C. Edward Hamelberg
Keeping the discussion rolling on these matters is no easy task for me at
present, draining from my tissues the energy required to continually justify
why the talk must go on, barring recognition that these "Sweden" issues are
perhaps a stimulating diversion. But I do not find much disagreement
anywhere. Except, well in re: the matter of me being in first name terms
with Nyamko Sabuni and Mauricio Rojas. Swedish tradition has done away with
such mystification of identities as is supplied by useless titles: Mr.,
Mrs., Sir, Dr, Your Highness, Chief, Alhaji, and so on..., perhaps not quite
tolerable for the post-colonial mind still soaked in the science of social
stratification? The prime minister is just Fredrik Reinfeldt, not Your
Excellency Fredrik Reinfeldt. The idea of being on first name terms is to
remain down to earth without invading the other's integrity. Just listen to
yourself say: His Excellency, Dr. Alhaji Yaya A.J.J Jammeh, and then imagine
the cruelty he represents. What a waste?
So Nyamko Sabuni can be called Nyamko, even on tv! Your attempt to write-off
Mauricio I hope, was purely for practical reasons. The man is no longer
politically interesting, I agree. But let us at least recognise the two have
shared the podium on very significant issues in the past: language skills
testing for Swedish wannabes, deportation of "hardened" criminals
(irrespective of social links to the country, such as children and spouses);
reformation of public funding of private religious oriented schools, and the
implementation of more aggressive control mechanisms to "smoke" out social
welfare crooks, and so on. Thus, your writing off one, while lauding the
other as a "saint who treads where angels fear" deliberately bends the rules
of logical inference. In a country where even the BertIan double (Bert
Karlsson and Ian Wachmeister) recognise that immigrants and people of
immigrant ancestry receive stiffer sentences than ethnic Swedes for
similar(!) crimes, to call for the deportation of "grova kriminella" (severe
criminals) even if that should mean their leaving behind children and
spouses, is simple, callous cruelty. If all that is just the cake, let us
look att the icing that crowned it!
One of the very first "ministerial" assignments she executed without delay
was to stifle funding for the Anti-racism Campaign office on the grounds
that its work brought no tangible results! When about a month ago, Veckans
Aff酺er (Sweden's version of Business Week, so to speak), the most bourgeois
of the right-wing press asked her for comments on the immigrant brain drain,
she said she had no time! [Hundreds of well educated immigrants remain
unemployed and/or underemployed for years in Sweden only to find suitable
lucrative positions as soon as they arrive in Britain or Canada. Nyamko
finally commented on the issue last night]! All of this, plus more
discursive soup served by a very eloquent black lady minister.
Let us recapitulate on what Sweden means to me, and hopefully us. Rampant
discrimination and racism, certainly. Night clubs that refuse blacks and
dark-haired immigrants are plenty, and employers will tell you all sorts of
lies for not offering you a job. These days if you are called Abdirizak
Mohammad, or Ali Baba, or Abdurahman Omar, your chance of becoming gainfully
employed might lie in altering your name to Magnus Lindkvist or Ingrid
Johansson or some other blue and blond name. Forces of cultural alienation
are sending a lot of immigrants, both young men and women to plastic
surgeons. Persian and Arab youth alter their facial features, nose and chin,
so as to look more caucasian! Others, having lost their souls in tentative
integration into a society that eventually rejects even those with good
grades, take to violent crime. (Have you read "Snabba Cash"?).
But their is as well, a noble history of genuine solidarity and progressive
politics. Sweden offered the most help to the ANC and liberation movements
on the African continent. It still pours millions in aid to Ethiopia,
Tanzania, Mozambique, and Vietnam, significantly subsidising the budgets of
these countries. That Nelson Mandela's first trip outside Africa after his
release from prison in 1990 was to Stockholm was not simply incidental.
Swedes risked their lives running underground support systems that helped
sustain the families of victims, killed or jailed, of the apartheid regime.
My friend it is in these complexes of contexts we must place and weigh
Nyamko Sabunis performance as minister. Perhaps she is no Uncle Tom, but she
is an Auntie Igrid to me! and even if she deserves a honeymoon on account of
her historic appointment, I am sure she will be colliding with many
activists, including me. I know that I am travelling to an entirely
different destination. The question is whether you are just taking a
different bus to the same destination as Nyamko. Tell me, please.
I am holding on to Ginny's position on female genital cutting. As she
rightly opined, some Africans have already gone underground, secretly taking
their daughters to their home countries where they are cut, and then brought
back to Scandinavia. It is a horrifying practice to all of us, i.e those
convinced that they know better, and we should work to abolish it. Yet, I
cannot think of any country where education and information have been more
effectively used as instruments of social engineering, as a way of altering
attitudes, as a consistently proven method of implememting even socially
unpopular reforms. It has been the cornerstone of social democratic politics
for decades since the pre war years.
Subjecting African girls to examination to determine the state of their
genitalia is not just an abominablel invasion of their privacy. Even if
Nyamko says her suggestion was to provoke debate, that such a suggestion
came from her is a reflection of the general climate of antagonistic
cultural encounter immigrants experience here. Because female genetical
cutting is demonised, its practitioners are equated, perhaps not explicitly,
as savages whose brutal impulses towards their own wives and daughters must
be aggressively checked. Why, a trip to the gynaecologist must be taken as a
most ordinary and compassionate samaritan act. Behold, even Cornelius
Hamelberg thinks FGC has its historical roots buried in the primordial
cruelty of men bent on depriving women of their divine right to a life
endowed with sexual bliss. But don't we know better? Are there no medicinal
roots to FGC, even if ill informed? And like the circumcision of males, is
that of girls not largely a crucial aspect of initiation rites into
womanhood? But besides, whence does all this anti-FGC hail?
Anti-FGC militantism is hardly older than the rise of feminist activism in
the West. It is this political project of gender liberation that has largely
defined FGC as an incredible act of widespread cruelty. Yet as genuine as
the concerns of westerners are, the brutality of the application of "rusty
knives" on female flesh in the African bush, is hardly more severe than the
tortuous lives of women in societies steeped in violent misogyny. Sex
reassignment surgery - never mind the clinically decent name, nothing
brutish here you see - is in many instances, more horrifying than many forms
of FGC including infibulation. Male to female surgery involves cutting off
the testicles completely, apart from other complicated procedures required
for making a man sexually female. There are "clit" clinics in L.A where
women go to be operated upon to alter the look of their genitals. If you can
imagine an old grandmother using crude knives in the African bush to slice
open the breasts of young girls and stuff them with different kinds of
silicon implants you would come closer to understanding why words,
professional training, money, clinical environments are all brought to bear
to create a mental projection defined by a dominat culture that sees one
practice as "barbaric" and the other as qualified aesthetic surgery. It is
all about the exercise of power.
Unless their is genuine respect for other people inspite of their
traditional practices, attempts to alter attitudes may prove more painful
than necessary. That is a message we need to convey to Nyamko Sabuni.
Cheers,
sidibeh
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