Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - "What if we raise the bar for men?"

[Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] hello everyone my name is zolani maola i am the one who sings and i'm really really honored to be here today with you at the fnf africa freedom prize ceremony it is my delight to share with you my latest work remember who you are now the song is particularly for you chimamanda ngozi adichie for your tremendous outstanding work because you truly do remind us to remember who we are [Music] know how beautiful they are if the mountains and the seas know how magical they are if the stars which made our skin show how radiant they are won't they shine their light until you remember who you are who you are remember who you are remember who you are [Music] make him queen and bring him peace [Music] yes you are yes you are [Music] you remember who you are who you are remember who you are you are give her a crown and watch them sing make a lord and make a king give him a crown and watch them sing and [Music] see you cried yourself to sleep oh remember who you are you thought he was broken oh remember who you are remember who you are and you try to bury you who remember who you are who you are who you are give him a crown and watch them sing make him queen and bring him peace we are more than these bodies we are molding these stories inside everyone seeks to grow you know you need to say it i remember i remember who i am i remember i remember who i remember who i am i remember who i remember who i remember who i am i remember who i remember who i remember who i am ladies and gentlemen welcome to the fnf africa freedom prize ceremony 2020. my name is rudy kavi i'm a broadcast journalist producer author and news anchor in johannesburg south africa it is my absolute honor and privilege to be your host today now i'm thrilled to be part of what promises to be a very memorable event every year the friedrich newman foundation for freedom honors outstanding personalities of the african continent with its african freedom prize now the freedom prize 2020 will be awarded to none other than miss chimamanda ngozi adichie the fnf africa freedom prize is an annual award for outstanding personalities in sub-saharan africa individuals who are particularly committed to freedom-related topics and issues such as democracy freedom of the press and human rights and these individuals are also global role models we are went away that it can be so uncomfortable to stand up for such values and ideals and to openly criticize especially those who are powerful in our societies the personalities fnf honors do not just receive praise and accolades for their work on the contrary their voices are often suppressed and their positions are criticized however fnf would like to honor those who continue to devote themselves to such issues despite any headwinds the approaches of their prize winners encourage people to reflect and think social norms and values the fnf is convinced that if free dynamic and innovative africa will enable people to live a self-determined life the fredo newman foundation is a german foundation for liberal politics with headquarters in berlin and potsdam and worldwide offices and projects it's a pleasure to introduce to you the regional director for sub-saharan africa for fnf miss inger habit dear chimamanda ngozi adichie dear lady tlavi ladies and gentlemen welcome to the africa freedom prize celebration in sub-saharan africa the friedrich naumann foundation for freedom has offices in johannesburg cape town harare abhijon dakar and we also organize regional activities uniting and connecting people on the whole continent we work with partners organizations and individual change makers in the fields of capacity building human rights poverty reduction and liberal democracy reforms 2020 has been a very difficult year full of uncertainty worldwide and also in sub-saharan africa apart from human suffering and death we have also seen massive restriction of civil rights in many african countries regimes headed by old men have used the pretext of the pandemic to pursue opponents journalists and also people who simply raise their voices with the sub-saharan africa freedom prize the regional office of the fnf is honoring outstanding african personalities who provide decisive impulses for the development of open and free societies in african countries chimamanda you are the laureate of the africa freedom prize 2020. it is time to celebrate today we celebrate you you represent a new generation of african women who are proudly african independent and successful you are one of the most influential contemporary writers and you are so much more you continuously raise your voice for freedom and self-determination of women and for a more just and more complex image of africa miss adichie you stand for freedom from from the one-dimensional image of crisis poverty and dependence of african countries you stand for freedom from patriarchism and corruption and you stand for freedom from patronage and prejudice we are excited to celebrate the africa freedom prize 2020 today with you as our laureate [Music] thank you so much thank you inga herbert thanks indeed the sub-saharan sub-saharan africa regional director for fnf so misadichi is a nigerian international author who now lives partly in nigeria and partly in the united states and she writes in english in her novels speeches and books she addresses social issues with honesty and eloquence her work has received many international awards and is considered an outstanding example of young african literature her work has been translated into over 30 languages and has appeared in various publications including the new yorker granta the o'hare prize stories the financial times and zootrope she's the author of many novels purple hibiscus which won the commonwealth writers prize and the first and right legacy award half of the yellow sun which won the orange prize and was a national book critic circle award finalist and a new york times notable book and