What stripping of women on streets means for the country’s political risk

A few days ago, touts in Nairobi attacked and stripped a woman for “dressing indecently”.

With mobile phones everywhere these days, someone recorded it and loaded it on the Internet, and it sort of went viral.

Then there was another attack in which a woman was stripped in Mombasa, then Thika, and a wave of outrage.

READ: Arrest men who stripped woman, Ruto says

READ: Police ask stripped woman to record complaint

A war broke out on social media, with — unbelievable as it might seem — vocal supporters of the women’s attackers, and opponents arguing, rightly, that it was an unacceptable assault on women’s right to dress however they chose.

A spirited social media campaign and mobilisation followed, and on Monday there was the big #MyDressMyChoice protest in Nairobi.

By evening, the rally had made it as news on CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, and it was all over the wire.

It was the kind of publicity Kenya really did not need or deserve, because the international narrative that seemed to be emerging is that it is a country where rogue men strip women on the street.

These outcomes have consequences.

Imagine for a second you are a college student looking to travel to East Africa on the single tourist visa and you can only tour one of the three EAC countries operating the visa scheme.

It is December, hot, and you would like to travel around in your shorts and sleeveless T-shirt.

You can go to Kenya, where you might be attacked by mobs that think that your shorts are, well, too short.

You can go to Uganda, where a conservative evangelical-fuelled political movement pushed through a “pornography” law that could see you jailed for wearing a dress that “shows sexual parts of a person such as breasts, thighs, buttocks, or any behaviour intended to cause sexual excitement”.

Or you can go to Rwanda to see mountain gorillas and where no one will grope or strip you on the streets. Where are you likely to go?

If tourism numbers are anything to go by, especially the percentage by which they are increasing, the answer seems to be Rwanda.

TOO MANY SURPRISES

The unfortunate thing about this is that the Kenyan government, going by the statements of Deputy President William Ruto, is opposed to these attacks on women on the streets.

The wider point, therefore, is that in this digital age, non-state elements, including uncouth touts downtown, can unleash a series of events that affect a country’s image and economy. That makes life hell for those forecasting risk.

And, in Africa, those surprises are just becoming too many. They come from all sources, including increased travel and opening up of African societies.

Last week Kenya Airways (KQ) released its half-year financial results. They did not smell of roses.

Part of the blame for the dismal results, KQ said, was Ebola in West Africa that forced it to close its routes to the worst-hit countries.

If at the end of 2013, when KQ was finalising its 2014 plans, it had got the best analysts and locked them in a room and asked them to come up with the top 10 things that could whack their business, Ebola would not have been on the list.

MORE LIKELY DOWNTOWN

Then, consider Ebola-hit Sierra Leone. Its Ministry of Finance and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) say it faces social and economic disaster as gains made since the country’s deadly civil war are wiped out by the epidemic.

Economic growth is now projected to shrink from 20.1 per cent last year to just 5 per cent in 2014.

Going forward, though, we do not need to be caught by surprise by these things. Take the stripping of women.

Generally, the less power men have, the more likely they are to attack women, whom they consider as a weak target.

Thus, a woman is more likely to be stripped on a street downtown by a tout than by a trader on the floor of the Nairobi Securities Exchange.

LEFT HAND ONLY

Kenya, fortunately, has a good measure of the anxieties of its men in the form of Maendeleo ya Wanaume (Organisation for the Advancement of Men) led by the controversial Nderitu Njoka.

Recently it called for a countrywide sexual boycott by men to protest what it claimed was “gender-based violence against men”.

There was a comic element to it. During the boycott, men were not to shake hands with women and if they had to, were advised to use their left hand!

The alarm bells should have gone off then, that all was not well in Kenyan malehood.

Mr Obbo is the editor of Mail & Guardian Africa.

Twitter:@cobbo3