‘Nothing is so delicate as the reputation of a woman;
it is, at once, the most beautiful and most brittle of all human things.’
Frances Burney
In the historic relationship between the European and African, which has encompassed centuries, continents and oceans, it has been widely recognised that the African and Africa itself suffered what would today be known as crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide. The arrival of European traders in Africa, in the fifteenth century[1], was the beginning of a period of plunder, war, conquest, enslavement, trade, annexation and nefarious racial dominance which would last officially for five centuries. The well documented fate of Africa, both mournful and engrossing, led to the enslavement, torture, mutilation, rape and death of millions; with regions such as the Belgian Congo able to boast up to fifteen million dead Africans alone.[2] From Africa, engulfing the Caribbean colonies, to the Americas and Europe the treatment of Africans and their descendants bore a striking similarity, reaching oppressive and repressive heights.
Amidst the conquest, murder and enslavement, driven by Social Darwinism and enacted by zealous believers in racial superiority, was the ever-present act of rape. An act in which one person unmistakably enforces their dominance upon another. That dominance, while nominally sexual, can also accentuate other forms of domination which induces the person to carry out such an act. In a society in which white men and women stood unmistakably atop each hierarchy, and black men and women cowed at the bottom, supremacy was a fact of the age woven into the fabric of international civilisation. The black woman then, in an age in which women were automatically considered inferior to men, featured even lower than their male counterparts and was therefore at the mercy of a dominant race bereft of any form of protection.
‘For white men, black women were ‘forbidden fruit’; sexual relations between black and white could create ‘perpetual spirals of power and pleasure; from which white women were excluded’[3], claims one historian, failing to mention that there is no power or pleasure for those who are raped. However, the exclusion of white women from this degrading interaction is important in understanding the elevation of the white women and the debasement of the black women. If white women were lofty, beautiful, pure, genteel, virtuous, respectable, pious, modest, chaste and sexually obtainable through marriage; the black woman was the opposite. Base, beastly, exotic, impure, uncivilised, wild, ungodly, cunning, desirable, salacious and sexually obtainable at any time, whether willing or not. The black woman was a mere object of revulsion and attraction, available for sampling by any who desired.
‘By the late eighteenth century, it was commonly accepted that black women were ‘hot constitution’d ladies’, very free in their favours, ‘so great was their inclination to white men.’[4] This ‘inclination’, as discussed above, amounted to the powerless being forced to cede their bodies to the powerful lest they feel the full force of the dominant race. It was noted above that Europeans arrived in the fifteenth century; the reader can reach their own conclusions about the acts which took place over three centuries of sexual conquest for Europeans to hold such an opinion of black women.
This mindset has continued into the twenty-first century with the UN Peacekeepers continuing the sordid tradition by raping African women, men and children to such an extent that the UN was forced to issue a ‘Zero Tolerance Policy’[1]. This author has written about the extent to which this scandal has impacted African society, with cases of sexual assault and rape in The Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Mozambique, Eritrea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. The Associated Press unveiled that between 2004 and 2016, almost 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse were made against UN peacekeepers. African governments, far from ousting the rapists, are complicit in the degradation of African women with their inaction despite the harm being done to their citizens.
African governments have gone further in their complicity, however. The treatment of women in Africa, by African men, has become so openly reprehensible that the governments have no moral right or desire to condemn the UN. African governments themselves have replaced the European institutions in the vanguard of abuse toward the black woman. All across Africa women live in constant fear of abuse from men who are encouraged by society to consider them worthless beings. This repulsive notion is disseminated to the populous from officialdom who by their continued actions embolden the rest of society to emulate their physical dominance over women. This is having a devastating impact throughout the continent.
In Zimbabwe, three female activists for the opposition, have accused government agents of kidnapping them and subjecting them to rape and torture. Joanna Mamombe, Cecilia Chimbiri and Netsai Marova were on-route to a peaceful protest on the 13th of May when they were stopped at a police checkpoint. Almost forty-eight hours later they were dumped in a marketplace sixty miles from where they were taken. The leaders of the Movement for Democratic Change’s youth section were pictured in hospital following the episode. The MDC has been subjected to repression, for decades, by both Mugabe and his successor, Mnangagwa. In seeking to repress the opposition, throughout years of tyrannical rule, the virtue of women has been weaponised.
