South African author and journalist Mark Gevisser and Daily Maverick journalist and author Rebecca Davis. (Photos supplied)
In his latest offering, one of South Africa’s leading narrative non-fiction writers, Mark Gevisser, traces ‘pink lines’ of gender identity and sexuality, delving into the often divergent lived experiences of queer people around the world.
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Journalist, filmmaker and author Mark Gevisser’s latest book, The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World’s Queer Frontiers, explores global issues of sexuality and gender identity through the stories of nine protagonists with different lived experiences of being queer.
During a webinar hosted by Daily Maverick journalist and author Rebecca Davis on Wednesday 12 August, she described the book as “nothing short of a global survey of the current status-quo for LGBT (plus) people” but also felt this was a limited summary of Gevisser’s work, which tackles an extremely complex and nuanced subject.
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Gevisser is the author of five books, most notably the award-winning Thabo Mbeki: A Dream Deferred, and Lost and Found in Johannesburg: A Memoir. Based in Cape Town, he’s a frequent contributor to The Guardian, Granta and The New York Times. In 1990, he helped organise South Africa’s first Pride March and ever since has worked on queer themes as a journalist, filmmaker and curator.
He writes in his book: “I witnessed a troubling new global equation come into play: while same-sex marriage and gender transition were now celebrated in some parts of the world as signs of humanity in progress, laws were being strengthened to criminalise such actions in others.”
This paradox, where queerness acts as both a unifier and divider is evident in Tiwonge Chimbalanga’s tale. The Malawian transgender woman was arrested for her engagement to a man, Steven Monjeza in 2009 and later fled to South Africa, which markets itself as “the gay capital of Africa” and is the first country on the continent to legalise same-sex marriage.
But even within South Africa, the paradox exists. Davis and Gevisser discussed the “gulf” between South Africa’s queer-friendly Constitution and the lived reality of the community.
“Research shows that the vast majority of South Africans believe that LGBT (plus) people have rights and that these rights should be respected. But there’s only a very tiny majority who believe that homosexuality is acceptable, There’s a gap between what we feel in our hearts and what we accept as rights,” he said.
Violent reactions to queerness like punitive rape and other forms of abuse are common-place in some areas. Gevisser framed this as a backlash to the “space” which queer youths have claimed for themselves in society.
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“By claiming this space, they are challenging age-old norms and [heteronormative] power systems… systems of patriarchy.”
On terminology, Gevisser explained why he used the once contemptuous term “queer” in his book, to package the discourse around the LGBT+ community.
“I like the word queer because of its double-valence,” said Gevisser, reading an excerpt from the book. “As well as having been reappropriated by people across the world to describe themselves, queer means different or skewed: to see things from a ‘queer perspective’ is to look at the world askance, to see it afresh.”
In some instances, the evolution of the term “queer” has been likened to that of the N-word and its use by African Americans, most notably in rap culture.
His book delves into deeper complexities, like ideas of queerness being a Western phenomenon, the struggle for transgender rights, the role of religion and the church in anti-queer discourse, the notion of gender as a spectrum rather than a fixed binary and how digital technology and social media has opened up a global queer community.
“This book is primarily a collection of stories… with very singular protagonists making very personal decisions, in very specific places. These people drive their own stories ; the rest of us – activists and policymakers, scholars and scribes and readers – try to catch up,” wrote Gevisser. DM
ILLINOIS, United States, Aug 12 2020 (IPS) – Recently, the UK contributed £17 million to support the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to continue their efforts to combat the desert locust surge in East Africa and improve early warning and forecasting systems.
Because of contributions like this and other contributions that have been made by countries including Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United States of America and other funders such as the African Development Bank, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, substantial gains have been made in containing the desert locust.
Given that desert locust outbreaks and other insect related invasions are to be expected in the future, in part because of climate change, there is need for countries affected to use the funds to work with organizations such as FAO and other stakeholders that are in the frontlines in addressing insect-related challenges such as the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology and the Entomological Society of America.
In dealing with insect-related challenges, it is clear that many African countries continue to take a reactive rather than a proactive approach and that needs to change
They must craft both short-term and long-term approaches to manage insect pests that affect food crops, causing significant crop losses to farmers while threatening food security and agriculture.
Over and over, in dealing with insect-related challenges, it is clear that many African countries continue to take a reactive rather than a proactive approach and that needs to change.
For example, in dealing with the fall armyworm, an invasive pest that appeared in Africa in 2016 and spread rapidly, causing losses worth millions of dollars, several countries including Malawi, Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria rolled out measures to contain the pest only after it had spread.
