I Am a Girl from Africa Read online

  I feel a flood of emotions: guilt, sadness, anger. I want to feel happy. I know I should. I know that it was difficult for Baba to tell me these things, but now his words feel like a burden. For so many years, I have not known what to do with this Baba person, from the first time Gogo told me about him to the first time I met him and was unable to utter a word. I thought that he and Amai had left me behind because they didn’t love me enough, but I know from the emotion in Baba’s voice and the way he told this story that they did, and they do.

  I understand that Baba made an incredible sacrifice, leaving everything and everyone he knew and loved behind—his parents, his family, his home, his community, even me—just so that I might survive. I am happy to know the truth, but sad that the world is such that Baba had to make such sacrifices and such choices. I put my hand on Baba’s hand, and for the first time in my life, I can look at my father with love, admiration, and gratitude. I understand how much my father sacrificed for me, and how complicated and difficult his choices were, and that he made those choices not to benefit himself, but out of his great love for me.

  * * *

  My baba’s story wasn’t unique. In the course of my life, I’ve had male role models, like Uncle Sam, who gave me equal opportunities to pursue my dream, and who encouraged me every step of the way. My experience isn’t uncommon, and I wondered what the world would look like if all men played a more active role in creating equality. What if everyone took action?

  When I met Phumzile in her office to discuss my idea, I said, with conviction, “We should use ubuntu as our guiding principle to create an initiative that inclusively engages everyone, especially men and boys, as part of the gender equality movement.” When I saw her face light up, I continued, “Just as we did in Zimbabwe and South Africa, we can harness the spirit of ubuntu to solve for this inequality, to create true solidarity among all genders to work together toward a more gender-equal world. We will call the initiative—HeForShe.”

  After my home country of Zimbabwe was liberated from British colonial rule, we faced a difficult choice: to forgive or to retaliate against those who had oppressed us. Now that the power was rightfully back in our hands, we had every right to chase away all the British people from our country for the years of suffering they had caused us. But we didn’t do that; we chose another way. In the spirit of ubuntu, we forgave the oppressors and worked alongside them to build a new, unified Zimbabwe. No matter how painfully raw our physical and emotional scars felt, we recognized through ubuntu that, just like us, the oppressors were human, and because they were human, we were connected, which meant that any suffering we would cause them would also impact us. By acknowledging our shared humanity, ubuntu brought us closer together as a country and proved to be a useful, restorative tool, a worldview that created stability and peace in the months and years following Zimbabwe’s independence. Yes, we were free, but as with any change, there was a period of adjustment that included the hard work of rebuilding; the residual effects of colonialism are not in any way easy to resolve. During colonialism, our people had been split up into different tribes, and often these tribes spoke different languages, and divisions were created and reinforced by the ruling powers. So, although this was a healing time, it was also a volatile time as people adjusted their mindsets and hearts to these seismic changes. Now that we were an independent country, everyone had to work hard to align with the spirit of ubuntu and commit to putting it into practical action.

  Phumzile shared similar sentiments about the role of ubuntu in rebuilding her home country of South Africa. Only a decade after Zimbabwe’s independence, ubuntu became the rallying call in the fight against apartheid in South Africa, under the leadership of President Nelson Mandela; Phumzile saw this firsthand as a minister in Mandela’s administration. The ubuntu philosophy paved the way for reconstruction, providing much-needed healing for black South Africans as they sought to live and thrive in this new world where they were finally, by law, considered equal to white South Africans. Those essential lessons in ubuntu left Phumzile and me with a strong belief that solidarity was absolutely integral to successfully addressing any inequality. Now we hoped to use it to address gender inequality. I left her office that day feeling exhilarated.

  Phumzile and I may have been united on this, but I struggled to galvanize and secure wholehearted support from UN leadership and some of our external partners. I was not doing what they’d asked me to do in the way they had hoped I would. I was asking them to embrace and accept men as part of the solution, not solely as the source of the problem, and even more so advocating to launch an all-inclusive initiative for gender equality (HeForShe).

  The initiative would raise public awareness online and in communities around the world about the real and harsh challenges faced by women and girls in every country. It would invite and encourage everyone, especially men in those countries, to stand together as allies with women and take small, individual actions on these key issues as part of their personal commitment to HeForShe. The idea hinged on a behavioral science theory, that once men self-identified with gender equality and became aware of the atrocities faced by the women and girls in their own families and communities, they would be more likely to act and inspire others to do the same. However, trying to convince our internal and external partners of this vision proved challenging and sometimes provoked dissent. After all, I was working with UN Women, and there were concerns that including men would detract from the organization’s imperative of empowering women and girls.

