{UAH} A history of Kampala's naked bodies
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A history of Kampala's naked bodies
Youth Minister, Ronald Kibuule caused a storm last September when he advised police to prosecute cases of rape starting with investigating the fashion of the female victim. By extension, he presupposed male victims. Enraged voices asked him to honourably resign as they lobbied the president to sack him. In one piece in the New Vision asking for his resignation, Makerere University law professor Sylvia Tamale sought to school the Minister that rape was not about half-nude or fully-dressed bodies, but men's power and control over the womenfolk. Tamale also wondered why men could fail to have control over their surging libidos.
Before the dust could settle, the Ugandan Parliament passed the anti-pornography bill, which among other things, seeks to ban the wearing of miniskirts and other sexually suggestive wears. Pandemonium was let loose: In several bars in Kampala, small "Save the Miniskirt" movements (and drink nights) sprang up. In Nairobi, activist Muthoni Wanyeki wondered why women could not be trusted to make their own choices of dress – calling this move, "back to the prehistoric notion where men only see women sexually." Hailing Wanyeki, journalist Charles Onyango Obbo called the anti-miniskirt crowd (sic), "Uganda's worst nightmare" – arguing that these were frustrated fellows interested in curtailing women economic progress under the NRM government. The miniskirt, in Obbo's script was a statement of class or achievement! Hmm! It is interesting to note that the anti- Kibuule/legislation crusaders, and the pro-legislation crowd agree with each other on the direct relationship between dress and sexuality (or rape, actually). The difference is that as the poor Minister confesses weakness in the sight of an open brown thigh or a well pimped behind, his critics urge him to have strength, self-control. At the same time, critics are asking men – the ever-libidinous Minister's constituency – not to be prehistoric (whatever this meant), unjust to women seeking to control and exploit them under the fiction of morality. So-called puritans!
However, painfully disconcerting reading our columnists and passionate activists – on either side – is their acute blindness to history, a terrible infatuation with the discourse of human rights, and inelegant thought-patterns and analyses.
In the immediate post-colonial condition, the 1960s and 1970s, the debate on dress and fashion of the woman's body was central in the national and cultural consciousness in many places around the continent. In Zambia, Tanzania and Uganda, for example, there was even a considerable degree of violence to it. Although this debate was also couched in the language of morality and national culture, it was more nuanced and detailed. It touched on cultural-political economy of the independent state seeking to challenge the remnants of the exploitative colonial machine. It was rooted in an agrarian, non-salaried sociology.
Colonialism economies and sexuality
Several historians especially Luise White (author of among others, The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi (1990)) have noted that colonial economies relied on migrant labour for their industries and farms. This involved transforming hitherto agrarian societies into salaried communities. Karl Polanyi summarised the colonialist's argument in his seminal work, The Great Transformation: "The Natives are to be forced to make a living by selling their labour… their traditional institutions must be destroyed, and prevented from reforming, since, as a rule, the individual in a primitive society is not threatened by starvation unless the community as a whole is in a like predicament."
In many cases like happened in Nigeria, not allowing men to come with wives at the workstations was enforced, and marriage at work forbidden. In East Africa, conditions such as (deliberately designed) distance from home, and size of emolument made it impossible for one to have a wife. The subtext: a labourer would demand a high salary if allowed to have a family or just a wife.
However, it was impossible to tame male desire for sexual intercourse and occasional domestic replenishment. As this form of colonial governmentality saw the beginning of prostitution, it also radically changed the conceptualisation of the woman's body. Earlier, sex and access to women's bodies had been couched in the poetry of marriage – an elaborate affair built around social norms not individual hallucinations. In fact, beauty, sexy, and love were not discussed in this dynamic – at least, not with today caricatured indulgence. Whether the pre-colonial times were bad or good for the womenfolk is a debate for another day. What is worth noting is that a change in the conceptualisation of the woman's body moved alongside the exploitation of men on white farms and industries in urban centres. Prostitution as is today, meant acquiring a method of marketing the sexy, the beauty, and the sensual in the vendor. It meant packaging and accentuating the product – the woman's body. It also meant investing in body cleaning lotions, perfumes and dresses. The miniskirt defined the business. The ambition of the anti-colonial struggle was to end all forms of exploitation, and anything in the service of the colonial exploitative machine.
Industrialisation and urbanisation – or actually, salaried employment – the main successful project of colonialism carried on this legacy of continued exploitation of men in the immediate postcolonial time. However, the exploitation of men, salaried employment would soon become the norm and the amenities of urbanisation, including electricity and running water became even more sought after. This would explain why prostitution, even with an increasingly proselytised community, continues to thrive.
An agrarian mind-set
How then do you explain the rise of the anti-miniskirt movement and the legislation in contemporary Kampala – with increasing industrialisation and urbanisation? In fact, it is the failure of these two sister projects - urbanisation and industrialisation. Viewed through the country's capital, Kampala, the situation is appalling. As the only industrialised town after the terrible decline of Jinja, hopes for Uganda's industrialisation are only rhetorical. Kampala's urban life with its increasing power blackouts; a terrible infrastructure, and slum-like architecture has failed to steady as an urban centre with a fully-fledged urban lifestyle. Interestingly, over 80 per cent of Ugandans live in the countryside, in semi-urban or agrarian locations.
In addition, although, it does not contribute much to the country's GDP, agriculture continues to be the main occupation of Ugandans with over 75 per cent subsisting on land, not salaried employment. To this end, like all other occupations, agriculture ceases being only an occupation, but an identity strengthening old and forming new centres of power and social relations. This has nurtured an agrarian sociology armed with tools to resist capitalistic expansion. Indeed, the anti-miniskirt movement has roots in the anti-colonial (economic) struggle, not morality, not culture purity. However, because the country has often had occasional spells of urbanity/industrial growth, stalling agrarian sociological growth, the anti-pornography movement also goes underground.
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"When a man is stung by a bee, he doesn't set off to destroy all beehives"
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