Instead, strategically, it would benefit countries if they would use available resources and tools such as satellite data, big data, intelligence generated by predictive modelling and other tools such as the Horizon Scanning Tool, to anticipate and prepare for insect and pest related challenges.
FAO continues to rely on data to produce forecasts and early warning alerts for the desert locust and other invasive pests such as the fall armyworm. Time is ripe to use intelligence derived from data and predictive modelling to anticipate future insect outbreaks. Doing so will allow African countries to stay ahead.
A man beating a bush with a stick to show desert locusts swarming near Fada, Chad. FAO toolbox shows how prevention, early warning and preparedness can help control desert locust and other trans-boundary threats. Photo: FAO
Accompanying data-based intelligence is the need for African countries to strengthen in country pest surveillance programs. Agriculture is a source of livelihood for over 70 percent of Africa’s population. As such, countries must safeguard agriculture by having national pest surveillance programs that are tasked with carrying out routine pest surveys and identifying and detecting new insect pests including those deemed to be invasive.
It is key for national governments to have functional agricultural pest detection systems. The good news is that there are many guiding documents that countries can tap into as they formulate their pest surveillance programs, such as the guidelines provided by the International Plant Protection Convention.
Importantly, countries must also invest in ways to share information about detected insects and the appropriate sustainable solutions to manage them. The use of mobile phones and radio are one approach that can be utilized to widely disseminate information about impending insect pest outbreaks. Moreover, keeping citizens and other stakeholders that are keen on tackling insect pest challenges can also benefit from organized meetings, workshops and conferences.
Finally, there is need to invest in long term actions, including investing in research and the training and capacity building, to ensure that African countries have the expertise and capacity to combat insect pests, now and into the future.
Insect-pest related challenges will continue to challenge African agriculture. African countries must use the available tools to anticipate, prepare and stay ahead of the next pest-related challenge. Ensuring food security for all, especially in Africa, will depend on how we harness data and available intelligence to stay ahead of insect pests including staying ahead of the next desert locust outbreak.
Dr. Esther Ngumbi is an Assistant Professor at the Entomology Department and African American Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She is a Senior Food security fellow with the Aspen Institute.
LONDON, Aug 11 2020 (IPS) – “With advertisements removed in Grenoble you can see the city’s beauty and the mountains beyond. Adverts create obstacles. Without them you can breathe,” explains Khaled Gaiji, national mobilisation coordinator of the French anti-advertising organisation Résistance à l’Agression Publicitaire (Resistance to Advertising Aggression, or RAP). “Advertising is like an iceberg: the largest impact is below the surface. Adverts colonise our imagination.”
In 2014 Grenoble’s then newly-appointed Green mayor Éric Piolle cancelled a contract for 326 outdoor advertisements, including 64 large billboards. Trees and community noticeboards replaced them – or nothing at all. The lost revenue was recouped by reducing allowances, including official vehicles. Despite Piolle’s attempts to make Grenoble Europe’s first ad-free city, bus and tram stops still have adverts, as the contract is controlled by the regional authority.
But that hasn’t stopped the ad-free fervour from spreading across France. There are 29 RAP groups across the country, up from five in 2016. They work autonomously with tactics including pressuring politicians like the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, who paused plans for new digital advertising boards on the city’s streets. To halt this RAP encouraged people to participate in a public consultation.
Ninety-five per cent of over 2000 participants were against the new digital ads. Their reasons speak to why people are resisting outdoor advertising the world over: their negative ecological impact, including the way they drive consumption, as well as the fact that they are invasive, obtrusive and omnipresent.
Outdoor adverts are not consensual: “I can avoid ads in magazines or online. But if I’m walking my baby to the park or if I just want some quiet time outside, I don’t want to be told to buy fast food, fast fashion or cars. However, I can’t avoid these ads on billboards.”
Nationally, RAP co-organised a petition, with other organisations, which collected 60,000 signatures that pressured then finance minister Emmanuel Macron, in 2016, to stop plans to spread advertisements across France’s small towns and villages. In Lyon, 150 activists from RAP protested in March 2018 and 2019 in support of global anti-advertising action, while in October 2019 200 activists marched there in solidarity with ‘Alex’, a RAP participant who went to court for his part in covering advertising spaces in posters. His case is adjourned until June 2020.
Gaiji, who is also president of Friends of the Earth France, says: “Grenoble stopping the advance of advertisements shows that we have a choice. It is like when people ask what has 50 years of environmental activism achieved? But imagine how bad thing would be if [we hadn’t done anything]. We say: ‘Action is life, silence is death’”.