  “I am fully aware that women’s empowerment is my priority, and that is precisely the reason we need to engage everyone—men and boys in particular. We will never achieve true equality if the pursuit of it remains a struggle between women and men, where one gender’s gain is another gender’s loss. We need solidarity; we must find an inclusive way to work together.” I provided the rationale behind my strategy and approach over and over again. “If men perpetrate most of gender-based violence, then shouldn’t we engage them to bear the responsibility of not raping women, instead of placing the burden on women to not get raped? Shouldn’t we engage men to say I will not marry a child, instead of expecting young girls to figure out how to escape a child marriage? Shouldn’t men share the responsibility for creating more equitable workplaces, instead of asking women to constantly fight to remove barriers such as the ‘glass ceiling’? If men had access to family-friendly policies, such as parental leave, they could better share the burden of taking care of the home and children or even become the primary caregivers, unburdening women to further pursue their professional dreams.”

  I pushed and pushed, building internal consensus, knowing full well that I could never do this alone, that I needed the support of my colleagues and the organization as a whole—until I finally secured internal approval to move ahead with the initiative’s launch. However, since my approach was quite innovative, it was viewed as risky, and therefore was approved to run for twelve months as an awareness campaign only and thus was not allocated any resources or funding from the organization’s limited budget.

  I was deeply disappointed when Phumzile conveyed this message. I knew I would need a small team in order to fully execute the vision, yet I had not been provided with a budget or resources to launch the initiative, let alone hire a team. Quite simply, I would need to find another way, and I decided that no matter what, I would do just that. I felt grateful for the opportunity to prove the potential power of ubuntu in addressing gender inequality. I quickly thought of creative ways to move forward: I reached out to external stakeholders and secured support; I found creative agencies willing to provide pro-bono work and partners to fund the launch event. I was always on a call, or responding to an email, or making lists of what to do or whom to call or whom I might engage to solve for each arising challenge. Every night when I finally returned to my apartment, I couldn’t stop thinking of ways to make this happen. I lived and breathed HeForShe, never losing my resolve and conviction that this wa
s the right way forward, the approach aligned most with the ubuntu principles that the initiative was meant to embody.

  And today the launch is finally happening. I watch the secretary-general, now finished with his remarks, trade places with Phumzile, who moves behind the podium to deliver her speech to officially launch HeForShe, dressed in an elegant, flowy white African-style floor-length gown with green, red, and orange embroidery zigzagging around the neck and across the chest.

  As Phumzile begins to speak, my heart pounds wildly. The fact is, no matter what happens tonight, one thing is for certain: there’s a great deal at stake, for all of us as an organization. What if the initiative is not well received, given the sensitivity around male engagement in gender equality? What if I am wrong, and this ends up damaging the United Nations’ credibility? How will I be able to live with myself? I feel my confidence begin to fade a bit, but then I remember why I am doing it this way, why I’ve fought so hard for this to happen against all the odds. For our HeForShe initiative to be successful, it must build upon the incredible work of the women’s rights movement, to which I am deeply indebted, but it must also flip the script, engaging all genders to find solutions to the complex issues of gender inequality. It must be innovative enough to disrupt the status quo in order to truly accelerate progress, but do so without upsetting or putting off our core stakeholders and donors who have stood behind this struggle for so long. I feel like I am balanced on a wire between skyscrapers, delicately placing one foot in front of the other, praying I will not fall. When the applause begins after Phumzile finishes her speech, which calls for solidarity and inclusivity in the movement, I sigh audibly with relief.

  Finally, Emma Watson takes center stage to issue a global call to action. In her passionate and carefully delivered speech, she invites men and boys to become advocates for gender equality, reframing the issue from one that is exclusively about women to one that inclusively engages everyone. As she delivers her remarks, the audience is entirely rapt; a pin dropping would make a sound like a tree falling. Her impassioned words captivate the audience, and her speech gets a standing ovation.

  What happens next is a global response that exceeds our wildest dreams. In the first five days following the launch of HeForShe, the initiative goes viral with tens of millions of views online, reaching men and boys from the streets of Mumbai, India, to classrooms in Buenos Aires, Argentina; from garment factories in China to prisons in the United States; from tea plantations in Kenya to rugby fields in New Zealand; and from sleek offices in Japan to grubby police stations in the UK. The response is diverse and inclusive, cutting across all lines of nationality, culture, race, gender, religion, age, ability and occupation, culminating in a remarkable outcome: in just three days, more than one hundred thousand people—with at least one man in every single country in the world—join HeForShe, making a personal commitment to work alongside women for gender equality.

  Supporters take to social media in millions, sharing their thoughts and hopes for a gender-equal world—a phenomenal response that generates more than 1.2 billion conversations across all social media outlets and platforms in the first week alone. When I hear that Twitter has declared HeForShe one of the most catalytic moments of 2014, I feel intensely gratified.