americana which won the national book critic circle award and was named one of the new york times top 10 best books of 2013. misadich is also the author of the story collection the thing around your neck ms adichie has been invited to speak around the world many of us are familiar with her ted talks 2009 ted talk the danger of a single story is now one of the most viewed ted talks of all times her 2012 talk we should all be feminists has triggered a worldwide debate about feminism and was published in a book in a book in 2014 and i've been particularly excited visiting south african universities and hearing young women in particular quoting that particular talk in her speeches and writings she takes a clear stand and criticizes in particular issues like corruption and autocratic government governments feminism and identity she writes about colonialism africa pan-africanism and homosexuality the whole spectrum of identity really we all want to express our respect for your work and your unbroken commitment to strengthen women's rights and to put a spotlight really on the kind of outstanding african personalities such as you masadichi you are a true role model and congratulations on this particular award we can't wait to hear your words over to you so thank you inga thank you reedy i have titled my speech today what if we raised the bar for men some thoughts on the epidemic of women all over the world being beaten and killed by men now it is not a very elegant title it's not concise but it is deliberate because it seems to me that language matters very much language can shield the true reality of things language can desensitize us language can lose its ability to capture very specific realities i could have titled my speech thoughts on gender-based violence or gbv it even has a kind of cool ring to it it slips out of the mouth very easily gbv but why have i chosen not to do so because while i acknowledge that the expression gbv is perhaps useful in certain species it does not quite capture the inhumane immoral and utterly unacceptable phenomenon that i think deserves maximum attention which is that all over the world today so many women are beaten raped and murdered by men and that these women would not suffer this kind of violence if they were not women yes men suffer violence but it is overwhelmingly women who suffer violence based on their gender and more importantly in the language we used to talk about it it sometimes makes the violence a kind of neutral phenomenon as though it is something that falls from the sky as though it is something that is inevitable when we know very well that it is in fact the result of choices made by men we say gender-based violence but violence by whom yes there are cases where women attack women and men attack men but we must be forthright in addressing this ugly epidemic that it is overwhelmingly women who suffer violence from men so here's the united nations statistics 137 women are killed by a member of their family every day what it doesn't say is that it is nearly always a male family member there are rape statistics that show anything from 30 percent to 70 percent of women who have experienced some form of sexual violence in different countries all over the world but we know the statistics are wrong we know the numbers are higher because we know there is still so much stigma attached to rape that so many women do not talk about it i have a friend who works for a corporate organization here in lagos and she told me a story about asking the women in her company what they wanted their guest speakers to talk about so when she asked the women to attach their names to their topic suggestions she got generic vague topics like the life work balance but when she asked the women to send their topics anonymously she was startled that the topic that overwhelmingly said that was overall mainly sent in by the women was domestic violence it is no longer enough to criticize it is time to imagine alternatives it is time to think about possibilities there is a lot of focus on women who are the victims of reducing a crime without focusing on the perpetrators of the crime and so what if we raise the bar for men there is an epidemic of male entitlement to female bodies the way society controls female bodies makes men unconsciously believe that a woman's body does not belong to her in many societies on this continent it starts with female circumcision now one of the wonderful things about the female body is that the clitoris has no other function but female pleasure so when you take a girl and you forcefully and violently cut off her clitoris what is the point when you forcefully sew up a girl's vagina making her vulnerable to horrible pain and infections and life-long discomfort what is the point of this torture the point is control the point is to control a woman sexually it is to deny a woman sexual agency and it is to tell her that her body does not belong to her now male circumcision when it happens is about initiation into manhood it is often uncomfortable and in my opinion it is unnecessary but it is not about controlling male sexuality or male bodies it is not about shame but female circumcision is a barbaric process that aims specifically to diminish women and control them at least 200 million women and girls have undergone circumcision which is also called female genital mutilation but the reason i choose to call it circumcision is that it's a language that's often used in the countries where it's practiced and i think it's important for us to use the language that is used in the communities that practice them and so of these 200 million women and girls in 31 countries half of those countries are in west africa we cannot accept a culture where women are considered second-class citizens and then turn around and be surprised that women are raped and beaten by men the two are connected if you do not give value to a thing then it is easy to abuse that thing so recently a woman got married in my hometown and a man said to her in giving words of advice for a happy marriage