in acts of intimidation and violence against both dissenting members of their faith communities and non-members. For example, Nigeria has many incidents of extremist violence directed against alleged blasphemers, including the incarceration in a psychiatric hospital and continuing death threats against an atheist man from a Muslim family3 notwithstanding the constitutional right to freedom of opinion or to change religion. Similarly, a stateprosecution in Kano State recently resulted in nine people sentenced to death for unfavourably comparing the leader of the Tijanniyya to the Prophet Mohammed.4
Many initiatives are designed to curtail women’s rights and autonomy. In 2009 a Family Code raising the minimum legal age of marriage for girls, improving women’s inheritance and property rights and removing a requirement for a wife’s obedience to her husband, which had already been passed by the Malian National Assembly, was withdrawn because of pressure from Muslim conservative and fundamentalist groups. The Nigerian Senate (members of which are both Muslim and Christian) has recently approved a Sexual Offences Bill, which whilst imposing sentences for sex with minors, lowers the age of consent for sex to 11 years of age.5
Commonly, these initiatives, backed with explicit reference to religious fundamentalist discourses on sexuality, also violate the rights of people on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and, rights to freedom of expression. In 2014 Uganda and Nigeria signed into law the Anti-Homosexuality Act and the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act respectively, which impose prison sentences on LGBTQI people (lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, trans, queer and intersex individuals), as well as for those organising to support gender identity and sexuality rights. In Uganda especially, the legislation was justified with reference to Christianity. Liberia, Kenya, DRC, Zimbabwe and Chad are also either considering or have passed even more strict laws. This type of legislation has widespread implications for freedom of information, association and expression. As activists against the Same-Sex Marriage Bill [now Act] in Nigeria pointed out “the implications and effects of the [Act]… go far beyond the prohibition of same sex marriage (which is discriminatory in itself), and will result in widespread human rights violations, censorship, impediments to open and democratic process, fear, repression and the break up of family relationships… for all Nigerian citizens irrespective of their sexuality.”6
Religious violent extremisms
Africa now has the dubious honour of hosting two of the most deadly terrorist organisations in the world – BH in Nigeria (and Cameroon etc) and al-Shabab… with BH having killed more people than Daesh (ISIS)…
As elsewhere in the world, religious violent extremism, including terrorism, is currently widespread in Africa. The GTI reports that Boko Haram,7 an Islamist group based in Nigeria but also active in Cameroon, Chad and Niger, is one of the four deadliest terrorist groups in the world over the past fifteen years. Between May 2011 and February 2015, Boko Haram has been directly responsible for the deaths of over 10,000 civilians,8 including burning schoolboys to death in their dormitories, as well as abducting of hundreds of schoolgirls and women. Over 2.5 million people have been displaced within Nigeria whilst another 200,000 have fled to Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.9
The Christian Lords’ Resistance Army (LRA) and the Islamist Al-Shabaab10 are in the GTI’s list of the ten deadliest groups. Since 2006-7, the LRA has been forced out of Uganda and become a regional threat in the border regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and South Sudan. Human Rights Watch has documented the killing of over 2,600 civilians and abductions of over 4,000 others, as well as the displacement of over 400,000 people as a result of LRA attacks in this region between 2008 and 2012.11
Al Shabaab (initially in Somalia but active also in Kenya) continues to control much of rural Somalia, killing those accused of spying or who do not conform to their interpretation of Islam, targeting children for armed recruitment and forced marriage, attacking schools and imposing a restrictive code of behaviour on women and men, stoning mostly women. Al Shabaab also continues to attack both government targets and civilians in Mogadishu, as well as in neighbouring Kenya, such as at Westgate Mall and Garissa University.
Through the links with Al Qaeda of Ansar al-Dine, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb, and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, Mali has also been a site of activity by religious terrorist groups (Al Queda and affiliates are the world’s second most deadly terrorist group), which have sidelined the secular separatist National Movement for the liberation of Azawad whose action to take over northern Mali sparked the 2012 crisis. They imposed an ultraconservative form of Muslim laws, enforced by public amputations for theft, whippings and executions. They forced head-to-toe dress codes on women, banned music, smoking, alcohol and even playing or watching football.
The Christian Anti-Balaka (anti-machete) group in the Central African Republic, reacting to political killings and atrocities by the Seleka opposition group (whose membership is majority Muslim), has killed, mutilated and displaced thousands of Muslim civilians, with the stated intent of eliminating Muslims from the country.12 At that time, approximately 24% of the population were Muslim.
The UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, Rashida Manjoo, has noted an alarming growth of gender-based violence, including targeted killings of women and girls, which are most often justified by reference to religion, culture and tradition. Particularly at risk of violence are women human rights defenders for their defence of women’s rights and because they are women.13 Similarly, Zainab Bangura, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, has pointed out that sexual violence against women and girls is part of a wider pattern of women and girls being deliberately targeted by interlinked extremist groups, who share an ideological opposition to the education, rights and freedoms of women. In this context, sexual violence is not merely incidental, but integral, to their strategy of domination and self-perpetuation.14
The increase of religious extremist violence has resulted in a greater incidence of sexual violence (including rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, trafficking and forced marriage) across communities of all religions. The great majority of those targeted by sexual violence are women and girls. However, boys and men have also been victimised, and, especially in the context of increasing homophobia promoted by all religious fundamentalisms, often find it particularly difficult to divulge sexual violence against them or to access support.
