Affirm the role of women, says WACC President

An interview with the outgoing President of WACC, Musimbi Kanyoro, during WACC’s Officers meeting held in Toronto June 26-28, 2008.

By Teresia Mutuku, Communications Officer and Web Manager, WACC

Q: What have been some exciting moments of your presidency?

As the president of WACC, I found it very exciting that the Association has continued to put communication for social change on the agenda. It brings together people from the ecumenical movement who are interested in the social agenda. Through the ecumenical movement, WACC has continued to train people to learn how to communicate social issues within their environment.

Q: In October this year, WACC will host a landmark event in South Africa, Congress 2008. What is the essence of this event?

The essence of Congress is that it is going to emphasize communication and justice and communication for peace. We are living in a world where there is lack of peace. I don’t mean just the absence of war, but real ways that people can deal with each other, in a way that we affirm the common humanity that we share.

Interference of peace comes in many ways, not just through conflicts that exist in our regions, but also it comes by lack of material support for the people, poverty, lack of respect for each other’s humanity, gender issues that divide us, illnesses such as the stigma that comes with HIV/AIDS. These issues are important for WACC and will feature at Congress.

Q: What else will feature at Congress?

We will also have the opportunity to look at how communication can help us be able to respond to the issues in our time. We will experience the situation in South Africa where the dent of the apartheid system has not yet disappeared and we will be able to see how people in that situation are continuing to find solutions for the future that give them the opportunity to find inner peace and recover from the dent. We will witness this by visiting the prison where Nelson Mandela was jailed and the communities that are marginalized by poverty that the apartheid system created. We will experience the pain of so many that are lacking peace.

We will also encounter churches and hear what message they bring to the people of South Africa. We hope that this will be a message not only for the context of South Africa but a message that we will be able to translate in the other parts of the world.

By hosting Congress, WACC is giving us space to learn from one another, to share what we know from our own regions and from our own individual lives. It will be an opportunity to learn how to use communication for bringing justice to our communities.

As the president of WACC, I want to invite members, communicators and friends of WACC, to come and share experiences and learn how to become active advocates of peace in our communities. It is going to be a Congress both of celebrating our ability to communicate and dealing with the reality that we are facing in the world today.

Q: What is the role of faith based organizations in conflict situations in Africa?

We need to recognize that throughout Africa, faith based communities organized within their council of churches are quite active in dealing with conflicts. This is historical. It has always been part for the programmes of the national councils of churches, including the All African Council of Churches (AACC) and the Sudan Council of Churches in the case of Sudan, to participate in conflict resolution initiatives.

At individual level, we have people such as Ambassador Bethuel Kiplagat from Kenya, the Executive Director of the Africa Peace Forum, who was very instrumental in negotiating for peace in Sudan. He is not only a diplomat but also a committed Christian who has in his life worked with old council of churches on peace issues. Prominent church leaders, such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have continued to strongly promote justice, not only from the aspect of political conflict, but also from individual conflicts, urging our churches not to neglect issues of sexuality, stigmatization of people by gender, or by HIV/AIDS. Without addressing the personal level, people will not be able to have inner peace. We need to deal with conflict situations at both levels as exemplified by the ecumenical and religious movements in Africa.

Q: What is the place of women in conflicts situations in Africa?

When we look at women in Africa, it is very easy to marginalize them into roles of what they should do and what they should not do. Though women are victims of conflicts in many ways, they are not just emblems of vulnerable sufferers, they are the ones that uphold and keep the communities, nurse and nurture the sick, the elderly and children and look for food when there is none.

I had the opportunity last year, together with six other African women leaders and Mary Robinson to visit Eastern Chad and Darfur, where we met very courageous women who strongly advocated for an end of war which has rampaged through those countries for ages.

There are many organizations in Africa, such as ISIS-WICCE which document the lives of women in conflict situations. During Congress we will hear witness from one of the keynote speakers from ISIS-WICCE who will illustrate how women have played a key role in documenting and communicating what is happening in those conflict regions.

On leadership position of women in Africa, we need to affirm that there is a lot of progress. More and more women are taking up leadership positions. At the present moment Liberia is improving with the leadership of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the first woman president in Africa ever. We hear nothing but progress happening in Liberia; progress that pays attention to women even in the lowest levels of the society, progress that has given prominence to the promotion of women rights, something that we hadn’t witnessed in that country before, progress that is now beginning to get police actively involved in addressing the siatuations of women.

I long for a time when we will have more women in high leadership positions in Africa such as President Johnson-Sirleaf, because she understands the situation of women far much deeper than any man leader has ever had.

There are other women in main levels of leadership not only at the level of presidency. I have been involved with women who are working hard to ensure that we have election systems that work in the continent. I am sure we all hear lots of things from Zimbabwe for example. But when you listen to the testimonies from women who are living in that situation, you’ll find that most of them are not protecting the status quo. They are telling the truth of what is happening. They are acting to bring change; at the communications level and leadership level.

Q: As outgoing president, what is your message to WACC staff, members and the next board?

Running a membership organization such as WACC requires renewing systems all the time, reviewing ways of work as well as financial support to make it work. As I leave the organization, I feel that we have made great progress in creating systems that can make the ecumenical movement grow into the future. I am inviting more people to become members and specifically appeal to individuals and organizations to financially support the Association.

I will continue to be an active member and supporter of WACC. I hope the members and others agree with me that we have found in WACC space to witness both our social action and our faith and together we will continue to make a difference in the lives of people.