We need a review on Forgetten Velvine Case

 

Disclaimer:  The conversation you are about to join in has the capability of rubbing you the wrong and probably flaring some emotions that you are not ready to deal with at the moment,  so  I  would recommend if you're not feeling up to the task of continuing with this conversation to just stop right here.

On March  9th  2021,  Velvine  Nungari  Kinyanjui succumbed while undergoing treatment at  Kenyatta University  Teaching and  Referral  Hospital. Her death came  13  days after being raped and assaulted,  a situation that left her with her spine broken in  3  places. After her death the  #JusticeForVelvine started trending online,  with people providing a  voice for the late  Velvine,  calling for the  DCI to bring the alleged perpetrator to justice,  days later the alleged abuse was released on bail and people voiced their frustrations on the matter.  Disappointingly,  everything seems to have gone silent at the moment,  with the hashtag not having a  lot of traction at the moment and worse of it all, the matter was overshadowed by the rise of the gender war shit storm that took over right after the dismissal of Shaffie  Weru, Neville Musya and  DJ  Joe  Mfalme from  Homeboyz radio. And here lies inherently the underlying problem to the entire situation and how we as  Kenyans handled it. 

The problem.

This has been a  constant pattern when it comes to addressing  Gender-Based Violence  (GBV), it ends up being a  gender war and after all, is said and done, the narrative dies and we all go silent and forget about it waiting for another day in the year or the following year for when such a case arises again and we raise our voices again calling for justice for the victim for another three weeks and then forget about the entire situation all over again. Rinse and repeat.  

During my research on how we as a  people ended up in this situation, I found an interesting article on The  Elephant by  Sitawa  Namwalie where she tries to provide the answers to the question on what it is like being a  Kenyan woman living in Kenya and being a  mother with a  Kenya daughter.  The article rightfully titled  The  Murder of  Women in Kenya and the  Psychology of Blame,  she cites a  paper published in 2003  by Brett  Shadle entitled  Rape in the courts of Gusiiland, Kenya, the 1940s-1960s where she finds a  paragraph that almost rives her to tears and restores her faith on the old  African society on her it treated women.  It reads:  

“Court elders, and later magistrates,  punished rapists harshly,  in absolute terms and relative to crimes such as elopement.  The courts’  conception of the crime was also strikingly  “modern”:  elders and magistrates traded rape as an offence against a woman as opposed to one against her male guardian. Perhaps most fascinating are cases in which an accused man claimed to have had consensual sex with his accuser.  Unlike their contemporaries in Western and in Kenya’s  British-run courts,  Gusii elders did not expect a  woman to prove that she had not consented to sex:  instead,  they demanded that the accused prove that she had consented. The record of these decisions complicates the notion of a progression away from a  deeply rooted,  deeply conservative patriarchal culture.  In  the  absence  of comprehensive  historical studies of rape  in  Kenya(and  indeed  in most  of  Africa),  this article  suggests a different  context  in  which  to  place  contemporary  debates  surrounding  sexual  violence,  and  also  offers another dimension  to  the  historiography  of gender  and  the  law  in colonial Africa.”  

 She goes on to point out victim-blaming and how it has taken over society, its purpose and how it works. Sitawa Namwalie’s article was the only of its kind that  I found compelling and well researched and  I will have it linked down below at the end of this article. 

Having read that and getting my hands on the paper something struck me and  I intended to get to the bottom of it,  and after hours of intensive research and hitting walls after walls after walls, the more that passage started making sense, even more,  there is lack of accessible and comprehensive historical data on cases brought forward on sexual assault by victims, this is where  I, in turn, discovered that since  2006 when the amendment of the  Sexual violence laws was passed,  the rise in femicide cases have risen exponentially and  I have every reason to believe that it might be tied into the  2003  article,  he was right, it is hard for the accused to prove that she had consented but it is even harder for the accuser to prove there was no consent when they are no longer alive.  The only data that came close to what  I was looking for was one that  I found on a  Facebook age under the name  Counting  Dead Women-Kenya,  they have been keeping record since  2019  which had a  total of 108  women killed and the recent updates for this year read that in the last three months there have been  33  women killed in  2021.   

On that  very  low  note,  I feel and  believe  that  the  problem  lies  inherently  deeper  than  we  all  think  and  I intend  to  lay  it  all  down for you: 

