Violence against women in Africa
Violence against women is a global problem, it was never unusual in Africa. For it is perhaps the most shameful human rights violation.
The most pervasive violence against women goes beyond beating. It includes forced marriages, dowry-related violence, marital rape, sexual harassment, intimidation at work and in educational institutions, forced pregnancies, female genital mutilation forced prostitution and human trafficking. Such practices cause trauma, injuries and death, female genital cutting for example is a common cultural practice in many parts of Africa. Yet it can cause bleeding and infections, urinary incontinence, difficulties with childbirth and even death.
Abusers of women tend to view violence as the only way to solve family conflicts. An example of domestic violence was in Kenya in 1998 when a Kenyan police officer got home late and demanded his dinner, there was none in the house, he got enraged, he beat his wife, the wife got paralyzed and brain-damaged and after five month, she died on her 28 birthday. But unlike many such cases; her death did not pass in silence, the Kenyan media covered the story extensively, images of the fatally injured women and news of her death generated nationwide debate on domestic violence.
There followed five years of protests, demonstrations and lobbying by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), a well as by outraged men and parliamentarians. Finally, the government passed a family protection bill criminalizing wife-beating and other forms of domestic violence. Violence affects millions of women in Africa.
A huge number of women in Africa in rural areas reported beatings or other forms of violence by husband or property, a view reflected especially clearly in practices such as wife inheritance and dowry payments.
Tanzania’s first president, Julius Nyerere was a early critic of such cultural practices, he noted in 1984 that denying women the right to inherit and own property leaves them economically vulnerable and dependent. That creates a situation in which women in Africa toil all their lives on land that they don’t own, to produce what they don’t control and at the end of the marriage through divorce or death, they can be sent away empty- handed.
Many women see no option but to remain with husbands who routinely batter them. The women stay because men serve as vital opportunities for financial and social security or for satisfying material aspirations. Moreover as such women as often both poor and uneducated: the combination of dependence and subordination can make it very difficult to demand safer sex or to end relationships that carry the threat of HIV/aids infection.
The government needs to join hands with other agencies and everyone must work together until women are safe. There is a lot of hope that things will change. I know from long campaigning experience that change is usually slow. I hope the women will persevere until they get it. From the determination in their voices, we expect they will.