The women gave detailed accounts of their treatment while being held. After being kidnapped, the three were subjected to an ordeal which included continuous beatings, sexual assaults with firearms, and being forced to drink each other’s urine.[1] The state, far from condemning the acts and taking action against the perpetrators, simply dismissed the claims as a fantasy and arrested the women. Instead of receiving justice, the women are instead facing up to ten years in prison for ‘making false statements prejudicial to the state’. This is the way women are being treated by their governments in Africa. An Africa with governments which kowtow pitifully before a world full of external aggressors, yet who only seem to find strength when oppressing their women.
The ‘UN experts’, have condemned the heinous actions of the Zimbabwean Government and called for the Government to ‘urgently prosecute and punish the perpetrators of this outrageous crime, and to immediately enforce a policy of ‘zero tolerance’ for abductions and torture throughout the country’[1]. Presumably, these are the same experts who investigated the thousands of cases of abuse by their own UN ‘peacekeepers’ in Africa and are therefore exceedingly well versed in such matters. The farcical nature of the UN reproving the Zimbabwean Government for acts they both continue to commit reveals the scale of the problem facing the women of Africa. If their own governments sanction and perpetuate abuse and the overseer of global Human rights does the same, where can women go for assistance?
If history has taught black women that they are not safe in the presence of white men, modernity has reinforced the fact that neither are they safe in the presence of black men.
In Nigeria, a spike in rape cases has given rise to the #wearetired movement. Africa News reported that ‘Barakat Bello was raped and killed in her home; Vera Uwa Omozuwa was killed in her church in Benin City, southern Nigeria and a 12-year-old girl was raped by 11 men in Jigawa, northern Nigeria’[1]. These high-profile cases took place in the months of May and June alone, sparking outrage in the country. The twenty-two year-old university student, Omozuwa, was ‘brutally raped and bludgeoned to death.’ Another young life pitilessly taken in a society which does not value its female population. These gruesome incidents led to protests, an online petition and complaints about the inadequate Nigerian legal system. It is the inadequate men of Africa, who preside over and construct the society which so abuses women who must shoulder the entirety of the blame.
Thirty-six year old, Wanda Ebe, was raped by her doctor after undergoing surgery when a twenty-one year old student at university. When asked, by the interviewer why she did not report the crime, Ms Ebe responded ‘I did not even know that rape cases were to be reported to the police.”[1] This is society in Africa; the society we have created for our women, where they do not even know that the worst crimes are criminal. So powerful and overarching is the notion that men are able to do whatever they wish to black women free of reprisals, that women themselves have been indoctrinated and live their lives believing that they are not beings of value. Globally, authorities report that women are reluctant to report the heinous crime of rape, for a plethora of understandable reasons. However, nowhere, other than in Africa are women unaware that rape even warrants reporting. The response of Ms Ebe lays bare the fact that the voices of women are so unheard, they no longer know when they are obliged to speak out. This is the result of unabashed tyranny, so detestable that it has demolished the dignity of women.
It would be difficult to comprehend how a country with a population of 195 million, in 2017, had zero convictions for rape. Further, it would also be incomprehensible that 2,279 reported cases manifested in zero convictions in a country. Unless that country was in Africa and the women were black. It becomes completely comprehensible when these two elements are added to an initially confusing conundrum.
