(Winner of First Prize, Dean's Essay Award, Faculty of Law University of Pretoria South Africa)
I’ve always believed that there
is great value in education, particularly higher education which is a privilege
granted only to a lucky few. I don’t value my legal education for the monetary
gains or prestige that it can bring but rather, for the skills it has equipped
me with to make a career out of ‘making a difference’ as well as the lessons it has taught me about
life, love, sexuality, spirituality, relationships, family, careers and human
behaviour.
After roughly two years of
seemingly never-ending masters and scholarship applications and taking the time
to get some ‘real world’ experience, I was finally set to embark on my 1-year
LLM journey. While my real world experience provided me with a great deal of perspective and
insight into where I see myself in the near future, the last ten months have had
the most profound impact on me in a way that I could not have possibly
imagined.
Never
in my life have I experienced anything as academically stimulating, highly
demanding and mentally-challenging as this academic programme. I knew doing a
masters degree would be tough but I must have taken for granted just how much.
After the intensity of the first semester subsided and we made it through relatively
unscathed, I had time to reflect on the half-year that was and revisit some of
the hobbies I’d neglected in order to get through it. It’s been exceptionally
taxing but I
wouldn’t trade this experience for anything because it’s helped me reshape my
professional and personal goals and understand exactly what I’d like my legacy
to be.
Last year, I started two blogs:
one on fashion and the other on the theme of identity, but more specifically on
how growing up away from my ancestral culture has affected my developing a
sense of identity in my teens and early adulthood. I was born in the UK to
Zambian parents, I hold a Zambian passport and have spent my formative years
between Australia, Swaziland, Zambia and South Africa (where I’ve completed the
bulk of my education and have been permanently resident for the past ten years
or so).It’s not a particularly novel thing to go through a bit of an identity
crisis when you’ve spent a significant portion of your developmental years
outside your country of origin but it’s a subject that’s very personal to me
and, as I came to discover, something that affects many people across the world.
A surprising consequence of my LLM studies is that I’ve once again become
hyper-aware of my cultural identity (or lack thereof). In a programme that
emphasises acquiring skills and knowledge to improve the human rights situation
in one’s ‘home’ country, feeling like I don’t have a home makes for great
opportunity to learn from my classmates but at the same time makes me feel
disconnected from my passport country and the African continent generally.
My
classmates and I introduced ourselves countless times while attending short
courses, lectures and some special events. The introductions been rather exhausting
for the entire class but I came to regard the exercise as a bit of anathema because
I was constantly confronted with a question that I do not particularly enjoy
answering: ‘where do you come from?’ Initially, I would give my go-to responses:
‘I’m Zambian but I live in South Africa’ or ‘I’m ‘originally’ Zambian’ but five
introductory speeches in, I grew tired of adding the qualification to my answer
and would simply respond ‘I’m Zambian.’ I would then pray to my creator that I
wouldn’t be called upon to educate the class about the political, legal or
human rights situation in Zambia of which I had very limited knowledge when I
first started the programme. It may seem strange or even comical that a
question as simple as ‘any Zambians in the class?’ could make my palms clammy
and my heart start racing for fear of being exposed as a ‘fake’ Zambian but it made
me incredibly anxious until I decided to steer into the skid and focus on my studies.
The wonderful thing
about human rights issues is that they affect all people the world over
regardless of background, age, race, status, religious affiliation or
orientation. Moreover, there are so many different capacities in which every
person on the planet can contribute to the advancement of human rights. I
believe this is what drew me to the field in the first place, especially being
someone who comes from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
Linked to my identity, for the
longest time the ‘feminist’ label bothered me immensely. The programme has,
however, led to a change within me and I now where the badge with great pride. While
I’m more inclined to the business and human rights side of things - a passion
which the programme helped me nurture through clinic work, a short course and
my dissertation - I developed a deep interest in women’s rights advocacy. Two
or three years ago, if someone had asked me if I consider myself a feminist I
would most likely have said no. Painfully ironic considering I strongly believe
in equal rights and opportunities for all people, staunchly advocate women’s
empowerment and fiercely defend women’s rights. I’m ashamed to admit that I
naively bought into ridiculous feminist stereotypes of the radical, man-hating,
bra-burning, perpetual spinsters and felt unworthy to put myself in the same
class as distinguished and seemingly elitist Germaine Greer-type feminist
scholars and philosophers. But I believe I rejected the label primarily because
I used to be uncomfortable with the inherently divisive nature of labelling
people. This discomfort also stems from my inability to develop a firm grasp on
a linguistic and cultural identity connected to my country of origin.
My opinions on feminism were
altered during the thematic week on Gender, particularly when I attended a
lecture delivered by Professor Sylvia Tamale. I immediately took a liking to
her. It’s incredible how another human being can make such an impression on you
at your first-ever meeting but this is the effect Prof. Tamale had on me and
part of the reason I chose Makerere University as my second semester
destination. As a Zambian woman who has lived amongst a range of different
cultural groupings for most of her life but whose parents continually imbued
her with some of their cultural values and did not wholly abandon many of their
cultures’ practices, I straddle different sides like many African women my age.
I try as much as possible to harmonise all facets of my cultural identity but
they are often at odds with each other. In some measure, Prof. Tamale’s teaching
and writings taught me that I don’t necessarily have to break one down in
favour of the other as they are all-encompassing of my identity. I had the
privilege of attending her inaugural lecture, Nudity, Protests and the Law, in which she reflected upon the internal
moral dilemmas she wrestled with when her friend and colleague Dr. Stella
Nyanzi carried out a nude protest earlier this year. Her openness and honesty about
fighting to retain her feminist identity in the wake of such a shocking event
so close to home and what it said about the objectification and sexualisation
of the female form further ignited my new-found passion for feminist
activism.
I now realise that it is
incumbent upon me as an African human rights defender from a privileged background
to become actively involved in combating the many injustices that myself and my
sisters on the continent face daily. Not only will I be doing this in my
professional life but in my creative endeavours as well. Blogging is my art and
a medium through which I have found my voice. I’ve truly been inspired by our
lectures on art and human rights taught by
the quirky Marissa Gutièrrez and those on human rights advocacy by the
brilliant Professor Liz Griffin to transform my blogging into a platform for pushing
my activist agenda. My fashion blog has already been a platform for me to
discuss a variety of subjects including history, race, art, sexuality, culture
and feminism to some extent. I have come up with a variety of new pieces and
ideas for both of my blogs, stimulated by my LLM studies, for my audience to
enjoy, be inspired by and reflect critically on pressing human rights issues. I
will continue in this spirit going forward.
It’s a bittersweet moment for
me as my long and difficult LLM journey comes to an end but it’s been the most
enriching experience, allowing me to forge wonderful friendships, hone important
professional skills, travel and learn two new languages. Most importantly, the
programme has helped me discover the identity I’ve been searching for since adolescence.
I’m no longer afraid to label myself. I’m Zambian, African, feminist, activist,
blogger and significantly, I’m a graduate of the LLM in HRDA programme 2016.
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