he said to her everything you do from now on you must remember that you are now under a man and i remember thinking he could have told her you're now in a loving partnership you'll be making joint decisions instead of solo decisions you now have a friend to walk with you on life's path and you will have good times and bad times but no he told her you are now under a man this language matters if a woman is under a man then it is easy to justify violence against her if she is under a man then she does not have autonomy over her own life now this man who said that a woman was under a man because she was married told me it is our culture okay if it is our culture then it is time to change it culture changes all the time in my hometown in eastern nigeria i know the first set of twins who survived the practice of killing twins in 1940 if a woman gave birth to twins in some parts of eboland the babies would be swiftly taken from her and left in a forest to die because ibu cosmology believed that twins were evil now i can imagine many people both men and women at the time saying it is our culture and it was but it changed and today i don't think any person would support the killing of twins culture does not make people people make culture we can make and remake culture it is strange to live in a modern world the world of cell phones and airplanes and insist on selectively holding on to parts of culture that existed in pre-modern times and that reduce the human worth and potential of women biology is the basis of male oppression of women men in general are physically stronger than women and this has been the basis of male oppression of women our human history was one where might ruled and so men ruled and men made rules that benefited them and they call those rules culture we live in different times we live in a time where might no longer rules it is not necessarily the strongest person who gets to rule and so we must remake the rules to benefit everyone how do we do this by changing mindsets we can pass all the laws we want to but if we do not change the mindsets of people if we do not change how we think about things nothing changes and so this is how to change your mindset talk about it create stories create transparency until one day that thing becomes ordinary nothing becomes normal so there's an example i like to use of the of the show in the u.s called will and greece will and greece was a show that should gay people as ordinary and normal and it did so much to combat homophobia in the united states much more than any laws could have done and so a question that i think is important to ask is how do boys learn about sex what do boys learn about sex many african cultures teach boys that the way to go about getting sex is through coercion through deception and sometimes through force and it teaches girls that they can never admit to wanting sex because it means they are immoral and unworthy of marriage marriage of course being the ultimate prize for a woman and i hope that the sarcasm with which i said that was not lost on anyone what this results in is that both men and women have a hypocritical distorted attitude to sex and for women this attitude is dangerous because it can lead to rape and murder it is true that rape is about power and not about desire but that this need for power and control manifests itself through sex speaks to the assumptions our cultures hold about sex rape is in some ways an extreme example of what our culture teaches about sex is there anywhere in our mainstream culture that female consent is celebrated that female pleasure is celebrated that female sexual agency is celebrated a married woman in most parts of africa today is seen as property because she will be told by her family and by her religious leaders that she must always submit to her husband she must have sex with him even if she doesn't want to which is a way of validating rape what if we do better with sex education what if we have open honest and uncomfortable conversations about sex and the cleaner the language the better what if sex education were not limited to biology what if we didn't teach young people just about the egg and the sperm cell but also about the society we live in about social norms and about cultural assumptions such as the cultural assumption around women and their bodies now i think shame can be a useful thing we should teach girls that they should be ashamed of themselves when they are dishonest and when they tell lies and when they steal but they should never feel shame about their bodies biology is too often a source of shame for women and biology should never be a source of shame i remember growing up and being made to feel ashamed when i got my period if your dress accidentally got stained you felt terrible shame as though periods were not natural things as though somehow you had done something wrong periods happen specifically to girls and to make it a shameful thing is to teach girls that something is wrong with their bodies periods should just be ordinary they should be seen as normal as normal as the sun shining and the rain falling and people sweating but the shame does not stop with periods we do not give girls the language to talk about their bodies i know so many adult women today who know little about their bodies and who are ashamed of their bodies and who cannot talk about their bodies the word for vagina in my language ibu is considered very vulgar so imagine this scenario a little girl innocent helpless is being sexually abused by her uncle she's scared and confused sexual assault is difficult enough to talk about even for an adult but how will this little child talk about it when she doesn't even have the language what will she say how will she say it we should give girls the language to be able to talk about their bodies and most importantly we must strip that language of shame and what about men and shame we know from research and i think most of us also know this anecdotally that a baby boy and a baby girl are treated differently from the minute they are born in