Lesotho’s Prime Minister Thomas Thabane is to be charged with the murder of his former wife Lipolelo Thabane, who was shot dead in June 2017. The former first lady was shot in a car by a gunman, while the couple were going through divorce proceedings which had become increasingly acrimonious. The Prime Minister is accused of arranging the murder alongside his current wife, Maesaiah Thabane, who he married two months after the death of Lipolelo.[1] The Guardian reported that ‘Lipolelo Thabane, 58, was shot several times at close range as she sat in a car near her home, two days before her husband’s inauguration in 2017. She had reportedly refused a divorce and won a court battle to retain her privileges as the first lady until any formal separation.’[2]
What would, in any accountable society, be seen as cause for an immediate resignation and subsequent imprisonment is something entirely different in Africa. The president failed to appear in court, his Private Secretary casually claiming that ‘He is not attending court, he has gone for a medical check-up in South Africa’.[1] Such is the gravity with which the murder of black women is treated by officialdom that in response to this criminality the Deputy Commissioner of Police said, ‘We shall wait until he becomes available and we shall arrange that he comes here and appears before the court of law and be formally charged.’[2] It is absolutely extraordinary, unheard of in any society, for prosecuting authorities to wait patiently until those arraigned on charges are conveniently available. Yet, why exert yourself in pursuit of justice for black women? Based upon the evidence, who actually cares?
Returning to Zimbabwe, in 2019. comedian Samantha Kureya, after being critical of the government in her comedy skits, was kidnapped, stripped, sexually assaulted and forced to drink sewage. Three hours later, she was found discarded ‘in the bush’[3]. From North to South, East to West, Zimbabwe to Nigeria, the notion that black women are worthless seems nefariously ingrained into the minds of men.
Unfortunately, this outlook has journeyed across the globe with the diasporic community, subjecting black women to an identical global fate. In Jamaica, Nevia Sinclair, after going to bed, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend who entered the family home, picked up a kitchen knife and murdered the Secretary of the National Works Agency.[1] In an age where the descendants of Africa look increasingly for notions which unify them, the contempt for women within the race seems to be the foremost unifier. As discussed above, the belief that black women are beings of sexual pleasure to be conquered and commanded is an old notion that black men continue to breathe life into, ensuring its damaging continuance.
Neville Sinclair, the father of the deceased, is Senior Justice of The Peace. Nothing could be more farcical that the Senior Justice of The Peace awaking from his bed to find his daughter savagely murdered within his home. The reader should remember that Lipolelo Thabane was the wife of the Prime Minister. Joanna Mamombe, one of the abused Zimbabwean trio, was a member of Parliament. ‘They were pouring water on us. They beat us if we stopped. They made us drink each other’s urine. They were fondling Cecilia,’ the MP told reporters from her hospital bed.[1] No rank, no wealth, not even modernity can spare the black woman from the fate of her ancestors, to be used and then disposed of like an animal. For men have so little respect for them that they are not safe in society and must live in constant fear of suffering the fate of the women who feature in this article. If those of prominence are treated so contemptuously, what hope then is there for the unknown woman from the city, township or village?
Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) Corporal Doran McKenzie, a soldier with over a decade of military experience, returned to his home and murdered his partner, Suianne Easy. The body of Ms Easy was reportedly ‘riddled with chop and bullet wounds’ after being viciously murdered, before the corporal turned the gun on himself.[1] A confidante of the killer, in an interview, stated that ‘Satan was there with him last night’[2] in a forlorn attempt to explain the horrific actions.
What was in the corporal is that which is permitted and prevalent in men when interacting with black women. An innate belief that they are superior to a highly sexualised being, who is little more than an object to abuse and dispose of once pleasure has been obtained. If nothing is so delicate as the reputation of a woman, men both black and white have ensured that it was unmercifully tarnished long ago. Once embellished with beauty, what was brittle has been destroyed and as a result, the black woman is at once considered by men a disposable being, to be used and murdered for pleasure’s sake.
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britannica. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/: https://www.britannica.com/place/western-Africa/The-beginnings-of-European-activity
Burke, J. (2020, Feb 24). Lesotho PM requests immunity from charge of murdering wife. Retrieved from The Guardian : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/24/lesotho-pm-thomas-thabane-surprise-court-appearance-over-wife-murder
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Orjinmo, N. (2020, June 5). #WeAreTired: Nigerian women speak out over wave of violence. Retrieved from BBC NEWS: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-52889965
The Ebony Muse. (2018, Feb 18). Retrieved from WordPress.com: https://ahseptimius.wordpress.com/2018/02/15/black-women-children-and-men-are-being-raped-by-un-peacekeepers-who-cares/
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