"I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah," a man claiming to be Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau said in a video first obtained by Agence France-Presse.
"There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell. He commands me to sell. I will sell women. I sell women.”
These are the chilling words of a Nigerian man who is part of a group that allegedly abducted more than 200 Nigerian School girls. The words used by the man on a video are indicative of the horrors facing the abducted school girls in the biggest country in Africa. As the Minister of Social Development in South Africa, where we also face unacceptable levels of violence against women and children, I call on the international community, the African Union and the Nigerian Government to do whatever it can to liberate these girls from such modern day slavery and, to bring the perpetrators to book.
It is unacceptable that in the 21st Century, that women and girls are still treated as subjects to be bought and sold, in an environment that as the alleged abductor implies facilitates the buying and selling of women and girls. While our immediate concerns are with the terrified young girls and their families we need to tackle the underlying factors that sustain these kinds of crimes.
The idea that girls and women are sexual objects, or, only there to be married off to men, is core to the ideology of male superiority, an ideology nurtured by religious and cultural belief systems throughout Africa and the world. While we need to ensure the safe and speedy return of all the abducted girls, we need to work with the AU and all the governments in our continent to commit ourselves to the fundamental emancipation of women. Women and girls will only be safe and free when there is universal acceptance that women are and should be in control of their own lives including in control of their bodies.
As long we treat the issue of women’s bodily integrity as relative to culture or religion and not a fundamental right, this oppression of women will continue. Women and girls, must have the ability to exercise their rights to education, to decide when to have sex, with whom to have sex, when they want children, how many children they want to have or not have, with whom they want to marry, or to marry at all.
These issues are all linked to the sexual and reproductive health and rights of all women and girls, fundamental human rights, that are denied to women across Africa and the world as men still seek to control the bodies and lives of women.
As a Minister of Social Development in South Africa, I will work with my colleagues here and across the continent to ensure that we work to protect all Africans from violence and discrimination, irrespective of their race, gender, sex, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gendered identities. Whenever we seek to make exceptions for any of our people to be protected from violence and discrimination we actually create the space for the kinds of horrors being visited on the girls in Nigeria.
Now is the time to mobilise governments, civil society and other stakeholders to stop this war on women and girls and to fight for an Africa that respects the rights of all people without distinction.
For more information contact:
Lumka Oliphant
Cell: 083 484 8067
