TW: Sexual Violence 

The prevalence of sexual violence against women and girls in Africa is a central theme of feminist discourse and activism. Worrying statistics, such as 27.6% of South African men in a survey admitting to having raped someone, quantify the gravity of these dangers. In conjunction, media serves to qualify the realities of rape culture in our society. Art forms like film, television, music, and literature creatively and powerfully translate women’s experiences within this paradigm to larger audiences as a means of invaluable education and insight. With this in mind, AMAKA explores five contemporary films that poignantly present the nuances of this epidemic of sexual violence against women. 

Òlòtūré

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Òlòturé is a 2019 Nigerian film that follows the story of an eponymously named journalist (played by Sharon Ooja) who goes undercover to investigate the lives of sex-trafficked women. The film is rumoured to be modelled after the real-life story of Tobore Mit Ovuorie, an investigative journalist who almost lost her life in Nigeria undercover with the desire to expose the syndicates that caused the death of her close friend Ifueko, who returned from sex work in Italy with full-blown Aids in 1999 and died shortly thereafter.

Ovurie’s story and this film both do a great job of showing the known and unknown dangers of sex work in Nigeria. Kemi Lala Akindoju plays Blessing, a sex worker attempting to leave the industry via separating from her abusive boyfriend, Chuks, who acts as her pimp. Following her efforts, we see how violence can permeate this lifestyle, even when one actively rejects it. Her boyfriend works hard to destroy any opportunity she has for independence, isolating Blessing and threatening anyone who tries to intervene. As she tries to leave her abusive boyfriend multiple times, he not only works hard to thwart her efforts, he isolates and threatens anyone who would dare to help her try and create a better life for herself. “You would just be one more whore dead on the streets” is a chilling threat Chuk verbalises to Òlòturé when she tries to intervene.

Date rape is another aspect of rape culture that’s addressed in Òlòturé, with its perpetrators depicted as men of stature, like government officials. This goes to contradict prevailing notions that men who sexually abuse women are easily identifiable brutes, adding more dimension to our perception of abusers. Indeed, Òlòturé presents female trafficking as a multi-layered network among men that transcends class; empowered politicians are aiding and supporting men on the ground. This mirrors the reality of female subjugation in the real world.

We also learn how this system of exploitation encompasses victims, who can become active participants in its continuation. Òlòturé’s Madam Alero, a former sex worker turned trafficker, personifies a growing global trend of victims turned traffickers. A 2016 report by the United Nations reveals that in 37% of convicted trafficking crimes against women, other women have been involved. The UN says women often feel a greater sense of trust towards other women due to their shared gender, which is then exploited by trafficking rings to more easily lure women. The findings go on to say that traffickers and their victims, in general, typically come from the same place, speak the same language or have the same ethnic background.

Speaking to Premium Times about her undercover project in 2012, Ovourie identified how crime and the act of selling sex intersect, saying, “It is important that the world now gets to know that the cross-border sex traffickers have merged with even more ruthless crime syndicates and that murder for profit is a business that is mixed with prostitution.”  

We Are Dying Here

We Are Dying Here is a multi-award winning South African stage play-turned-short film originally written by Siphokazi Jonas in 2020. Released in February 2021, it focuses on gender-based violence (GBV) and the violent culture of harassment, abuse and femicide that enables the phenomenon.

The piece is a cross between theatre, spoken word and film, chronicling the journey of three nameless female soldiers, portrayed by Jonas and her co-writers Hope Netshivhambe and Babalwa Makwetu. Powerful in both its words and visuals, the film features the three women reciting poetry and singing in the midst of raging war-like surroundings. This imagery and soundscape depict the extent of assault levied at women in this region via femicide and sexual abuse; the chaos juxtaposed against the characters’ calm dispositions highlights how women are expected to continue living as though nothing is wrong. 

We Are Dying Here’s crowning achievement is its ability to make you feel the emotions of the three soldiers without ever depicting violence on screen, using a combination of lighting, colour and set design to convey this struggle. From broken windows and fragments of splintered wood to a burning house and an ashen atmosphere, these visuals provide a stunning backdrop for the poetic words the women use as they run across the battlefield.

“There’s always an older woman somewhere trying to teach herself silence because she was told that no one would believe her. So she is not sure anymore, not sure if it actually happened” is a line by Netshivhambe that underscores this erasure of female suffering and the generational inheritance of this silence.

They also showcase how women are often interrogated more than the abuser, with Jonas’ character stating, “…but first a few questions to establish your innocence. Did you say no? Do your clothes say no? Your life, your values, your virtues, how long have you lived as a no? Because what matters is not what you say; it’s what he believes he heard.” 