  I immediately recall Gogo’s teachings and my promise to carry her wisdom forward into the world. And now we are witnessing what is possible when we all work together in the spirit of ubuntu; when my colleagues and I embrace the richness of our diverse views and opinions in finding solutions; when all genders work together to accept each other as equals; when our humanity exercises compassion toward one another by acknowledging that what we share is more powerful than what divides us. We had issued a call for compassion to alleviate the suffering experienced by women and girls, and the whole world had responded.

  Those who want the rain, must also accept the mud.

  —Ghanaian proverb

  13

  “What the heck is the United Nations doing? What exactly are you engaging these men to do?” The woman on the other end of the line is clearly upset. This, the first backlash a week after the successful launch of HeForShe, hits me like a smack in the face, even though I’ve been bracing for such a reaction for months. The rapid transformation of HeForShe into a global movement has created a host of new dilemmas for me, not all of them expected.

  “Surely you don’t think that men talking about how they are HeForShe on social media is actually going to create change, do you?” The more she talks, the more heated and intense her voice becomes. I feel a bloom of panic in my chest as she continues, “This is insulting to us feminists. These men must be given direction and concrete actions to take in order to end gender inequality. Why are you giving them so much power when they already have it!” I try to answer, but she is not having it. I have no choice but to sit in my office, stay silent, and listen.

  What I don’t know in this moment is that this phone call is just the beginning of what will become the most challenging phase of my career, a nightmarish period that will leave me questioning absolutely everything about my work and what I’ve struggled so hard to achieve. In the coming weeks, the criticism cuts deep and comes in thick and fast, not only to me, but also to my boss, Phumzile, and the rest of the senior leadership team. I wake up every morning and wonder what irate emails and phone calls I might receive that day, and how I will respond diplomatically. The critique is wide-ranging: I am accused of being “naïve” for thinking that men actually care about making things equal for women and girls; my feminist values and credibility are both called into question; my ideas are considered “too disruptive.” Despite the overall positive press, when a few harsh comments from journalists and media outlets hit the news, I feel myself beginning to tense up with doubt, even though deep down, I still hold to my conviction that true and sustained equality will only be possible if everyone is involved and works together to create change.

  Proving this to everyone else will become the most important endeavor of my career so far. Our external stakeholders want results from men, and they want them now. I am equally impatient for progress, but I also recognize that transformative change cannot happen overnight—especially on an issue as complex and multifaceted as gender inequality, which has remained unresolved for centuries. Yet the pressure continues to rise, like water on the boil, together with demands that I create measurable change overnight.

  When I am summoned to a HeForShe crisis meeting with UN senior members, I am nervous, but also fully prepared to address their concerns. I share with them the positive feedback from literally thousands of supporters who tell me how they are beginning to understand gender equality in ways they had never considered before. In the letters of solidarity and support, men write that the awakening feels as if the scales have fallen from their eyes, creating a “click” moment that allows them to finally see things from a different perspective, a new vantage point that demands real and lasting shifts in their behavior toward other genders. I know that the first step to creating change is for people to personally identify with the issues—to be invested in the problems at stake and the possible solutions. I share some of the messages I’ve received:

  I thought gender equality was just a women’s issue before, but now I understand that it is my issue too.

  I believe in gender equality. I believe that my sisters should have the same opportunities as me. I just didn’t know how to get involved, but now I do.

  I have always been a feminist—in support of gender equality. But at some point, I got tired of all the male-bashing, of being made to feel guilty for the sins of other men, and so I just disengaged from the conversation. It’s great to see this positive and inclusive approach, which makes me feel more welcome, like I can be part of the gender equality movement again.

  I also read out loud an unexpected and deeply moving letter from a man serving a sentence at a maximum-security prison in New York City:

  Two weeks ago, I was sitting in priso
n watching television, when I saw Emma Watson deliver the HeForShe speech at the United Nations mentioning that gender equality should liberate all of us and that “… If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted, women won’t feel compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled. Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong.” I found myself in these words and for the first time in my adult life I broke down and cried. Thank you for setting me free. While I remain consumed with loneliness in my small prison cell, I feel free.

  At the bottom of his letter, he drew a bird flying out of a cage—a metaphor of how the movement had liberated him. When I received this letter, I got chills up and down my spine. His story reinforced my firm belief that transformation and positive change are possible, no matter our circumstances.

  * * *

  The leadership team is impressed and moved by the stories, but they insist that this must translate into tangible change in communities. This is a relief to me, as I have proof of change sparking all over the world. I tell them about men in Kenya standing up against gender violence; about students in India, France, the UK, and the US uniting to address the rape culture on college campuses; about a man in my home country of Zimbabwe who started a “husband school” to teach other men in his village how to become better husbands and fathers. These individuals are taking visible and concrete action for equality within their communities, as part of their personal HeForShe commitment, as part of their pledge.