Violence in the name of freedom

Society adores freedom; in books, in movies, on tv; freedom is what we all strive for. In our Americanized modern society freedom is all one should strive for. But what is freedom? Is it granted or is it taken? Is it freedom if it is based on the expense of another community or even individual?

Jomo Kenyatta is by all means a nationalist freedom fighter, for he opposed the colonial regime in Kenya and rose to power as its first native Prime Minister. He and his people certainly achieved freedom from the invaders. In Facing Mount Kenya, he discusses the cultural oppression that his people had to struggle against; he elaborates on the initiation ritual of the Ginyuku tribe and how it was outlawed by imperial powers, for it involves the genital circumcision of both boys and girls. The practice of male circumcision has been observed for centuries and is continued today, it is in fact advocated for by Islam and Judaism; but in modern, scientific societies the circumcision of women is known as female genital mutilation, it is a practice considered barbaric and an act of gendered violence. Yet Kenyatta, with his western education argues for its continuation. He argues because it is a core belief of the Ginyuku culture: without it the girls cannot be considered full members of the tribe, they cannot marry or engage in social custom.

Even when one attempts to empathize with Kenyatta and accept his claims about the medical care taken of the initiates during and after the ritual; it is nearly impossible to feel anything but vehement disagreement with him regarding the necessity and permanence of such an atrocious ritual. But his argument must be understood, it must be read without prejudice; it is easy to call him a tribal nationalist, but the paranoia and fear with which he writes is more subtle. This is a man who faces a multifaceted assault from the institutions of the invaders: the school, the church and of course the colonial state. They may be separate legally but to him they are all alien and unwelcome. They do not wish to hear the tribal arguments in favor of the practice or to explain their arguments to the tribes in anything but the most patronizing of ways; to them this practice must be admonished and the tribal members that engage in the practice are to be ostracized from society and their institutions.

The ban on clitoridectomy is a colonial law, and that is why Kenyatta must fight it; but in doing so he immortalizes the ritual, and grounds Ginyuku society in this initiation sequence increasing its importance. His argument is that this culture cannot be transformed because for centuries it has been this way; but in doing so he patronizes his own people and his culture, it is likely the practice has evolved over time along with the Ginyuku culture, and it infantilizes the Ginyuku people when he claims that they cannot adapt new rituals when they have understood the medical harms of their ritual. But Kenyatta’s argument is most offensive to all the girls in his nation that have yet to go through this initiation; the little girls that are not even aware of the exact procedure that will be done to their bodies in the name of maturity and social custom, girls that must sacrifice in order to be accepted by their own people. Kenyatta strips those girls of the freedom to say no to this act when he argues for the perpetuation of the custom. To them he is not an anti-colonial leader, he is simply the embodiment of the native patriarchy. Perhaps freedom is not to be determined by the freedom fighter, it is certainly not to be determined by the colonizers; perhaps to know what freedom is, we must ask the girls on whose bodies the battle is being waged.