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Women`s degradation still rampant in Tanzania
2005-05-13 09:23:07
By Lorna Achieng
The practice of wife-beating as a sign of strong love among some communities in Tanzania is still so much alive, defying all understanding and the national condemnation of it.
“There is a belief that if a man does not beat his wife, he does not love her,” says a woman in Dar es Salaam who originates from Mara, a northern region by Lake Victoria.
Despite efforts by Tanzania Media Women Association (TAMWA) to fight the repugnant practice, men still practise this form of cruelty even in urban centres, under the very nose of authorities.
Only recently a man in Dar es Salaam beat his wife and made an embarrassing display of her by forcing her to walk stalk naked on the street.
The local government took the man to task and was planning to take him to court, but the woman refused. She said she still loved her husband despite the punishment he gave her.
Studies in one of the lake zone tribes have revealed that the notion that wife-beating is a sign of love is still so strong that a woman, who has not been beaten by her husband will devise an offence to earn a beating to reassure herself of her husband’s adoration.
An investigation made recently shows that in every five minutes a woman is beaten somewhere in the world. In Africa the frequency could be more than that. A study that is always displayed on TV screens says that every five minutes a woman falls victim to man\'s thrashing.
Beating or committing one form of cruelty or another on a woman is in many African villages or homes a common affair. It is done with so much compunction that it is in effect a custom and the women who complain against it receive little help.
Christina, a young girl, was badly beaten and burnt up by a hot iron by a young man, who demanded to sleep with her.
Talking with pain from the municipal hospital of Amana suburb in the ocean-side city, she narrated the incident that took place at the house where she lived and said, “He pushed me on to the bed and told me to take off my clothes.
I refused. He tore off my clothes, and pressing me hard on the pillow, took a hot iron from the switch and burned me on several parts of my body. I cried,” she explains, lying on the hospital-bed.
The boy then went away, leaving Christina in terrible pain until her mother came and rushed her to the hospital, both of them crying from the horror.
In spite of Tanzania Media Women Association\'s (TAMWA’s) efforts to protect women from cruelties such as beating and rapes, there is still various forms of unkindness to mothers and girl-children in the country.
Early last month on World Women’s Day a young man who later gave only one name as John, opened the zip of his trousers and ejaculated on a woman standing in front of him at a gathering.
“I did that because her beauty overwhelmed me,” he said.
Outraged, the woman complained bitterly. “It is World Women’s Day and a man does this to me! This is an extreme form of gender harassment,” said the woman.
TAMWA is demanding justice for the woman. Known as a brave women group, the women’s organization has locked horns with a couple of government organizations including the police on various issues of human rights concerning women. But cruelties and violations of human rights against women is global.
A research in a book called “No Paradise Yet” about Anti-women laws in Pakistan, says in 1999, Samia Sarwar, an abused mother of two seeking divorce from a drug-addicted husband, was executed in her lawyer’s office by a gunman hired by her own family.
Sarwar had gone to the lawyer to seek her legal assistance because her parents had vehemently opposed her wish to divorce and threatened her for bringing shame on the family’s ‘honour’ if she did so. Sarwar had taken refuge in a shelter for abused women in Lahore.
Tanzanian women suffer much ignorance of the law, a major cause of abuse of their rights. The big question is: How will TAMWA fight for women’s rights if women themselves don’t know them and some of them believe that beating is a sign of love?
Speaking to the people of World Women’s day this year in Dar es Salaam, President Mkapa called upon lawyers to translate laws relevant to issues concerning women’s rights into a simple and clear language so that sections that appear to oppress women be repealed or removed altogether.
The President urged women to fight the masculine society they live in if they wanted equality with men.
The male-society was not a machination of men or conspiracies between them as some people thought, he said. Neither was it mere blames against men by women. “It is the sum total of the various stance of the society products of upbringing with regard to the social norms and customs,” he said.
Mkapa’s ministers have rallied by him in the fight against cruelties to women. Most notable among them is none other than Dr Asha-Rose Migiro, who while opening a workshop to assess achievements made 10 years after the Beijing Conference for Women, called upon women to vie for positions of leadership in the forthcoming general elections as a means for empowerment.
“We need to be confident as women, strengthen our unity and then go for the elections from a position of power,” she said.
That won’t be easy. The President reminded women of the stiff climb to that glory. The social order was aged and has been in existence for centuries not only in Tanzania alone, but the whole world at large.
“It is a Herculean task to destroy the masculine society, but it is necessary to do so if we want true equality between men and women,” Mkapa told the rally.
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