fact even before they are born it is overwhelmingly female pregnancies that are terminated specifically because they're female and studies show us that as infants across cultures all over the world girls get more hugs and more comforting while boys are expected to cry less and are comforted less as toddlers we already expect boys to be tough and to suck it up and not to cry so we start very early in our project of constructing the hard cage of masculinity the problem is not that masculinity itself is bad that is masculinity being the idea of having certain expectations for men the problem is what we have decided that masculinity must look like we can make a choice as a society to do it differently we can remake masculinity and it starts with what we teach boys to be ashamed of our culture currently teaches men to be ashamed of weakness to be ashamed of failure to be ashamed of not being financial providers what if we begin to teach little boys to be ashamed of different things what if we construct a new masculinity what if from childhood we tell boys that real men do not start fights but if you bring a fight to him and you're his equal he will beat you the hell up what if we tell them that real men cry that real men talk about emotions that real men are honest and keep their ward and i am not talking about teaching them about chivalry because chivalry's premise is female weakness there are men today grown men who want to learn because nobody taught them these things this is not to excuse men but instead to challenge what seems to me a kind of inevitability that hangs over the way we talk about male violence against women it doesn't have to be like this it doesn't have to be the raging epidemic that it is what if male cultural role models spoke about this sang about this celebrated this new masculinity the way to change minds is through stories cultural products art storytelling music all have the power to change mindsets changing our mindsets will have an effect on how laws are implemented today in many african countries authorities still do not take sexual violence against women very seriously i cannot think of how many women in this country nigeria who have been told by the police when they go to report violence done to them by husbands or other male relatives go home and settle we need to raise boys and teach them that many of the skills we presently consider female skills are actually human skills we must expect more from men it is soft bigotry to have such low expectations of men when we say that men rape because men will be men or because a woman were a short skirt or because a woman wore a local blouse then we're saying that men are really wild animals who have no control over themselves and if it is true then we cannot trust men in any position of power because they are so lacking in basic self-control but we know that this is not true men are not wild animals who do not have control over themselves rape is not about how women dress because women in countries where women are covered from head to toe are still raped by men baby girls are raped by men elderly women are raped by men men rape because men make the choice to rape men can do better and we as a society must expect men to do better and so when we say gbv let us also be specific about which violence is currently an epidemic in the world today it is male violence against women we should talk honestly and openly about it we should change mindsets about it we should implement laws that severely punish it and we should raise the bar for men thank you and over to you weedy thank you so much for addressing an issue in your keynote that is very close to my heart chimamanda is a south african woman who lives in a country with the highest rape incident in the world we have four times the global femicide average in south africa and violence against women has shaped much of my work as a journalist here i was listening to you offering some some tools that we can use to reverse the status quo and some of the obvious ones to me are about investing in girls and women's education giving women economic freedom having dialogue with men teaching men how to be different and raise the bar but it sounds to me that the cultural issues the cultural issues offer the biggest challenge as we strive for equality between men and women what are your thoughts around how we as pupils of the world get around cultural and religious barriers not just in africa by the way but in the united states we are seeing a manifestation of toxic masculinity in politics and everyday life as well so the question is exactly that the cultural barriers towards creating the world that you so eloquently described what are your thoughts then i i do think it's probably the most difficult i mean um like you said economics is important we women need to have better access and we still live in a world in which men support men so wealth creation still is very male but you know there are many situations where women who have the good fortune of having a level of economic success and economic power still still bend to certain cultural assumptions that are bad for women so a friend was telling me recently about a young woman who got married and shortly after her marriage got into harvard and was about to go off for 18 months to do her course in harvard and her older relatives women were all shocked and saying to her but what about your husband how can you leave him and go to harvard for 18 months and and i remember and i just found that so strange because these are educated women who you know know the value of education and somehow because she this woman is going to go away just for a year and a half it's somehow the most important thing is what about your husband right because marriage is the thing that you're supposed to value more than anything else so i i think it's it's forcing conversations to happen i think it will take time i do think it's important to make it cool by which i mean that there is there's a lot of sort of cultural power in the idea of what's cool so i think that if um if