Meet democracy and human rights activist Farida Nabourema from Togo, a woman who has been fighting for civil liberties and a democratic government in her homeland since her early teens. Her journey is a testament to resilience and courage, and Farida shares the realities of activism in a patriarchal society heavily influenced by the colonial era, where women's rights are frequently suppressed. Farida gives a first-hand account of the different ways she has rebelled against this oppressive system, including a 'Digital Democracy Program', a creative initiative to utilize technology in the fight for freedom. Listen as Farida explains how this platform, along with others like Bitcoin and Pegases, has helped citizens to raise funds securely.
Meet democracy and human rights activist Farida Nabourema from Togo, a woman who has been fighting for civil liberties and a democratic government in her homeland since her early teens. Her journey is a testament to resilience and courage, and Farida shares the realities of activism in a patriarchal society heavily influenced by the colonial era, where women's rights are frequently suppressed. Farida gives a first-hand account of the different ways she has rebelled against this oppressive system, including a 'Digital Democracy Program', a creative initiative to utilize technology in the fight for freedom. Listen as Farida explains how this platform, along with others like Bitcoin and Pegases, has helped citizens to raise funds securely.
Welcome to what the World Will Become, a podcast about the humans who dedicate their lives to building a more free and just world. My name is Marie Berry. I'm a feminist researcher and writer, and I've spent the better part of the past 20 years researching and thinking about how women experience war and its aftermath. I've done research in places like Rwanda, Bosnia, Kenya, Nepal and Colombia, and I've interviewed hundreds of women whose lives have been shaped by violence. Along the way, I have been repeatedly struck by two simultaneous truths. The first is that violence is devastating, leaving those who survive it with trauma and grief that can last for years and even generations. But the second is that even in the most bleak and impossible of situations, there is often a great beauty, a way that those who suffer from violence find love, joy and resilience that can creatively forge new paths forward, paths that offer us profound hope and possibility for building a more just and free world. On this podcast, I interview activists from all across the world who are forging these paths forward in the context of deep difficulty. These activists offer us, and offer me, a blueprint for how we might build a world that is free from violence. The title of this podcast is inspired by abolitionist scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore, who reminded us that quote. What the world will become already exists in fragments and pieces, experiments and possibilities. So please join me in this season of what the world will become to hear stories from those whose experiments have profoundly inspired me. My hope is, at the end of each episode, and indeed the whole season, you are inspired by these stories and find small ways to bring bits of their work into your own lives.
Marie Berry:Hello everyone, my guest today is Frida Naborrema, a democracy and human rights activist from Togo. Togo is a country of about 8 million people in West Africa, and it has been ruled by the same family a father and a son since 1967, making it the longest running regime in Africa. Under current president Fahri Nukhna Simbe's rule, the country has engaged in widespread abuses, restrictions on freedom of speech and rampant corruption. Frida has spent her life trying to counter this repression and bring democracy to her country. She is the executive director of the Togholi Civil League and her writing has been featured in places like the New York Times, African arguments and Forbes, and her activism has been celebrated on CNN and PR, in the Guardian, the Economist and more.
Marie Berry:I first met Frida in 2018 when she came to the second annual IGLI Summer Institute for Women Activists that I convene in Colorado each summer. When I met her, it didn't take me long to realize that she was a remarkable force. She is a woman who's weathered profound personal difficulties as a result of her activism, but everything she has experienced has instilled in her a fierceness and a dedication to fighting for a more free and just world for all. I'm happy to say that Frida has returned to every IGLI Summer Institute since sharing her wisdom with activists from across the world, and today Frida is one of the most known figures in efforts to build democracy in Togo and Francophone West Africa.
Marie Berry:As you listen to our conversation today, I think you'll quickly understand why, Frida, welcome so much to the show. I'm so deeply excited to be sitting here with you today, Farida, and what a joy to be able to have this conversation with you on International Women's Day. I think it's a delight that neither of us had anything scheduled for a little bit of time this morning for me, this afternoon for you and so it's just an honor to get to sit down with you and talk about what you are doing to build a world that is more free for more people. So welcome to the show and thank you for being here.
Farida Nabourema:Thank you so much, Mary, for inviting me. I am extremely delighted to be here today, especially on a specific day like this one. That means a lot for women's right and social justice across the globe, so thank you for having me Absolutely.
Marie Berry:I want to invite you to just start by introducing yourself and letting everybody who is listening know a little bit about who you are and what sort of work you've been doing.