The anti-advertising movement is loud in France, but it has roots further afield. In 2006, São Paulo became the first place in the world to ban outdoor advertising. Then mayor Gilberto Kassab described it as ‘visual pollution’. Within a year, 15,000 billboards were down, along with 300,000 large store signs, in south America’s largest megacity. Cities in India including New Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai have all restricted outdoor advertising. For ten days in 2015, Tehran replaced all advertising with art.
Britain’s anti-advertising clamour rises
The south-west English city of Bristol hosted the UK’s first national anti-advertising conference on 26 October 2019. Organised by Adblock Bristol, it attracted people from across the British Isles, including members of Adblock Cardiff, which was set up in Wales last year. Attendees from the UK’s second largest city of Birmingham set up their own group after the conference.
“Our big focus is challenging new planning applications for digital billboards, where the industry is expanding. Working with local communities we have stopped 18 new digital screens in Bristol and have successfully lobbied to have some old static billboards removed,” explains Nicola Round from Adblock Bristol.
Round explains that outdoor adverts are not consensual: “I can avoid ads in magazines or online. But if I’m walking my baby to the park or if I just want some quiet time outside, I don’t want to be told to buy fast food, fast fashion or cars. However, I can’t avoid these ads on billboards.”
The conference showcased other successes: lobbying against Bristol council’s plans to extend advertising into green spaces; working with local communities and art projects to showcase alternatives and covering adverts with paper for a day to let people express themselves.
One workshop explored how advertising drives sexism. “Advertising featuring sexualised images of perfect bodies not only encourages us to objectify and dehumanise the women pictured, it trains us to objectify all women,” Sophie Pritchard who co-ran the workshop explains. She is from TIGER (Teaching Individuals Gender Equality and Respect), a local grassroots co-operative working with young people.
“Advertising often presents women as submissive, as possessions to fulfil the needs of men, and men are shown as strong and dominant. These are the core beliefs underpinning domestic abuse,” Pritchard explains, citing numerous studies that have shown that way in which sexualised advertising drives body shaming, mental health problems and misogyny.
Overall, swathes of studies link advertising with selling unhappiness, making us want things we do not need. Fighting against this, different campaigns worldwide focus on limiting specific adverts. Singapore has banned unhealthy food and drinks promotion, including on billboards, going further than similar moves in Mexico, the United Kingdom and Canada. Paris in March 2017 followed Geneva and London to ban sexist and homophobic adverts. In 2005, World Health Organization rules banned all tobacco advertising for its 168 signatories; but investigative research by the Guardian shows that big tobacco still targets children in at least 23 countries of the Global South.
The climate emergency also amplifies another argument against advertising.
“Bristol was the first UK council to declare a climate emergency, so it makes no sense to then install new digital advert screens,” Round explains. “We know from planning applications that a double-sided digital bus advertisement uses the same annual energy as four households. So imagine the big ones, let alone the environmental impact of the over-consumption encouraged by these advertising boards.”
Adblock Bristol has mapped how advertisers target the city’s major roads, noting that areas with the most billboards suffer the highest air pollution. Anti-advert campaigners also want to raise broader questions about environmental justice: why should impoverished areas suffering the worst air pollution – largely due to traffic – host adverts for cars out of the price range of many local people? In the end, selling more cars to motorists stuck in traffic jams only worsens air quality and the climate disaster.
Reclaiming the public visual realm
The Bristol conference featured a ‘subvertising’ workshop – a term that refers to replacing or altering billboard images with art. Early subvertising campaigns started as early as 1973 in Australia, focusing on tobacco. More recently, carbon intense industries have been targeted, including adding cigarette-style warnings to car adverts.
“We set out to subvert the dominant narrative forced onto us by corporate advertising. It is important to reclaim the public visual realm – especially when we are being straight up lied to, as is the case with widely used greenwashing,” explains Michelle Tylicki, an artist who has collaborated with subvertisers.
Her work has included making a spoof film poster about the UK fracking firm Cuadrilla – in the style of the horror movie Godzilla. Fracking in the UK has now been suspended following years of pressure from campaigners.
Tylicki also made a poster series that was displayed during 2018’s climate negotiations in Poland. “[It was] to challenge the greenwashing and ‘business as usual’. At this summit it was decided that they will ignore the key 1.5 degrees IPCC report. This shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the ‘climate summit’ was sponsored by Polish coal companies.”
During the summit, the right to protest was severely restricted. One of her billboards (in Polish) read: “Belchatow power station emits more CO2 than is absorbed by all Polish forests. Poland, business as usual. High time for climate justice.”
She tells Equal Times: “Coal still provides 1/3 of electric power in the world. Current CO2 emissions cause 45,000 premature deaths in Poland each year. It is a beastly industry that will continue to walk over dead bodies for profit – unless we challenge it.”
