Berkley Center

On my last trip to Zanzibar, the sky was aflame; the water was lavender silk. In Zanzibar, one wants to believe that beauty begets beauty, —that the overwhelming loveliness of everything around could not but lead to peace, love, and contentment; to those things and to nothing else. Truly great beauty is breathtaking and improbable. Zanzibar has this beauty. It also, however, has neighborhoods reduced to rubble and reminiscent of the post-war Balkans; stifling, overt oppression of women by the male Islamic majority; extreme poverty, and scores of other problems. The ugliness that exists in Zanzibar is a human creation, a supreme triumph of violence over natural beauty. Zanzibar as paradox is nothing if not beguiling, and I cannot say with any confidence that my fascination with Africa as a whole is not rooted in this fundamental tension. How can a place so beautiful be so inextricably entrenched in despair and conflict? The exemplar beauty present across Africa —in the landscape, the people, and the simplicity of life —exists alongside and perhaps inextricably with unnecessary hatred and ungodly strife. Zanzibar pushes this juxtaposition to the unavoidable forefront.

Zanzibar is located 40 km off the coast of Tanzania. It is semi-autonomous, more than 99 percent Muslim, and undeniably oppressive of women, both in its laws and on the streets. According to the US State Department, the overall situation for women is less favorable in Zanzibar, which has a majority Muslim population, than on the mainland. Although women generally are not discouraged from seeking employment outside the home, women on Zanzibar and many parts of the mainland face discriminatory restrictions on inheritance and ownership of property because of concessions by the government and courts to customary and Islamic law. While provisions of the Marriage Act provide for certain inheritance and property rights for women residing on the mainland, the Marriage Act is not applicable in Zanzibar. Furthermore, the applicability of customary, Islamic, and statutory law on the mainland and Zanzibar depends on the stated intentions of the male head of household. Courts on the mainland and Zanzibar have upheld discriminatory inheritance claims. One Zanzibari law, commonly known as the spinster act, condemns a Muslim woman 21 or younger found to be pregnant out of wedlock to two years imprisonment. Men found to have fathered children with women other than their wives are theoretically eligible for jail time as well, but no men have ever been tried. Over the course of seven days in Zanzibar (in the cities, at the beaches, and in the rural center of the island), I saw no unveiled women that weren't Western tourists, with the exception of three children that couldn't have been older than six. Even the tiniest little girls wore veils or full burkas. The men wore standard Western attire: shirts and cargo shorts, flip flops, et cetera. The women were faceless, nameless, and entirely anonymous, isolated from the greater society and themselves. 

In Dar es Salaam as in Zanzibar Town, one does not see many women, and those that are visible are subjected to various levels of veiling as well as varying levels of taunts and ostracism by the crowds of unemployed and idle men. One of the Zanzibari men I spoke to in a market in Stone Town remarked that the women who are veiled in black, they are respected by men.  Those who do not wear the veil and modest dress are teased and marked as prostitutes. Allah does not favor those who do not do as the Qur'an and male teachers dictate. Interestingly enough, there is no specific verse in the Qur'an that prescribes veiling for Muslim women. The verse most commonly pointed to as a justification for mandatory veiling of women is a reference to a practice instituted by Muhammad specifically and exclusively for his wives in 627 CE, and the veil was neither compulsory nor widely adopted until generations after Muhammad's death, when a large body of male scriptural and legal scholars began using their religious and political authority to regain the dominance they had lost in society as a result of egalitarian reforms. This spirit of subversion of tolerant interpretations of Islam is alive and well in Zanzibar. 

A Western woman's experience wearing the hijab in Tanzania is somewhat more mixed. It is liberating in the sense that it allows for some measure of deflection of the intense, violent, and lewd stares that women attract in town. Veiling allows me to feel more safe, like I may actually be able to walk down the street without being attacked. But clearly, the outline of my body being almost visible under extremely conservative clothing isn't really the problem. It's important to note that my experience is somewhat different than that of an African woman. Compared with their treatment of Western women, the men here can be said to treat African women with a modicum of respect. It is widely assumed that Western women (doubly so if we are known to be specifically American) are promiscuous and atheistic and have no respect for any sort of societal norms governing sexual relationships or customs in Tanzania and Zanzibar. For me the hijab can be welcome because it allows me a measure of escape from the above assumptions. For the women here, veiling is not a choice. It is forced segregation, mandated discomfort, and stifling societal alienation of the highest order. 