Farida Nabourema:I was born and raised in Togo. I have been an activist since I was a teenager. I've been fighting to bring democracy to my country, togo, that has been ruled by the older military regime in Africa. I co-founded 11 years ago a social movement called the former school movement, and the goal of the movement was to push Togo's youth and citizens in general to demand accountability from the military regime of Fonyasinbe and to demand change, because all we have known since we were born has been the same family in power, and that authoritarianism has prevented our people from enjoying all their civil rights and liberties.
Farida Nabourema:We grew up in an environment of violence, where the state's repression is extremely high, and so, since I was young, all I have been doing is to fight for social justice in Togo and in Africa as a whole, because I feel like the oppression of the people of Togo are the residues from a colonial system that has legitimized the use of violence against citizens and that has made it okay for governments to not want to be held accountable. And along the line, I founded another organization called the Togo Lease Civil League, and I'm the district director of the Togo Lease Civil League. Today we are lucky to have people working in the Togo Lease Civil League in three different continents in the US, in Europe, in Africa. It's a diaspora-based organization funded by Togo Lease and Exile, hoping to raise awareness globally about the dictatorship in Togo, but to also support local initiatives on the ground in Togo in terms of civic engagement, women's rights and rule of law.
Marie Berry:In general, it's fantastic and remarkable. You know the type of work you've been doing, the amount of time you've been doing it for, and I know it's really challenging and difficult work, and so I look forward to kind of talking to you about some of that, and I want to perhaps just ask you to tell us a little bit about what it means to grow up in Togo and what that looks like for you, for your family, for women and for Togo Lease people more broadly.
Farida Nabourema:I was born under the rule of Ea de Manasimbe, who died in 2005 when I was 15 years old, and his rule is not much different from that of his son, but there are some more particularities because he came from this generation of tyrants, where they really promoted themselves as semi-guards and wanted the citizens to be in complete adoration of them. I grew up in a country where students in the public school system were obliged to train every single Wednesday afternoon and weekend to dance for the president, to sing his name, to praise his name, and there were competitions among schools in terms of who would better praise and hail the president. And unfortunately, this was not just limited to the students. It was actually the case of the small public servants in Togo. Teachers, police officers and many other small servants had to also learn to dance, wearing party uniforms and performing for the president to his glory. And on Sundays, people would go to the headquarters of the ruling party and the president would sit like a semi-guard, wearing always wearing black sunglasses and admiring the people, praising and singing him and dancing for him. And every morning, people have to line up from his house to the presidency to clap for him when he's going to work and when he's returning and whenever he travels, people, every morning, every single morning, and when he travels, people have to line up from his the presidency to the airport to clap for him, to tell him goodbye and say flight. And when he returns, people have to also line up from the airport to his house to welcome him back to the country. Apparently, he's the father of the nation, he's our daddy and he traveled to bring us goodies and bring good luck and investment to the country.
Farida Nabourema:So we live in a system where there was a huge personality call and that personality call came with very high experience, mistakes were not too narrated and students a pedestrian can be shot dead because he didn't stop when the police asked him to stop, because the presidential car is going to pass, or a student can get arrested and his family are arrested and killed because he refused to perform for the president, because he's not feeling well. So it was an atmosphere of terror and fear and by 7 pm each day, the government unleashed soldiers from the military and there was a special unit, soldiers units, a special force and they were called there's a nickname for them they were called the savages. And these guys were savages. Yes, they were released. They had big beards, they looked very unkept, very scary, showing all the toxic masculinity of scary men, and they were unleashed on the streets every night from 7 pm to keep people in their homes and if, by any mistake, you find yourself in the streets and they find you, you may get severely beaten or killed and unfortunately, one of my cousins was their victims. He was so severely beaten that as a result of that, he lost his mind. He never recovered from it and eventually he died a couple of years later.
Farida Nabourema:And they are countless of young Togolese people who get killed that way, and it was an atmosphere of terror. You can't even see the name of the president in your home. So in that context, believe me or not, when I had them died in 2005, the people of Togo were so overjoyed they were celebrating. It was like I always tell people millennials from my generation who are fanatics of Harry Potter that the only comparable thing to Voldemort in real life was the Adema, and I was reading Harry Potter as a teenager living in Togo, and when I realized that in that book people couldn't see the name of Voldemort, automatically, I'm like we can see the name of Eya Dema too, and the whole time I was reading the book by portraying Voldemort in my head as Eya Demanyasimbe, because every single thing that was described about Voldemort corresponded to Eya Dema.
Farida Nabourema:But his son did a coup on the evening of his death and what we thought were going to be an end to decades of suffering and abuse actually became a nightmare, because the following month there was a complete attack on civilians.
