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Which way Africa, reed dance or Western way of decency?
2006-10-10 09:08:36
By Mwondoshah Mfanga
For about one month now there has been an exchange of words between the First Lady, Mama Salma Kikwete, and a group of feminist activities under FemAct over the former’s recent visit to Swaziland.
The Feminist Activism Coalition, in short FemAct, accuses Mama Salma of taking part in the officiation of reed dance festival, an occasion organised every year by the Swazi King in which girls reaching maturity choose to perform as a pass out function before the emperor.
The activists’ organisation, which also teams with the Tanzania Gender network Programme (TGNP), questions why Mama Salma attended the festival, imploring that as First Lady, she might have the same practice introduced to Tanzanian girls.
The activists view and condemn the Swazi traditional practice as antediluvian, abusive of human and in particular, women rights.
They also see it as a devaluing practice and as a culture with vexatious vestiges.
They further say that it is abusive to allow some individuals to use their high positions in society to subject women to a dance in which they dispose their body parts in public only to appease the King, who in turn chooses one of them as wife.
As if that was not enough, last week, they poured more scorn on the same First Lady, this time furnishing some statistics in response to Mama Salma’s exposition a week and a half ago over what transpired while she was in Mbabane.
In the statistics, they said though the purveyors of the reed dance claim that the aim is to protect the girls from promiscuous sex, Swazi girls of the ages between 15 and 24 have been cited to be among the leading groups with HIV/Aids in the region.
They also claim that the prevalence of Aids amongst them is a result of the reed dance.
According to the Coordinator of FemAct, Deus Kibamba, the Swazi girls with HIV/Aids constituted 31.59 to 47.38 per cent as compared to 12.18 to 18.27 per cent for the country’s boys of the same age.
He said ”only Lesotho girls share higher rates and Botswana and Zimbabwe girls are close behind their Swazi sisters.”
Kibamba, further said the reed dance represents one of the most regressive aspects of African culture, which humiliate, degrade and devalue women, whereby the gentle sex is subjected to display as an object of pleasure for men and in this case the ruling class.
He concluded by saying that the cultural aspects contribute to early marriages among the girls, healthy risks and early child bearing.
When one looks at the entire talk shop, he can denote one clear thing—that the discourse is full of certain contradictory values, of which FemAct as human right activists and counsellors also do not want to furnish its picture clearly.
In their exposition, they consider the King as merely an ’individual’ who is there only to stage the reed dance every year in order to purse his manly pleasures.
This is where our women folks go wrong. Though I am not a Swazi, I believe that in carrying out the old legendary tradition, the king does so as a state institution so that the general transactions that are conducted around the dance become a continuous reproductive reality of the Swazi state.
The aim of the dance is not therefore only to have the Swazi King pick a new wife or pursue his pleasures, but to reproduce the Swazi state.
That is the first major service that the dance does to the Swazi society.
The other, is that it renders the girls remain virgin and committed to some societal ideals up to a certain period where they are ready to meet their husbands—and in this case, it is when the King, just like any other man, come to pick his wife.
If FemAct have a query on this, it could be that the King chooses first and perhaps goes for the most beautiful.
Contrary to this, and we believe this if what FemAct stands for, is that you find a situation where all the girls or women are subjected to the forces of the market—taking part in televised occasions like Miss World, Miss Universe, Miss World Tourism, as they walk naked in public, stage beauty pageantry dance while naked, and of course luring all the market promiscuity at the girls’ risks.
FemAct has seen all these nasty acts being committed by women and girls throughout the country and in this society, but it is surprising to learn that it is only when the First Lady visited and attended the Swazi reed dance that they came out to ridicule her visit.
How many of our sisters walk naked in the city streets everyday, and yet they are not engaged in a special society programme like the King’s theatrical reed dance in Swaziland or they are not taking part in any socially meaningful programme, and FemAct has remained quiet.
In May this year, Mama Salma officiated at the Miss World Tourism at Ubungo Plaza in Dar es Salaam—and the pageant girls were televised as they performed in their catwalk and half naked swimming bikinis to be seen by the whole world.
FemAct, and the rest of the NGOs fighting for human rights were there, but did not even make a yelp. Is it because Miss World, Miss Universe, or Miss World, etc. are English, American and international respectively and the ”Miss Reed Dance” is Swazi, African?
Now come to those sane people who walk naked on the streets, simply to advertise their commercials and their disposition has little to do to the society than to destroy.
It is sad to learn that those who walk naked in the streets are praised because they display the proudly cherished Western ’civilised’ culture.
If one may ask, is the Western decency standard what should be our way? If this is the way and other forms of human decency that are not Western are considered to be out, then FemAct should be rest assured that its advocacy of human rights is paring the society right across the belly by denying those who do not subscribe to the Western way their rights simply because they are antediluvian.
If Africanity and African civilisation, for which we believe the Swazi culture belongs to, is the value of decency for Africans, then the reed dance is many times more valuable than the Western level of decency, which the activists appear to be condoning.
Many people are wondering as to what is so special about this Swazi politicised issue, because the main elements of reed dance are omnipresent in almost all the traditional African cultures, which in a way are practised almost all over the continent.
If FemAct was firm enough to protect women and girls when it comes to the question of attire and personality, why do they turn down proposals by fellow activists asking it to recognise the need and significance of women (cladding) decency instead of harbouring exotic values that destroy our society than build.
It is amazing to learn that Fem Act has been turning a deaf ear to them as if the protection of girls and women in general is a preserve of the NGO only.
Let it be understood that girls, just as boys are our children and they need to be protected and guided.
But to be realistic the Swazi King institutional setting and the guidance associated with it offers better way of salvaging the girls and boys from the shackles of the market than any other traditional institution we know of today.
This is not to say that it is the best in terms of standards of women cultural disposition. No.
But relatively and in comparison to the western market values, which have almost bought most of our people and some governments, the Swazi paradigm is far better and African in terms of origin.
Let it be understood that even when one talks of women rights, there are certain cultural principles that cannot just be brushed aside.
For example, in the Western societies, women feel they are more protected when they are given some positions that men also do hold.
In the oriental and Islamic cultures, women feel they are protected when they are guaranteed some positions by their men as provided in their religious rites.
In Tanzania and Africa in general, where we have an amalgam of cultures to brush aside everything traditional or oriental as if it is useless as we crave for Western values on the belief that they are the solver of all our cultural problems is improper.
Western norms should therefore not be let to dominate everybody’s mind and render us to remain mere copy cats.
As for the statistics on the number of girls in the Aids band being bigger than that on boys—we believe the method used to arrive at the results is unscientific. The question is, were the girls tested at birth?
If they were, then there is justification to condemn the institution and the Swazi society for spoiling the virgin girls.
But if they were not, and it happens that they were Aids cases right from the beginning, then the scientificity of the research is questionable.
But if one would venture to ask another question. How come that Lesotho, Botswana and Zimbabwe girls are also rated highly among those who have HIV/Aids as compared to Swazi girls, while they do not take part in the reed dance?
The point is we should not let ourselves to be used by some people or organisations to purvey their positions simply because we or our institutions are inferior and we do not want them to continue to exist.
We should by any means defend our institutions and perfect new ones in order to protect the people and guide them for their cultural prosperity.
Short of this the organisations we stand and ourselves shall always be on the cultural receiving end.
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