If you take a brisk walk into the distant past, you will
meet your great grandfather obliviously enjoying the setting sun outside a
newly built hut. It is crisp. In mint condition. It belongs to his third wife,
or fourth, or fifth. Does it matter? Absolutely not. He has on a leopard skin,
covering just his loins. Children play around naked, as the older boys drive
the animals in their respective shades. The day is breaking.
During those days, there was order and everybody had their
distinct roles. The women bore children and reared them; the men protected and
provided food for the family. The children on the other hand concentrated on
being children, until they came out of age, where the boys got circumcised and
became men, and the girls got married off. Occasionally, sacrifices would be offered
to appease the gods when a villager commits a serious offence. Other than that,
nobody lacked anything.
Then the white man comes, inspired by the conquests of
Alexander the Great back in time. He declares that Africa and Africans are
indeed backward. The industrial revolution had depleted their resources and they
were out and about shopping for them. They took lands which were available in
abundance, owned them and later sold them to Africans. Isn’t that one big cruel
joke?
As they grabbed lands, they preached of a new god, who was
more powerful than the rest; a god that towered above the African gods who had
guided and protected Africans through bouts of diseases. Generations and
generations came through various calamities, scathed but undeterred because the
gods wouldn’t let them. But this was the hallmark of primitivity, as if Africa
and Africans just came into being. Schools came up to teach Africans new ways
of life, and make them like the whites, so that they could homogenize the world
and create a market for their goods in the long run. Like darkness gradually
disappears with dawn, and eventual rising of the sun, Africans abandoned their
gods, their ways of life and adopted the new one, that would see them fight and
gain independence.
The white man realizes that he made a mistake in bringing
education to Africa. It would be nice if they just remained primitive. Then
they brought AIDS to make Africa close to permanently subservient to the west. When
we fight, they turn a blind eye, take out oil if there’s any or just leave us
fighting to our ends as with Somalia. They don’t need charcoal, which
apparently is the leading export of Somalia.
Because of the dwindling resources, and white man’s knowledge,
things got tilted. Women began demanding more and more things. They were no
longer content staying in the kitchen, and ruling it. Just like Alexander the
Great, they were also keen on expanding their territories. And so they began
using fancy terms such as ‘equality’ and ‘empowerment,’ aided by another term
‘marginalized groups.’ Men deliberated and came up with insightful conclusion
which was ‘why not?’ FGM came tumbling down, although not completely. Women now
wear suits and high heels, to attend meetings in Geneva and new York, where they discuss at length the effects of
FGM, whereby they are given some funds by donors. As a matter of principle
these women come to purchase houses in high end neighborhoods and roll out in
luxury SUVs, while some girls still get mutilated in Marsabit and Pokot.
More and more women are breaking the proverbial glass
ceiling. Even with this kind of empowerment, women are still stuck with the
traditional role of the man, that he is the sole provider. He pays the rent,
educates the kids, and pays the house help even if he earns less than the wife
(in case she chooses to remain a wife). When calamity strikes, as it sometimes
does, and the man loses his job or is struck by a disease, the next thing you
hear is the woman complaining about how he has suddenly become a burden just a
month into the situation. The man, mind you, has been footing bills
unflinchingly for the last decade, but then one month it becomes burdensome.
She wants out. She reaches the media, just in case a couple of anonymous people
will support her decision. A month later she is out leaving us with the
question: what’s the need of women empowerment if they can’t raise a man to his
feet when defeat is on repeat?
Enter the constitution. A two third gender majority. It is
not achievable in polls, so they create an extra seat for the women, just for
women to compete against each other just in case we end up with a man. The
crafters of the constitution did not think this through. They were obsessed
with gender rule, not knowing that the common voter doesn’t have a clue what
that means. For that, we may have to pay by nominating a whopping close to
fifty women to the house, just to attain the constitutional threshold. As far
as I am concerned, the women want to remain marginalized forever, where they
will speak forever about empowerment and equality, and in the process earn a
few free seats to parliament, and of course not take any share of
responsibility whatsoever in an union.
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