• On top of this list,  is the number one worldwide culprit;  religion. Before you go on a  tangent, hear me out,  this is not about a specific religion, but mainly monotheistic religions and their teaching on women as objects and property, beings whose only existence is to serve the man and that the man is the head and he takes what he deems his. 
• “Familial  loyalty.”:  This has been a  thing with most  African families,  they share what I refer to as toxic loyalty to one another.  By that  I  mean,  the family will protect the rapist and lynch the boy/girl who is anything else but heterosexual.  Families will protect  the  father, brother,  cousin, uncle, a nephew  who  will  be  accused  of having  sexually  assaulted a female  or  male  relative  and they  will secretly  be  swept  under  the rag and  if  you  try  to  bring  it  up, the  victim  will be demonized for  “beating  a  dead horse” and  “digging  up  shit.”  Yet  parents  will raise  hell when they hear you  are  out  in  the  dead  of night  or  with a boy  or  even dream  of  you  being  in any proximity  to  a  male  figure  your age  blaming  it  on  that  “You  know  all boys  think  about  is sex.”  A message to all parents, the demons you first need to protect your child from are the ones you have been defending and ignoring their existence and you call them family. DO  NOT  BE  A RAPIST APOLOGIST  IN  THE  NAME  OF “LOYALTY”  TO  FAMILY!!! 
• “Boys being boys” defence:  On  13th  July  1991,  71  girls were raped and  19killed at  St.Kizito school after the girls refused to participate in a strike organized by the boys. A  statement by the deputy principal then, Joyce  Kithira said  “The boys never meant any harm. They  just  wanted  to  rape.”  In the same  paper  by  Brett  Shadle, another passage reads: 

  “After much debate, in June 2006  the Kenya parliament approved  the Sexual Offenses  Bill,  the first  such  overhaul of the law since 1930.  The bill  introduced  into the penal code new  crimes  (such  as  gang  rape)  and  minimum sentences  for  sex  crimes. On  the broadest  level there  was  no vocal opposition, although  a comment by  one male  MP  (to the effect that  Kenyan  women always  say  “no”  even  when they mean “yes”)  led  to a walkout  by female  parliamentarians. Some  early  supporters  of the bill argued that  the final version  had  been  too  watered-down (the criminalization  of  female circumcision  and  of  rape in  marriage, for  example, were dropped).  Nonetheless,  the bill’s sponsor, nominated  MP  Njoki Ndung’u, celebrated  its  passage as  a  major  victory.  With the passage of the  bill, the problem  of sexual violence  entered center  stage in  Kenyan  public discourse. Opinion  coalesced  around  the conclusion  that  rape is  in  fact  a  serious  and  growing problem  and  has  to be dealt  with  severely.  Njoki  Ndung’u  herself  was  declared  “Person of  the Year”  by the  U.N. in  Kenya.  Issues  such  as  child  and  wife abuse,  and  the  treatment  of victims  by police and  the courts,  are now openly  discussed.  Police, medical personnel, and  judicial officials are being  trained in  how  to  deal with  cases  of  sexual violence. In  contrast,  only  fifteen years before,  the mass  rape of  seventy-one girls  at  St.  Kizito  Secondary  School in  Meru  by their  male classmates  was  dismissed  by many as a case of  “boys  being  boys”  (Steeves  1997).” 

 This defence has been on the frontline of enabling men on them not taking accountability for their actions. 

•  The Penal System of  Kenya:  Before  I continue,  I feel it is necessary that I  say this,  I am not a lawyer, so this is no legal advice or anything of that nature. The minimum time a  person charged with sexual abuse can serve is five years to a  maximum of a  lifetime and if you have loaded pockets,  friends in high places and or you are highly influential that is cut down to a  slap on the wrist and zero to no years.  THIS IS  NOTHING CLOSE TO  ENOUGH  TIME. A  victim has to deal with years of trauma that even with years of therapy,  it will affect different aspects of their lives including but not limited to relationships;  both familial, professional and romantic, personality, self-esteem,  they develop self-image problems and on top of that recurring and haunting nightmares.   

Solutions?

Death,  life imprisonment does not constitute as enough punishment to the amount of life-altering trauma sexual assault victims will have to face and deal with for what probably might end up being the rest of their life.  This doesn’t even tackle the situation where the victim dies or ends up taking their own lives because of the shame and guilt they will be feeling because they know the moment they talk they will be blamed and nobody will probably believe them. This doesn’t even address the situation where the victim gets pregnant and ends up resenting that child because to her that baby is born of sin and she will probably for the rest of that child’s life,  he or she will be punished for a crime they did not commit.   

I do not think or even believe that there will ever be a  punishment powerful or even impactful enough to come close to providing justice for our women. 

Our women are scared of us, yet we are meant to be protectors but they have suffered in the hands of our kind that it has destroyed any shreds of trust left. How are we supposed to protect and defend people who are afraid of us?  The  “not all men”  does not suffice,  a  man who uses that as an argument during a conversation of similar nature only makes the women not trust you even more,  it is time we retire that phrase. Women already know that it is not every man,  what they do not know is which man is decent enough to be trusted.   

If we want justice and equality for women,  both men and women need to come together and stand as one and speak with one voice,  set aside the gender war and help each other to fight for each other rights.  Men will never get equality and the much-needed understanding until women achieve equality, and women shall never achieve equality until men stand with the women.  Until we set aside our differences and avoid turning everything into a  gender war then they will both achieve what they desire. Both sides are neither wrong nor right,  both men and women need to stand together to get justice for everyone. Alas,  that will remain to be nothing but a  dream.   

 

Stay sane. Stay safe. Hydrate.