musicians that young people look up to if actors that young people look up to start to talk about this and talk about it in ways that are honest not just lip service not just saying things like on international women's day saying yes women's equality but actually talking about it and also producing work that reflects it because you can't talk about how you're for women but then your music is consistently denigrating women then it doesn't make sense so i feel as though it's um i think it's a complex thing that doesn't have easy answers but i really think that that's the way that we're going to achieve any real change i smiled earlier in the introduction when the conversation was around african governments headed by old men who have used the pandemic to really cement their oppression of journalists of women and it was ironic because donald trump's face flashed in front of me because that's where it has happened using the pandemic to slam down on internationalism on immigration on women the briana taylor mata uh black lives matter protesters so even there in the western world and we ought to be honest about this these symbols of oppressions are bound and they are tangible so my question to you is does it matter who's in leadership today and are you inspired by any of the leaders that we have in the world today um are there any leaders that i am inspired by that's that's a very hard question actually yes yes jacinda arden of new zealand i find very inspiring and i do because i think she's just demonstrated what leadership can be where you communicate with the people you're leading where you put their needs first where you're thinking in practical ways and where it's not about your ego and now i'm not sure how much of that has to do with her female socialization but i find her inspiring i also quite admire angela merkel but she's sort of really really steady and and sort of unflappable and and also quite efficient i think in that very german way um i think that's maybe it i admired barack obama when he was president and in terms of just talking about gender i think that he was a leader who seemed to understand how important it was to talk about the ways in which being born a female person in the world automatically limits you and it's not just about africa and i think that um sexism exists everywhere in the world the difference is that in western countries people like to pretend that it's not there and it's not as overt as it's not as in your face as it is and in places like um our continent africa and in latin america and in some parts of asia my next question to you um you know it would not make any sense to have this conversation and not ask about end size now back in your country i think a lot of us amplified our voices in solidarity but there's a way in which leadership was just brazen and not listening and there's a way in which african governments themselves we're not expressing anything not in any forceful or meaningful way what can you tell us about your role as a writer you've said before that you didn't choose writing writing chose you there are many ways to be an activist you can go out into the street and protest against police brutality but i still believe that the pen is mightier than the sword i'd love to get into your heart and your thoughts around nigeria and sas now and what you see as your role as writer and teacher i take my um position as a person who is from nigeria and who has a platform that is international and you know i happen to just have this good fortune of of writing books that people read all over the world and so it's giving me a platform and i i feel a sense of responsibility to use that platform when it comes to issues that are important and nsa's in this country i found both inspiring and utterly utterly depressing inspiring because young people have just had enough and the idea that they rose up and i felt it was just so organic across the country people saying we've had enough not just of police violence because i think it really became about wanting more wanting better and i found it depressing because we just have a government that i don't know whether it's that it's unable or unwilling to even just engage with the citizens and there's something also for me that's very disappointing about the indifference of other african countries yes we all expect the west to speak up right so the us and canada and france and germany and they're all saying this is bad but of course one is thinking well what about our brothers and sisters and i think it's because we still live in a continent where governments are so terrified of the idea of citizens rising up and so i imagine that african governments are worried about showing any kind of support for real democratic reforms because they're worried about what's going to happen in their own countries and so of course it speaks to terrible governance across the continent um our neighbour can ruin those you know the people are still being murdered in in in the sort of anglophone crisis there so it's not surprising that cameroon for example would be silent when the nigerian police the nigerian army decides to open fire on innocent people but i think that there there's a lesson here and the lesson is that increasingly i think young africans are no longer willing to accept poor leadership now here you are receiving the africa freedom prize from the fnf and you've won so many awards i wonder what meaning these have for you beyond obviously validation and gratification that your work is being appreciated i ask this because often when we have a star coming out of south africa coming out of zimbabwe we feel a sense of ownership as africans that you're putting the continent on the map it's perhaps a very unfair burden to place on on individuals but in the context of global politics and identity and multiculturalism what does it mean when someone like you wins an international award like this beyond just appreciation for your work um well it also means that i'm just terrified because i don't know what's then expected of me no i think it