Farida Nabourema:According to the United Nations, over 500 people were killed in the aftermath of Eya Dema's death, following the elections that his son organized and wanted to keep himself in power, and the numbers on the ground are far more than that, and I remember there were two students in my high school that also died, didn't come back to school later on because they died in the police. Repression and the deed. That reminds us that there is a continuity of dictatorship. It's not because Eya Dema is there to die. The repression and the abuse and the terror is going to end, and his son wanted to send us a very strong message that he is capable of being as brutal, if not more, than his death, and unfortunately he has been doing that for the past 17 years. He's now the longest serving president in West Africa. His father was there for 38 years. He's been there for 17 years and counting, and the regime has been in power in Togo for a whole of 55 years.
Marie Berry:Wow, it's amazing to just begin to kind of get a glimpse, or really wrap my own head around, what it would be like to be forced to applaud the president's car every morning, or to dance for his glory, as you put it, and to be terrorized in the evenings by the savages, and I think you talked about the kind of whole cult of personality around the president that then didn't change with the arrival of his son.
Marie Berry:I mean, this is a really stunning and challenging example, I think, of what it means like for so many people who live under authoritarian rule around the world, and while the kind of specific characteristics of authoritarian leaders does differ to some extent, the kind of essence of the hierarchy of those that have power and access and the rest is so similar. I mean, the whole goal of our conversation today is to really focus, then, on what you and other activists have done in response to this type of oppression. I mean, can you tell us a little bit about when you first got involved as an activist? You know you were a teenager. What did that look like and what sort of risks did that involve for you as a young woman beginning to stand up to this type of brutality?
Farida Nabourema:If you allow me, before I answer that question, I would like to provide a little bit of background, but believe me, I wouldn't be too long. The first question you ask is about how did people resist or what did they do as a result of this. My activism wouldn't have been possible without that of my father, because he himself has been an activist for decades and it was his arrest in 2003 that's kicked me into politics out of anger and frustration and fear. But my father's activism himself wouldn't have been possible without that of my grandfather. Actually, my grandfather was also an activist and my grandfather was an activist against colonial rule and, interestingly, when I said at the beginning of this podcast, that go to returnism we see in Togo has its roots in the colonial system when the French were colonizing Togo. Togo was initially a German colony but then was divided following the German in loosing what were one between Britain and French and French. Togo is what we know as Togo today, as the British Togo land, united with the Gold Coast from Ghana. But under the French rule, it was illegal to not stop and salute a white person. Whenever an African person crosses them on the street, they can report you for not greeting them and you can be arrested and flogged, severely flogged, and embarrassed publicly for that. And my grandfather was arrested for not greeting a white man and he was arrested. He was tied to a tree like an animal. He was flogged and he was left there. And he took a public school teacher, a local, to see his suffering and to plea on his behalf for him to get released. And my grandfather, as a gesture of thank you, became very close to that teacher who introduced him to the independent struggle by making him understand that if we get our independence, he wouldn't have to salute any white man anymore and he wouldn't have to be tortured because he refused to salute a white man. And that whole personality cult that Yadima has created was derived from the way the local colonial rulers were ruling their communities. They wanted to present themselves as being superior to the Africans and the locals there. So this is what led my dad into activism, because my grandfather spent years in prison when he eventually joined the independence struggle.
Farida Nabourema:As a result of him being in prison, one of his sons contracted Rubella and he was rejected from the hospital because there was another law stating that the children of people fighting for independence should not be allowed in schools and in hospitals because these were presented as the benefits of colonialism. So the saying was that if you don't want colonialism, you shouldn't enjoy any benefits of the colonialism. So your children can go to the hospitals. And my uncle died and as a result of that and it was a very traumatic experience for my dad because he was this younger one and he saw him dying and they were helpless and there was nothing they could do about it and he became an activist and went through the same cycle of prison, out in and out. And it wasn't until I was 13 that I became aware of this, because I was younger back then and my mom was really good at not letting us know, at hiding it, but when I was 13, it happened in front of us.
Farida Nabourema:I was a little more mature and I was older and this took, something was happening, and this is how I became involved as an activist myself, and it is something that, once you start, you find it difficult to stop, because initially, political meetings in Togo were banned and my father was arrested in 2003 during a political gathering. So they had codes among themselves whenever they wanted to meet and they would meet at one of their friend's house for their political meetings and as a kid he always used to send me around to tell people we are meeting at this person's place for food, for dinner, and initially I didn't understand there was something behind it. But right after he was released from prison I realized he got in trouble because of those meetings. So I started following him without him knowing. Then, when he was done, he'll come out of the meeting and we'll find this wedding outside and like, what are you doing here? It's late, like sometimes it was over 8pm or 9pm, and in Togo you don't get out at this time of the day. So he realized that preventing me from following him wasn't a solution. You would rather have me go with him and ensure my safety than forbidding me from following him, and then I'll still find a way to sneak out and go there. So that's how I started following my dad to political meetings and through those meetings I learned a lot about the different grievances people were fighting against and what was bringing them together.