The subvertising movement aims to end the monopoly corporations increasingly have over public space. It organises skill-shares so that more people can democratise their cities and towns.
One reported impact of removing billboards in São Paulo was that it revealed vistas of the impoverished areas that existed behind them. Anti-advertising projects around the world tend to focus on valuing these areas rather than dismissing them as mere ‘slums’. These projects also help us imagine how all cities could be without adverts.
In Mumbai, the NGO Chal Rang De (Let’s Go Paint) has painted houses made from corrugated iron in bright colours. Similarly, the council in Medellín, Columbia’s second city, has transformed severely impoverished neighbourhoods, suffering violence from the drugs trade, by daubing the walls with murals and providing amenities, services and hope. Likewise, in Ghanaian capital city of Accra, artist Mohammed Awudu is guiding young people to turn the informal settlement of Nima into an art city.
Round chaired the conference’s closing session on what should replace corporate advertisements. This, she says, should be up to the local communities. “In Bristol some say more art, like the Burg Arts Project, a rolling series of art by local artists and the local community. Primarily we would like to see advertising gone, perhaps to reveal beautiful buildings. Other communities might want to plant and rewild, or paint murals. There are many ways communities could take this.”
Prof. Azza Karam is Secretary General, Religions for Peace International
Religions for Peace Interreligious Council of Albania distributing Covid relief supplies from the Multi-religious Humanitarian Fund. Credit: Erzen Carja
NEW YORK, Aug 4 2020 (IPS) – — I have never been interested in religion or spirituality before, but I found myself tuning in to all sorts of on-line religion and spirituality related forums “in search of something.”
These are the words of a 30-something single young, middle class man (born into a Protestant-Catholic family background) in a European country.
The latter is known more for turning several churches into museums or shopping centers, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. When people are afraid, lonely and alone – they tend to seek “something” beyond science.
A quarter of Americans say their faith has become stronger because of the pandemic, according to a Pew survey conducted during April 20-26, 2020, of 10,139 U.S. adults.
But this is to be contrasted with the experiences of those from an older generation (60+) in the southern hemisphere, like my own 85-year old Muslim father, who lives to pray. For him, the mosque has, over the last decade since my mother’s death, become both his spiritual hub and social club.
His cohort is differing ages of retirees, who, in spite of very different political perspectives in a Middle Eastern country reflecting the now normal of intense polarization, treasure their prayerful community spaces. This middle class (an endangered species to be sure) of retirees, share a sense of deep faith informing their social and political convictions.
For many of them, the lockdown was experienced primarily s an inability to go to the mosque, and thus as almost physically painful. None of them countenanced the idea of on-line prayers, that doesn’t make any sense, they maintained. Their sense of depression was almost palpable throughout the lockdown period, as was their joy at the reopening of some mosques.
The coronavirus presents barriers to caring for the sick and to performing certain death and burial rites which are core religious practices, and especially needed in a pandemic that has already claimed nearly hundreds of thousands of lives.
In Sri Lanka for example, public health measures for safe burial practices have already challenged traditional rites, wherein authorities mandated cremations for Covid-19-linked deaths, despite the fact that cremation is supposed to be forbidden in Islam.
Covid-19 also complicates Jewish and Muslim burial practices of washing and cloaking bodies before burial, given concerns about transmission. Innovative religious responses seeking to reconcile public health policies with traditional burial practices have been taking place.
In Israel, for example, bodies are wrapped in plastic before burial, and before that, ritual washing is completed while wearing full protective gear. Some Islamic scholars are providing exegesis and guidance on how the ritual of washing the body prior to burials, could be conducted safely whilst following Islamic principles.
Religions for Peace Interreligious Council of Albania distributing Covid relief supplies from the Multi-religious Humanitarian Fund. Credit: Erzen Carja
This echoes what occurred during the Ebola crisis in West Africa. In fact, while COVID-19 differs from HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Tuberculosis, and Ebola, there are nevertheless some important similarities.
In cases of dealing with diseases where transmission affects large numbers of people, and vaccines and medication remain relatively hard to find and/or provide to all affected, beyond the health inequities which are underscored during such times, there are critical lapses by national and international authorities in acknowledging and supporting the role of religious leaders.
In fact, during previous outbreaks of HIV/AIDS (around the world), and of Ebola in Central and West Africa, the strengths of religious communities were rarely incorporated into public policy – until national and international secular authorities lose the plot.
In Religions for Peace (the only multi religious organization representing all religious institutions and communities around the world with 90 national and 6 regional Inter-Religious Councils/IRCs), a founding mantra is that caring for the most vulnerable is deeply embedded in all faith traditions.