means i hope it means something bigger than me i hope it means that it's a recognition of what can come from africa and a recognition of what africa can produce because while i'm a person who considers herself comfortable in the world i am deeply and um unchangeably a product of of my country and of my culture i wouldn't be here if i hadn't been raised by evil parents in a university town in southeastern nigeria so so i'm a product really of nigeria and i think that to be recognized often for me is is what i hope that often what i hope will happen is that that their young girls and boys across this continent who will look at me and think about what they too can do that despite because i think that this is the truth about this continent that people can thrive in spite of all of the obstacles that our governments place in front of us obviously when we engage with words with literature we all interpret it whichever way it works for us i just want to go back to your talk on the way of a single story and that for me will speak to xenophobia certain perceptions that people will have about the other certain perceptions men will have about what a woman is in society certain perceptions that white people can have about black people and so on it's quite ironic that as much as we know all these things theoretically in practice in practice the retreat to nationalism the retreat to what is familiar and i can use brexit as an example that in times of crisis and socio-economic challenges that we are facing people retreat to their own whatever that that is and now that takes me then to the post-pandemic world our economies are going to take a long time to heal unemployment is at record lows in many countries so my fear with all of this is that perhaps the single story the view about the other and who's responsible for our misery whatever that is that the world has that risk of embracing a single story and the safest story at that what would you say if that were happening or if that were to happen it's interesting that you asked that question because i actually have the same fear and just observing the world in the past few years and and this kind of shift to a kind of right-wing populism across europe and of course in the u.s with trump and how this populism often sort of uses the language of um tribalism i mean i think human beings really are tribal i think we are but i think it's a question of how we kind of manage our tribal instincts and it seems to me that when things are going well we're kind of okay but then when they're not we're not um the reason this worries me in particular is because i think it will affect africans in the most negative ways and even within africa it worries me that we don't know one another well enough and so in south africa for example when nigerians and zimbabweans and and other black africans are being attacked it it's it's just really sad because i think it's it's the sort of thing that doesn't seem to to make space for recognizing the history the history of for example nigerians who were really up in arms against apartheid and the ways in which african countries have connections and really should build on those connections but i think in the next few years we are all as a world going to go through very difficult years i i think that's inevitable i mean that kovid has just completely changed things and there's the economic recessions are coming and it's going to be up to governments to figure out how best to guide people through them and unfortunately for us in in this continent we don't seem to have leadership that is inspiring and so it worries me about how well we're going to do so i think anybody who's read your books and listen to you would want me to ask this question what are you working on now um i've been laughing on social media as people say if you haven't finished your studies during the pandemic you're not serious about life if you haven't written that book you're not serious about life if you haven't managed to stick to your diet during the pandemic you're not serious about life so what has chimamanda been busy with during the pandemic and what can the world expect from you i've been busy watching a lot of things on netflix eating chocolate ordering things online and returning them yeah i suddenly became really interested in strange things i go on etsy and i order earrings so much as i would like to tell you that i've been reading um proust in the original french sadly i have not and i'm not going to tell you what i'm working on because i'm a very superstitious evil woman and i feel that if i talk about what i'm working on it will i will jinx it okay i got something out of you you are superstitious i'll never forget that one thank you so much for chatting to me this day but most importantly congratulations on the africa freedom prize 2020 being the recipient thereof and we appreciate your in your contribution to global debates and a reflection on the self and identity congratulations once again and thank you so much thank you so much rudy it's always very very inspiring for me to talk to a brilliant african sister so thank you [Music] it's our pleasure now to perform a song that i had the great honor of being a part of in the year 2010 it's a song whose lyrics still have great relevance for our continent as a whole it's time for africa [Music] you're a good soldier choosing your battles pick yourself up dust yourself off get back in the saddle you're right on the front line and everyone's watching we're getting closer it's getting serious this isn't over the pressure's on [Music] it's time [Music] is [Music] the people are raising their expectations go on and beat them this is your moment no hesitation today's your day you feel it you've paved [Music] this [Music] is [Music] is [Music] foreign [Music] first time for africa yes thank you everybody [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Freedom Foundation Africa

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Length: 52min 37sec (3157 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 14 2020