This monster called culture continues to enhance suffering for our women, girls and youth in general. It has been used as an excuse to continue oppression at different levels and capacities. It enhances child marriages, FGM and other harmful cultural practices. Fellow Africans when will we learn harmful culture has no place in the 21St century?
“11 teenage girls have been forced out of school due to teenage pregnancies”, “alarming rates of HIV infections among the teenagers and youth”, These are some of the headlines that have been flashed on our faces in the recent past. But Comprehensive Sex Education (CSE) or even mentioning of condoms to our youth and teens is almost a taboo. CSE has been opposed aggressively as it is deemed to go against our ‘culture’, let’s not mention the religious leaders who are “holier than thou” when it comes to matters sex before marriage.
Allow me to ask this? What remedy does this monster called culture and our sweet religion have for emerging issues/trends? This world is changing very fast but culture and religion are very slow to adapt to these changes. The custodians of culture and our religious leaders seem to be in denial, they are in slumber-land. Someone kindly tap them and wake them up to the reality of the 21St century. Can someone tell them as we read this teenagers are having sex.
The sooner we wake up and realize culture and rigid christian beliefs are bringing more suffering to our generation than good the better. Fellow youth we need to embrace each other and claim what is rightfully ours. We need to be part of policy makers and not consumers of policies made by people whose mind-set is still stuck in the 19Th century ideologies. Let’s claim our place to save our generation from being doomed.
The hard reality is our culture is the one that proves to have more benefits and is able to address the emerging issues, well I can say the same to religion …’Shaitani shindwe mimi’. We cannot allow ‘blind’ people to continue making life changing decisions on our behalf while we sit pretty and wait to be doomed. This is the time for youth take over. It is our time and our world……….
