{"id":18037,"date":"2020-11-01T08:37:19","date_gmt":"2020-11-01T08:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barazalab.com\/?p=18037"},"modified":"2023-09-04T05:38:34","modified_gmt":"2023-09-04T05:38:34","slug":"softie-reflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tuwele.com\/baraza_update\/softie-reflection\/","title":{"rendered":"Softie Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greetings, friends:<\/span><\/p>\n

I hope you\u2019ve had a good and productive fortnight, the weeks are flying by! We\u2019ve been busy at Baraza, hosting a special screening of the film<\/span> Softie<\/span><\/i>, as well as two separate panels surrounding the film – one with filmmakers Sam Soko and Toni Kamau, and a second with the subjects of the film itself, Njeri Mwangi and Boniface Mwangi. I can\u2019t explain how insightful, vital and deep these conversations were, and as you watch the film one realizes, in those 90 minutes, how deeply brutal this country is, how quickly it shuts down dreams, how thoroughly it keeps us trapped in the \u201csoft bigotry of low expectations\u201d (yes, I\u2019m improbably quoting either George W. Bush, or Condoleezza Rice, I can\u2019t quite figure out who said it first). Voters didn\u2019t expect anything more than a transaction in Mwangi\u2019s campaign – they expected to sell their vote and get hard cash for it. The film jarringly exposes this tragic electoral theatre, but Njeri Mwangi says she doesn\u2019t regret that her husband ran for office, despite abundant heartbreak. In the conversation at Baraza Media Lab moderated by Sheba Hirst, Njeri said, \u201cFor me, we won before the elections. We ran a clean campaign, our race was funded by the people and we ignited a hope within the people, showing them that they can dream and hope.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

My other takeaway from the film was the amount of recognized and unrecognized labour that it takes to sustain the dream of a better Kenya, and that this labour is mostly borne by women. I\u2019m wrestling with what this means to be a person of vision, convictions and dreams for a better country. How much of those dreams are underwritten by people doing invisible labour? How can we recognise this cost better, and what do we do once we see it?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

To <\/span>quote<\/span><\/a> my friend and sister Anne Moraa, women are erased, constantly: \u201cErasure confines the work women do into a box which has nothing more than \u2018women\u2019s work\u2019. Women freedom fighters become unthinkable in a country where parliamentary debates to meet the constitutionally required two-thirds gender rule are presented as a periodic annoyance, rather than a necessity…Erasure reduces women to \u2018political flower girls\u2019 \u2013 the media actually uses this phrase \u2013 and we cannot fathom women as a fundamental part of revolutions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m so glad that Softie helped me see Njeri Mwangi, Khadija Mohammed and the army of Ukweli volunteers. I continue to mull on this, but in the meantime, here\u2019s:<\/span><\/p>\n