Of the fight against rape and the Nobel Peace Prize

This combination of pictures created on October 05, 2018 shows the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winners Yazidi's Nadia Murad and Congolese gynaecologist Denis Mukwege. They were awarded for their work in fighting sexual violence in conflicts around the world. PHOTOS | BERND WEISSBROD and LARRY BUSACCA | AFP

What you need to know:

  • The 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature was suspended over a morass of improprieties and scandals, including serial rape accusations against a person closely connected to members of the awarding committee.
  • The suspension means, among other things, that we will have to wait yet another year before we know if Ngugi wa Thiong’o will bring home the honours for us.
  • I was not sorry that the award was suspended. Nothing and nobody that smacks of rape or suspicion of rape should be tolerated in any sphere of our culture and civilisation.

Though an abomination that should not normally fall from our tongues, “rape” has now got to be shouted from the rooftops of houses, pinnacles of temples and the domes of basilicas.

This is because this nauseating sacrilege of the violation of human dignity is so endemically and globally embedded in our race that we must name it and shame it in the clearest and loudest terms.

We hoped that with the #MeToo explosion on the world last year, that we were approaching the end of the dark tunnel of unpunished sexual harassment, molestation and assault. But, if the events of recent weeks are anything to go by, we are patently still very far from the absolute zero-tolerance point of sexual violence needed for the survival of civilisation.

Indeed, there appears to be an International Rapists’ Alliance (IRA), whose motto is: “commit, deny, bully and lie and you will win and boast.”

The IRA beasts seem to believe, with sad justification, that with their guns, money, fame, political power and even “spiritual” traditions, they can always win and continue dominating and raping our bodies and souls forever.

But the anger and indignation of decent folks against this heinous crime is rapidly reaching boiling point, and some of the voices asserting that enough is enough are beginning to be heard and respected.

I will illustrate with two references to the recently-awarded (or withheld) Nobel Prizes. Starting with the bad news, we in the literary business are hanging our heads in sorrow and shame.

The 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature was cancelled, suspended, withheld or whatever euphemism you want to use for it, over a morass of improprieties and scandals, including serial rape accusations against a person closely connected to members of the awarding committee.

The suspension means, among other things, that we will have to wait yet another year before we know if Ngugi wa Thiong’o, our beloved and highly deserving octogenarian, will bring home the honours for us. It also unsettles my programme to grab the Prize in 2024, as I had promised you.

FIGHT AGAINST RAPE

Anyway, I was not sorry that the award was suspended. Nothing and nobody that smacks of rape or suspicion of rape should be tolerated in any sphere of our culture and civilisation.

The harshest sanctions and punishments should be visited upon any individual or institution practising or abetting this mostshenzi(barbaric) of allshenzicrimes. It appears the Nobel Awards institution concurs.

Even more emphatic in the assertion of the fight against rape was the Nobel’s award of the Peace Prize, the most prestigious of them all, jointly to Nadia Murad and Dr Denis Mukwege, “for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict”.

Nadia Murad, aged 25, is an Iraqi survivor of abduction and sexual slavery. She has chosen to go public with the horrors she and her fellow women and girls suffered at the hands of Islamic State militants, as a way of exposing and fighting the evil of sexual violence in situations of conflicts.

I found Nadia’s story vividly reminiscent of the Ugandan Aboke girls, abducted by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army in 1996. Even closer to our times, the tragic saga also looks like a replay of Nigeria’s Chibok girls, victimised by Boko Haram in 2014.

Their still unresolved fate makes me wish that Oby Ezekwesili, the woman who has so far heroically spearheaded the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, will run for, and win, the Nigerian presidential election next year. Or is that “interference” in other people’s affairs? But people like Nadia Murad and Oby Ezekwesili speak for all decent human beings everywhere.

Dr Denis Mukwege, too, has been speaking out for violated women in the DRC’s endemic cycles of armed conflicts.

The amazing gynaecologist, who has for nearly two decades been carrying out reconstructive and rehabilitative treatment for women victims of rape, is obviously qualified to give a voice to his anguished voiceless patients. Yet some powers-that-be are rubbed up the wrong way by the doctor’s articulate denunciation of rape as a weapon of war in his country.

This is one of the tragedies of Africa. Instead of going for those who do evil, we victimise those who expose it!

I called Dr Mukwege another Mswahili for two reasons. First, being a native of Bukavu, Eastern DRC, he is a speaker of our language, Kiswahili.

RECOGNITION

I was delighted to hear him comment about his Nobel Peace Prize award in fluent “Kingwana”, an officially recognised dialect (lahaja) of Kiswahili commonly used in that area.

Mukwege thus joins the distinguished pair of other Waswahili, our people, Wangari Maathai and Barack Obama, who have won the Nobel Peace Prize.

More importantly, however, I recognise Mukwege as a Mswahili in the sense of the oft-uttered compliment: “Mswahili ni muungwana” (A Mswahili is a person of culture and civilisation). Conversely, when we say “you’re not a Mswahili”, we mean you are amshenzi, an uncivilised savage.

Dr Mukwege deserves recognition as a truly civilised person because of his patently profound respect of and empathy with our daughters, sisters, mothers and partners, especially those most in need of care and protection. Most importantly, I believe that we all need to learn and improve our civility, our politeness and respect towards women.

The disgusting and nauseating violations of women in conflict zones do not just erupt when conflicts break out.

They often already exist in our societies, in the negative, degrading and dehumanising attitudes we hold and even express against women in our daily lives.

Neither Kampala nor Nairobi are war zones. Yet the horror stories we hear of the senseless murders and other crimes against women in these “civilised” metropoles show that we are still very far from showing and practising real and totaluungwana (civilised manners) towards our women.

We can all celebrate Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege by constantly prioritising and respecting the dignity of women in all aspects of our lives.