Lipstick, mascara and eye shadow? Unlikely weapons in the name of social awareness.
But a dynamic young Kenyan is using cosmetics in an innovative way to make politics more appealing to even the most apathetic of Kenyans.
The latest session, at the University of Nairobi, happened a week before the country’s August 9 general elections.
A handful of makeup artists, trained also in civic elections, stood ready with their brushes and sponges, which for a short while would become tools of democracy.
“When you come to our session it’s all fun, it’s all glam, it’s all beauty,” says Bina Maseno. Her experience as candidate for the county assembly as a 23-year-old in 2013 inspired her to found Badili Africa, an NGO she uses to “feminise political spaces”.
The “democracy dialogue and glam” sessions she runs for under-23s are targeted at getting them more involved, and the makeup artists, who have huge followings on social media, are trained to talk to them in ways that help achieve that.
“Your hair is political, your clothes are political, sex is political in this country, who you end up with, is a political decision,” Maseno says.
The young women are likely to open up more to the beauticians than they would if invited to a political discussion in a hall — which they might not attend at all. In a formal setting they might fear being judged for their views about issues like abortion or for not having been interested in voting.
Yet it is important for young women to make their voices heard in politics because some policy issues affect them directly, Masena says.
They were ready to strip me, and these people were talking about temper issues!
— Bina Maseno, champion for women's rights
“It’s very sad when you don’t see young women engaging, yet when it comes to femicide, teenage pregnancy, human trafficking, female genital mutilation, we bear the brunt of it.”
She says they’re telling young women to become part of shaping the policies that could either change their lives or maintain the status quo. Her own experience has taught her that young women who want to enter political office encounter numerous obstacles, the conservatism in dress codes and hairstyles being the least of these.
Once, after she addressed a public meeting outside, some men tried to pull down her skirt as she left. She was furious but her campaigners told her not to “overreact” because “the guys will think you've got a temper”.
She says: “They were ready to strip me and these people were talking about temper issues.”
It also made her realise that young women like her need extra resources for things like security on the campaign trail, which a man might not need. This makes running for office more expensive.
Maseno’s organisation also targets older, more established women who lead chamas — the Kenyan equivalent of stokvels.
“We take political conversations to these chamas. They are community influencers. You find one woman is in three chamas, she’s in different groups and she commands an audience of 70 women,” she says, “but she doesn’t realise that she’s a leader.”
The political conversations here revolve around explaining to women that the reason they have to rely on chamas to get medical care, food and housing is because the leadership of the day is not delivering public service goods.
Some female politicians and candidates, like deputy presidential candidate Martha Karua, were also invited to the meetings.
In these conversations the women learn that “because you have power and influence, you can set the agendas and summon your leaders. You have a power base, and he knows he can’t miss that meeting,” Maseno says.
Kenya’s constituency-based electoral system means that elected politicians can be held accountable.
Maseno says she had a hard time trying to convince funders to give her money for the project but NGO Oxfam was one of the first to bite.
Already some new ground was won by women in this year’s election as six women were elected county governors where all 47 were previously men.
Three of the four candidates for deputy president were women, which was another record.
Yet there’s a long way to go. Maseno says out of the more than 16,000 candidates that ran, only 1,962 were women. In total, 4,508 candidates under 35 were cleared to run.
It is unlikely, again, that at least one-third of members will be women when the new parliament is constituted — a constitutional principle that was flouted by the previous parliament.
Women have to realise that they should push their MPs to force parliament to comply, she says.
The fear of unrest around election time after the large-scale violence after the highly contested 2007-8 elections particularly affects women.
At least 900 people are estimated to have suffered sexual violence while about 1,100 people were killed by state security forces, gang members and individuals.
Advocate Naitore Nyamu-Mathenge from Physicians for Human Rights said a number of women are reminded of this during election time and, like many others who were affected by the violence, go out of town to rural areas for the duration of the elections.
Nyamu-Mathenge, who represents four women who are still fighting for compensation from the government for what happened, said: “Most of them still blame themselves for what happened. They feel perhaps it had something to do with who they supported.”
In the run-up to the result they feared it could happen again, especially because some of the perpetrators were police officers and members of the security forces.
Maseno hopes to become part of the solution in the next elections, five years from now.
“We must build a critical mass so that when I run for office local women will understand the value of having women in office.”
Hopefully there will be significantly more than lip service to women in politics next time around.
INTERVIEW WITH SA HIGH COMMISSIONER MNINWA MAHLANGU
Relations between SA and Kenya will continue on the path set by the respective presidents, no matter who wins this week's presidential elections, says the South African high commissioner in Nairobi, Mninwa Mahlangu.
“The good working relations between SA and Kenya will continue,” he said in an interview with the Sunday Times in Nairobi, pointing out that SA had had dealings with both front-runners as former prime minister Raila Odinga was in government for a long time, while William Ruto was deputy president for 10 years in Uhuru Kenyatta's government.
Kenyatta and President Cyril Ramaphosa established close ties in recent years and Kenyatta was even invited to the ANC's January 8 birthday celebrations in East London in 2018 — Ramaphosa's first as president.
Ramaphosa’s half-day visit to Kenya to attend the funeral of former president Mwai Kibaki in April was highly appreciated by Kenyans, Mahlangu said.
The two countries signed a number of agreements last year in November during Kenyatta's state visit to SA and the Joint Commission for Co-operation was also renewed.
One of the issues parties endeavoured to address was trade, which was skewed in SA’s favour.
Another issue was visas, for which a special presidential commission was established in November. Kenyans require a visa to enter SA while South Africans can enter Kenya visa-free for a month.
Mahlangu said the commission would meet again when the new Kenyan government was constituted.
SA’s government leaders are perhaps a little closer to Odinga, who considers himself a Kenyan Nelson Mandela for spending about nine years in jail for campaigning against one-party rule and on charges of allegedly plotting against then president Daniel arap Moi.
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