Social transformation, innovation, sustainability for whom and for what?
Of recent a couple IMF and Worldbank researchers are announcing that ‘perhaps neo-liberal macro-economic policies have been ‘oversold’ and they are not nearly so effective at producing growth as had been insisted upon, that they contribute directly to producing inequalities.
“Instead of delivering growth, some neoliberal policies have increased inequality, in turn jeopardizing durable expansion.
-The benefits in terms of increased growth seem fairly difficult to establish when looking at a broad group of countries.
-The costs in terms of increased inequality are prominent. Such costs epitomize the trade-off between the growth and equity effects of some aspects of the neoliberal agenda.
-Increased inequality in turn hurts the level and sustainability of growth. Even if growth is the sole or main purpose of the neoliberal agenda, advocates of that agenda still need to pay attention to the distributional effects.” (IMF Research dept)15
In some quarters this has been hailed as a breakthough, an innovation in thinking about and analysing neo-liberal economic policies and practices.
For many of us the reaction is rather different.
We have been pointing this out in Africa since the 1980s.
Is it only now that it is hitting Europe that its inadequacies are being recognised?
Under current economic policies and processes, growth in GDP not only coexists with inequality, but perpetuates it.
WB’s Poverty in Africa Rising report, points out that Africans living in poverty fell from 56% in 1990 to 43% in 2012. The report argues that the poverty rate may have declined even more if the quality and comparability of the underlying data are taken into consideration.
However, because of population growth many more people are poor, the report says. The most optimistic scenario shows about 330 million poor in 2012, up from about 280 million in 1990.
Even as there as been some improvement within the ranks of the poor, the gap between the rich and the poor has grown wider. In 1988 the richest 20% had 79% the world’s income but by 2014 only 8.6% of rich people owned 85.3% of the world’s wealth. Regionally, the share of world total household income in North America and Europe has increased from 64% in 2000 to 67% in 2014, even as their percentage of world adult population has declined from 21% to 18%.16
The world’s 10 richest people, according to Forbes, own $505 billion in combined wealth, a sum greater than the GDP of Nigeria which has largest GDP in Africa.17
Seven of the 10 most unequal countries in the world are in Africa, most of them in southern Africa. Excluding these countries and controlling for GDP levels, inequality is still extremely high.
The number of extremely wealthy Africans is increasing.
During the past 14 years, the number of high-net-worth individuals in Africa has grown by 145%.18
So – growth in the numbers of people at each pole – the poor and the very rich. Which means that using averages like per capita income is even more misleading.
For a more accurate picture of what life is like we should be using modes and medians, not averages.
Feminist analyses and activists, including in Africa19 have recognised that we can’t challenge patriarchy without challenging other systems which produce injustice and inequality. But the reverse is also true: we can’t challenge poverty and other inequalities and marginalisations effectively without challenging patriarchy. ~
References
1 http://brianpellot.religionnews.com/2013/12/19/journalists-face-religious-straitjackets-half-countries (Note: Subscribers Only)
2 http://www.harvardilj.org/wp-content/uploads/Antiblasphemy-Laws_0608.pdf
5 The Senate also passed over 40 other Bills that week. There is some debate over whether this was an oversight or not. The original Bill stated the age of 18 as consent – it was changed in committee. The House of Representatives has not at time of writing passed it, so it has not yet gone to the President for assent: http://www.nigerianwatch.com/news/7106-senate-inadvertently-makes-11-the-age-of-consent-with-new-sexual-offences-bill; http://www.ibtimes.co.in/nigerian-senate-lowers-age-consent-sex-18-11-faces-backlash-635241, http://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/185030-nigerias-proposed-sexual-offences-law-obnoxious-falana.html
6 Nigerian CSOs et al 2011
7 Jamā‘atu ahl al-Sunna li’l-Da‘wa wa’l-jihād i.e. the Association of Sunnah People for Proselytisation and Armed Struggle, commonly referred to by the Hausa phrase Boko Haram, ‘secular education is forbidden.’
8 http://www.cfr.org/nigeria/nigeria-security-tracker/p29483
9 UNHCR in http://www.unmultimedia.org/tv/unifeed/2015/09/chad-boko-haram-displaced/, http://newirin.irinnews.org/lost-in-the-city
10 Formally Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahidin – Movement of Striving Youth.
11 https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/01/09/qa-lra-commander-dominic-ongwen-and-icc
12 http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/02/12/central-african-republic-muslims-forced-flee. The Seleki rebel group does not define itself or justify its actions in religious terms.
13 2012 Report of the Special Rapporteur on violence against women A/HRC/20/1
14 UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zainab Hawa Bangura Condemns the Use of Sexual Violence as a Tactic of War and Terror by Boko Haram http://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/press-release/un-special-representative-of-the-secretary-general-on-sexual-violence-in-conflict-zainab-hawa-bangura-condemns-the-use-of-sexual-violence-as-a-tactic-of-war-and-terror-by-boko-haram/
15 http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2016/06/ostry.htm
16 Davies et al 2008, Credit Suisse 2014, Oxfam 2015, http://inequality.org/global-inequality/
17 http://inequality.org/global-inequality/
19 http://awdf.org/wp-content/uploads/Charter_of_Feminist_Principles_for_African_Feminists.pdf