The mandatory veiling is disconcerting enough, but by far the most troubling thing I saw while in Zanzibar presented itself during a visit to a local pharmacy. While waiting, I took to perusing the items under the counter, curious to see the different kinds of packaging and the variety of products that were available, when I saw something marketed as "vaginal tightening cream." There were four different brands, all prominently displayed, the most memorable of which was called "Lady-a-Virgin."  That was around the time I started to become physically nauseated. I would like to point out that this pharmacy stocked no actual women's health products at all, none, and no contraceptives of any kind. 

Far more troubling than creams and elixirs, however, is Tanzania's widespread practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). Tanzania has an alarmingly high overall rate of FGM, with 50 percent of Tanzania's 20 regions practicing it substantially and an estimated 18 percent of the total female population having been subjected to the procedure, most long before they were old enough to object or to know what was happening to them. In certain areas of Tanzania, the percentage of mutilated women is close to 90 percent; in some tribes, it is 100 percent. All types of FGM are practiced in Tanzania, from clitoridectomy, in which the clitoris is cut or ground off with a sharp rock or metal shard, to total infibulation, in which the clitoris and labia are removed with the same rudimentary instruments and the vaginal opening is sewn tightly shut, leading overwhelmingly to life-threatening infections, extensive scar tissue, and an inability to bear children, not to mention the total and permanent loss of sexual sensation and myriad dire psychological after-effects. Rates of FGM are higher within and among Islamic majority countries and groups than in their non-Islamic majority counterparts; this is especially true in Africa: 90 to 100 percent of Somali women have been mutilated; 98 percent in Djibouti; 95 percent in Egypt; 94 percent in Mali; 90 percent in Sudan; and 90 percent among Islamic groups in Nigeria. 

Even the societal elites specifically, the men at the University of Dar and the rich Tanzanians we come across in the city, don't see a problem with the status of women in their country. None of the Tanzanians I have talked to can understand why anything in their country should concern Americans at all. They tell me that we are free to leave whenever we want and that we should simply avoid the places in the world where we think that inequality, injustice, or oppression exist. Tanzanian elites are overwhelmingly men, and even those few women who would qualify as elites don't see discrimination towards or oppression of women as concerning themselves, because in obtaining some level of wealth, autonomy, and education they have seemingly risen above the gender fray. Worse, there's no sense of injustice anywhere being injustice everywhere, no sense of perceived responsibility for changing the way these things are in society at large after they themselves have escaped it. 

As a result of this particular gender paradigm, I find myself frustrated, not having any power to effect change; anything I say is discredited concomitantly with my saying it is because I am from the West and because I am a woman. Two less savory characteristics one would be hard pressed to find from the Tanzanian male point of view. In this case as in others, change will need to arise organically, from within the country. In this case, slightly different than in others, it will need to come from the men. Clearly this is problematic. Getting anyone who has unlimited, unrestricted power over another person or group to relinquish said power has historically been a losing battle, only successful after a protracted struggle and much bloodshed if at all. In Africa, history leads me to believe that a strong leader espousing gender equality and equity could potentially make a real difference for women here, but the likelihood of finding a charismatic leader that identifies with his people and wants to make gender issues a priority seems soul-crushingly small. Tanzania needs another man with Nyerere's popularity to lead for women, but I don't know from where he might come and as of now, I'm not optimistic. 

The above analysis is supported by research, yes, but the impetus for the research and the overarching ideas themselves are the result of my own personal experience living and traveling in these societies. The last thing I want is to be irrationally reactive or culturally insensitive, but I cannot but conclude that the situation here is one of those things that is wrong because it IS, regardless of culture or extenuating circumstance. If there exists any universal values in the world, then they must be relevant and applicable to all people, regardless of gender (or race, or sexual orientation, or any other distinguishing characteristic). The everyday systematic oppression of women in Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam and across Tanzania, whether de facto or de jure, is wrong. Forced veiling is wrong. Female genital mutilation of all kinds and in all degrees is wrong. Laws that prescribe different penalties for defendants of different genders are wrong. Discrimination and degradation towards and of half the population of Tanzania is an abominable corruption of the highest order. 

As Frederick Douglass said, "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them"; these women have been forced to "quietly submit" to all manner of sins for hundreds upon hundreds of years. They lack the basic mechanisms with which to protest the current state of affairs, and even if they had them no one would listen. That Tanzanian male leader with charisma and empathy as well as the desire to champion their cause, the savior they need, is mythical at best, and it's too easy for others to make the argument that there are greater battles for Tanzania to fight before dealing with gender issues. Social changes are always the slowest to come about. But where does that leave Tanzanian women, and what is the extent of our responsibility to them? I haven't the slightest clue where to begin.