Author: Juliana Omale-Atemi
Date: April 15, 2007
Type of article: African Examples
Source: The East African Standard http://www.eastandard.net/archives/index.php?mnu=details&id=1143967376&catid=4

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Abandoned by her father as an infant, she was a child bride and mother of seven, out of which only one child survived to adulthood. Today she is an award winning journalist, filmmaker and human rights activist who believes in a world order that is fair, just and inclusive, writes Juliana Omale-Atemi.

She talks about social justice in Africa with a great passion.

"I want to see justice for everybody," says the diminutive woman with a big voice.

Born in Zanzibar in 1943, Ms Fatma Alloo lived through the feudal system of the sultanate, colonialism and post-independence and now the age of globalisation.

"I feel as though I have lived many lives in my lifetime," says the human rights crusader and social movement activist.

Alloo was a child bride and a mother of seven, out of which only one child survived to adulthood. She has struggled for space and legitimacy within a patriarchal system.

"I was born after the end of the second world war, when African soldiers had just returned from far away lands to regale their country men and women with vivid tales that wiped out the myth of the white’s man superiority," she says.

Born to a young mother in 1948, her father abandoned them soon after her birth. "No one knew how to deal with this situation," says Fatma thoughtfully, "Ours must have been the first case of abandonment and was considered a terrible tragedy."

Alloo’s mother remarried and moved to Mombasa with her new husband. She went on to have five sons with whom Fatma is close.

Builder of African social movements

Little Fatma was left in the care of her aunt (mother’s sister) who raised and supported her until she died recently.

"My aunt was my real mother. I was heartbroken when she died, she showered me with unconditional love, and taught me to be strong to weather the storms of life," she says.

Alloo has fought to protect human rights and to ensure justice for the oppressed in Tanzania for almost three decades.

But she prefers to define herself as a builder of African social movements, having been inspired by the leaders and foot soldiers of the liberation struggles of Uganda, Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa. She interacted with them closely when they were exiled in Dar es Salaam in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.

Alloo draws her inspiration from the late founding president of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, who once asked his country men and women a simple question: "How would you like to be remembered?"

"My answer is I would like to be remembered for trying," she says. "I have learned that one is not born into a movement rather it is the experiences that have made me what I am today."

By the mid 1970s, Alloo was a married woman in her twenties, a mother and student. "I came into being in the 70s at the University of Dar es Salaam," she says.

In 1963, her adoptive parents arranged for her marriage at age 15.

"I am sure they did it to enhance my chances in life as the times were extremely difficult," she says.

It was during the Zanzibar revolution after Tanzania’s independence and there was a lot of violence.

Amidst the tumult the newly weds left for the United Kingdom.

"I arrived in London when it was really cold and I was dressed like a typical Mzanzibari in light clothing and sandals," she reminisces.

Transformation of house-help

She was shocked to see white people doing menial work, something she had never witnessed in colonial Tanganyika and Zanzibar.

"Back home such chores were strictly reserved for the natives, yet here they were in their own country, sweeping the streets, cleaning floors and windows!" she says.

That experience got her thinking deeply about race issues.

"Most liberation movements on the continent made Dar es Salaam their home and Nyerere’s teachings were on people’s lips. These were heady and youthful days," she enthuses.

On her return from the UK, Alloo started thinking about how to make these ideological positions meaningful to ordinary women and men in Tanzania and Africa. One day, after a period of spousal abuse and neglect, her house-help showed up bruised and battered on her doorstep.

Alloo was outraged and she would not rest until the woman received justice.

"After the police and the courts had done their work and on the strength of a tiny loan I gave her, I watched as she transformed right before my eyes," she says.

The woman bought a plot of land, built herself a house and two adjacent rooms to rent out.

But the biggest transformation took place within the woman’s family and community: "The moment she took control of her life she stopped being a victim and became a victor and role model for her children and in her community. Someone to be proud of and to emulate," says Alloo.

Then she did not know that the incident would lead her to a life of activism. Today, Alloo’s list of achievements is impressive. She was a founder member of the Tanzania Media Women’s Association (Tamwa), which she led for close to a decade.

Creating space for women’s issues in the media

In 1979, she was among a group of young women, fresh graduates of the journalism school in Dar es Salaam, who met informally to compare their experiences of working and covering issues in the mainstream media. This was long before the age of liberalised media and new information communication technologies (ICTs).