We Are Dying Here draws upon the contemporary crisis and the lack of action to safeguard those vulnerable. In 2010, Interpol named South Africa the rape capital of the world. Over a decade later and the sentiment remains, with nearly 10,000 rape cases and over 6,100 murders reported between July and September of 2021 alone. Thus, the film beautifully showcases what it is like for women to fight a war they did not choose — “a war for our bodies”, the film’s creators digest. In turn, it humanises the reality of these statistics and presents women’s experiences as more than just facts and figures. 

A Girl from Mogadishu

A Girl from Mogadishu is a 2019 film based on the life of Ifrah Ahmed, a Somali-Irish social activist played by Aja Naomi King. She is the founder of the United Youth of Ireland NGO and the Ifrah Foundation. The film details Ifrah’s journey to escape a war-torn Somalia and her emergence as an international activist against GBV and Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

The story opens up with her running away from a 50-year-old man she was forced to marry at 15. We are then led to her father’s home, where she is raped by military soldiers who have occupied the site.

The rest of the movie shows Ifrah arriving in Ireland, where she's examined by a male gynaecologist who evidences the fact she's undergone FGM. This identification is poignant due to it happening outside of the protagonist's native culture, thus placing Ifrah in a state of juxtaposition between home and abroad — between oppression and liberation. Indeed, she's forced to confront the depravity of her gendered experience from an outsider's perspective, underscoring the sheer desperation of her escape. This deepened realisation acts as the catalyst for Ifrah's subsequent activism against FGM, teaching herself English in an effort to tell her story and lobby against the practice in Ireland. 

This endeavour was also an undertaking of the real-life Ifrah Ahmed, who lobbied the Irish government to pass the Irish Criminal Justice (Female Genital Mutilation) Act, enacted in 2012. Now in 2022, Ahmed works as the Gender Coordinator on behalf of the Somali government as well as the Gender Advisor to the President. She has also led countless initiatives working directly with communities and religious leaders, such as the UN Women - Ifrah Foundation partnership, signed in October 2021. 

Both the dramatisation and real-life events of Ifrah’s experience provide a bittersweet ending that’s rare for other women like her, whose stories are wholly bitter with no sweetness. Despite being violently divorced from her homeland via violent misogyny and imperialism, Ifrah’s name and tale have at least made an impact beyond her city. Many women become nameless casualties of war; A Girl from Mogadishu offers a material possibility of liberation from this oppressive violence, however melancholy. 

The Hen that Came Home to Roost

The Hen that Came to Roost is a Zimbabwean short film, released in 2021 by Intwasa Art Festival. The film stars Bonakele Agnes Ncube as a young woman named Grace, who returns home after many years to confront her mother and uncle about her childhood trauma that is now being extended to her niece.

Grace questions the role that culture and tradition play in continuing the cycle of abuse as well as the enabling silence from older women who have internalised their experiences of abuse as a rite of passage, rather than abhorrent subjugation of women and girls like them.

The film takes an unexpected twist as Grace murders both her uncle and mother. Her violence proves reactionary, as her uncle was the perpetrator of her childhood abuse while her mother was a bystander. These events tap into the phenomenon of “reactive abuse” at its most extreme level. According to summative findings from a 2017 study by Penal Reform, in a significant number of cases in which women are convicted of murder or manslaughter, the victim was a male partner or male family and there was a history of domestic abuse. The confrontation and murders depicted in the film thus give us a look into this tragic paradox in which the victim becomes the perpetrator. 

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Citation

Citation is a Nigerian film released in 2020. It follows the life of Moremi, a University student (played by Temi Otedola) who reports her professor for attempted rape. The film concurrently shows her story from past and present lenses, detailing the events leading up to the attempted assault in the past and the hearing in the present. This two-part separation juxtaposes the protagonist’s demeanour before and after the attack, allowing us to understand how this experience has changed her as a person. She goes from a keen and wide-eyed girl who wholly places her trust in the hands of her mentor to a wisened woman, fighting for her freedom to learn.

The film explores the prevalence of institutional bias against female victims of abuse in Nigerian society, as fellow lecturers along with the media bolster the accused’s image as a good man while ignoring his sordid trail of sexual misconduct at previous institutions. Accordingly, the film also shows women’s plight to be believed and the public tendency to victim-blame and put the onus on women. An example is when Moremi’s boyfriend insists that she drops the class rather than stand trial. Another is the media circus that surrounds her story, which presents her trauma as juicy gossip rather than a sensitive matter and a gross lack of student safeguarding. Her public representative even goes as far as specifying that they need the publicity to win the case because, without it, she would just be another girl who never finds justice.

In summary, Citation gives us an insight into how rape culture even permeates institutions designed to nurture and protect young people, instilling a sentiment of hostility towards its victims and emboldening arrogance for its perpetrators. Though it ends on a high note, with the professor being removed from his position in the school, the victory feels hollow, given how much Moremi was forced to expose herself mentally and emotionally in order to have her voice heard and basic needs met. We’re also left wondering about the absence of justice for other girls and young women whose stories weren’t as high profile.