As a result, religious institutions, communities, and faith-inspired/based NGOs (or FBOs as they are often referred to), have historically served as the original providers of essential social services. In fact, FBOs are the first responders in most humanitarian emergencies. Their work includes providing spiritual sustenance for sure, but also hunger relief, heath care, and shelter.
This is not only a feature of the developing world. Samaritan’s Purse set up a health center at the height of the pandemic in Central Park – an icon of New York city. Caritas, at one point, was feeding 5,000 people a day, in Geneva, Switzerland.
For 50 years, Religions for Peace worked to equip its IRCs (through the respective religious institutions and services) to seek peace through advocating for human rights (including the rights of Indigenous Peoples, as well as women, religious minorities, the disabled, elderly, and youth), mediating conflicts, providing emergency humanitarian relief, and contributing to sustainable development efforts (including health, nutrition, sanitation, education and environmental sustainability).
The defining feature of Religions for Peace IRCs is multi-religious collaboration. The main principles of this collaboration are representativity and subsidiarity. In the case of the former, each IRC earns Religions for Peace affiliation by ensuring its governance represents each and all of the nations religious institutions, and communities. In return, each IRC is guaranteed its independence to determine its national/regional priorities, and its modus operandi.
Half a century of collaboration with several United Nations entities at different moments in time, provides a comparative context to enable an assessment of how the UN works with some religious actors.
At the very least, this historical time-line of partnership efforts on peace and security, sustainable development and human rights, provides a learning context. It is with that in mind that we can say that UN efforts in seeking partnerships with faith-based NGOs in facing the Covid-19 implications, are noticeably on the increase relative to pre-Covid dynamics.
Entities like UNHCR, UNICEF, UNAIDS, WHO, and even non-operational entities like the Secretary-General’s own office, as well as UN Office of Genocide Prevention and Responsibility to Protect, have, respectively, issued statements specifically calling on religious leaders and actors to uphold their unique influences (noted above), sought religious input on and in Covid Guidance documents, and (are) hosting multiple consultations to strengthen myriad joint responses.
Working with multiple stakeholders, Religions for Peace research is revealing that while some religious charities are struggling to find resources to continue their services for communities, other FBOs are able to raise more resources for pandemic relief, than anticipated.
This is particularly the case for Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist organisations in countries in Asia, but also Muslim and Christian charities in Africa and the Middle East.
Almost 90% of Religions for Peace IRCs reported a 100% increase in engagement (asks) of their advocacy and messaging efforts from/by national governments, particularly as of May and June 2020 – as compared to this time last year.
This is evidenced through national campaigns during religious occasions and holidays, as well as local awareness raising efforts by religious leaders in particular, as opposed to faith-based NGOs.
Out of the Covid response efforts tracked by 25 Religions for Peace IRCs in 4 regions, thanks to the Multi-Religious Humanitarian Fund administered by RfP, multi-religious efforts are, on average, much harder to encourage than efforts administered by Ecumenical or single religion organisations.
A rough estimate shows that out of the nearly 100 humanitarian assistance projects being tracked by RfP in 40 countries in parts of Africa and Asia, only 1 percent involve multi-religious efforts. Several IRCs have also reported finding it harder to even advocate for multi religious collaboration to provide pandemic assistance (food and medicine packages) in conflict impacted countries (i.e. more than it normally is to seek to mediate some of the conflicts and/or work with governments in mediation efforts).
While it is now almost a cliche to call for more partnerships with religious, or faith-based actors, this is simply not good enough. FBOs, like many NGOs fully immersed in relief efforts, are finding several (good) excuses not to work together.
Faced with a global pandemic, even the FBOs – ostensibly inspired by religious calls for serving all, including the most vulnerable – are less keen on collaborating across their multiple differences (institutional, theological, structural, financial and political), as they continue to serve millions.
Is it enough to serve all who need regardless of religious affiliation (the current bar against which religious NGOs are often measured by the UN and other international entities), or should a pandemic inspire more, and better collaboration among multi-religious partners?
One can but wonder what the relative lack of religious NGO collaboration may foretell for social coexistence after the pandemic, not to mention what this lack of collaboration spells for the legitimacy of the so-called prophetic voice many of them speak of.
அமெரிக்க தமிழ் அமைப்புகள் கஜனின் தமிழ்த் தேசிய மக்கள் முன்னணி கட்சியை ஆகஸ்ட் 5, 20 தேர்தலில் ஆதரிக்குமாறு வேண்டுகின்றது. – African American News Today – EIN News
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