The result of these consultations was a joint production of radio programmes discussing the issues of teenage pregnancy in Tanzania.

The reaction from the public was enthusiastic and the women journalists were inspired to produce another set of radio programmes dealing with violence against women.

But they were discouraged by their bosses (men), who believed that domestic violence was not a serious enough issue to be discussed on public radio. Their programmes were never broadcast. Demoralised by that experience, it took seven years for the women to regroup.

"By 1987, women journalists were questioning their roles within the media houses in Tanzania, and finding out that they were not immune from policies that excluded them from exercising their abilities fully," explains Alloo. "That is how Tamwa was born."

She and her colleagues took the unbeaten path to create space for women’s issues in the media and to advocate for women’s rights. This put them on a coalition course with their bosses, at a time when media was largely state owned and tightly controlled.

"When the doors were shut by our media houses we opened windows of opportunity for ourselves by publishing our own magazine and producing radio programmes from our perspective," she says.

Riding on the wave of multi-party democracy sweeping across Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Tamwa made a link between policy and practice in the social affairs of Tanzania.

Festival of the Dhows

The women rolled up their sleeves and tackled issues of domestic violence, sexual harassment in the streets and workplace and the underlying reasons why a high number of girls were getting pregnant and dropping out of school.

"We started legal literacy programmes but the women participants pushed us into activism because they were asking, ‘So what if I know my rights? Where do I go when I face violence in my house?’ We knew we had to do more," she says.

These questions resulted in the birth of a Crisis Centre in a heavily populated neighbourhood of Dar es Salaam. "In 1989 we mobilised our members and sympathisers by sending a letter to as many people as possible," she says.

Among her personal accomplishments is winning the MNET award for 1999 for her documentary on khanga cloth and her leadership roles in both the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF) and Zanzibar Women on the Net (ZaWoN). She is also a member of the African Social Forum Council, based in Dakar, Senegal.

Fatma is a firm believer in investing in a new image for Africa: "We need to create our own images, and this is what I do with a passion at ZIFF – the Festival of the Dhows," she says.

The dhow is an ancient sea-faring vessel, powered by the monsoon winds that have facilitated trade, commerce and ideas across the Indian Ocean for centuries. Themes of the festival are cultural diversity, individual integrity, social justice, women, children, the Diaspora, culture and conservation.

The Festival of the Dhows concentrates on the creation of African images, using history as the building blocks even as it celebrates cultures that bind people living along the Indian Ocean coastline in Africa to the Arabian Gulf States, Iran, India and the Indian Ocean Islands. The festival also creates awareness on the impact of globalisation on these countries.

Played important role in the World Social Forum

Alloo’s pet project is the women’s panorama within the festival that showcases African heroines, and a diversity of visual arts and theatre works.

"Radio, theatre arts and television are powerful media that must be accessed by women," says Alloo,

"When we started Tamwa, there was no television on mainland Tanzania because Nyerere believed that a society that cannot create its own images should not be dominated by other images," she says

Nyerere’s prescriptions have been swept aside by the present day market realities and a paradigm shift from the old policies that advocated for tight media controls.

Is there room for the traditional media to co-exist with the new media and technologies? Alloo says the Theatre Arts Faculty at the University of Dar es Salaam and the Bagamoyo School of Arts are churning out young people who are not afraid to marry the traditional with the modern to produce street theatre, community theatre and film production.

And she is excited at the possibilities for building social movements in Tanzania through media.

"When I look back, I marvel for I grew up at a time when there were no telephones on my island yet things have changed so phenomenally that I now have a cell phone to make and receive calls or to play games with and the world is accessible to me at the touch of a computer button," she says.

As a council member of the influential African Social Forum, she played an important role in the World Social Forum that took place in Nairobi in January.

Alloo is a firm believer in the spirit of pan-Africanism and that the future of African social movements is in the hands of community and grassroots organisation.

"African can never be the same again," says Alloo. "It is right to talk about what has gone wrong on the continent, but it is better still when people organise to do something about it."

She is optimistic that the WSF’s East African presence will feed into a continental and global consciousness to create a new world order that is fair, just and inclusive.

— An AWC feature