Farida Nabourema:And I realized that these people were doing this at a great risk, knowing very much that they could die as a result of it, and unfortunately I know many of them who have died following arrest and torture in prisons, and the one case that hurts me the most is that the youngest prisoner in that history. She was 8 months old when she was arrested, with her mom and my dad. They were all placed in the same cell. Her name was Olivia and I have always hoped that she will grow up and I will tell her the story about how it all happened, and unfortunately she passed away a couple of years ago and she never had to experience that freedom either.
Farida Nabourema:So these are things that make me ache a lot to know that people were born, grew up in that atmosphere of fear and torture and abuse and they die and they live the world like that and they never get a chance to experience justice and freedom. But at the same time, it also keeps me going, because they have been many times where the repression is hard. Even though I'm not physically in Togo, their tasks come in multiple ways and in multiple forms. You feel like giving up and you get tired, but then I remember my plea, my commitments and my promise to those who have fallen that I will keep fighting so that one day they get justice, and it reminds me that the very least I can do, because I'm lucky to still be alive is to use whatever means and resources that I have to raise awareness on the abuse people are facing in Togo and to mobilize resources to support the struggle to bring an end to this dealership in Togo.
Marie Berry:Wow, frida. I just that's a lot of heaviness right, and just thank you for bringing baby Olivia into the conversation. You know what a tragedy and a reminder of the stakes of this work. So thank you for sharing that, thank you, Mary.
Marie Berry:Tell us about what the work has looked like for you. What is the work looked like? I mean, you said you started when you were 13. I mean you were a kid following your dad around to these meetings, and how did it grow from there to become such a massive part of your life? Honestly, I feel like.
Farida Nabourema:Now that I'm older and more experienced, I realize that a lot of my reactions were results of trauma and anger, a lot of anger, my inability to be able to help people really needed help, and I was obsessed with the struggle to some extent where nothing else mattered for me in my life, because I felt like there is nothing more important than freeing toggle from that regime that is preventing millions of people from living a decent life. That struggle, right from the beginning, came with a lot of backlashes, and the very first backlash came from my inner circle, my family. But I was lucky that my dad, being the stubborn activist he is, has always been not only an inspiration but a source of comfort for when the backlashes are so severe that he realized people are going too far, and he will talk to me and make me understand that these are all part of the struggle. To some extent he normalizes it. It has advantages and disadvantages to normalize abuse, but at least he helped me understand that I wasn't the only activist that have faced this type of repression, and some have actually faced far more than that.
Farida Nabourema:It has been constantly waking up every morning and asking yourself if it is worth it and then convincing yourself that it is definitely worth it. And the second you step out, the entire world reminds you that you're wasting your time. You're putting your life at risk for nothing. You're going to get killed or go to prison. You don't think about your mom because she's going to suffer as a result of this. You're a selfish person because you don't put your family first, or you don't put your parents first, or from the sexist comments. You're a woman. You should just find a husband and have babies. You should just find something to do with your life in the fashion industry or anything else that is projected as being the only acceptable forms of activities women can engage themselves in.
Farida Nabourema:So I found myself in a situation where I was constantly fighting people that were supposed to be on our side, people who were victims of dictatorship, like myself, but who believe that it is because of those of us who expose the regime that their lives are in danger. And there is a famous sentence that my dad keeps sharing since I was a kid. To me he said when he was in prison in 1979, that was way before I was arrested my mom and her were dating. At the time they were not married yet, and my mom told her, if you don't provoke the beehives, the bees will not bite you, because she believed that him writing against the regime was provoking the regime and for as long as you leave them alone you'll be fine. But we have countless of cases of people who were actually extremely good citizens according to the regime's own book, meaning they do everything right and they still became victims of the regime. Because when there is absolutely no rule of law, it doesn't matter if you're doing the right thing, you will still end up being on the wrong side. It's all because the system is flawed and you can just become an unlucky citizen and end up paying the price for that.
Farida Nabourema:So people are taught in our system to see activists as enemies and I recall at the beginning one of the people referred to my mom as the activist mom. When people tell her are you the mom of the activist? She used to be so outraged because activism was seen as a delinquency, as terrorism. In fact, activists were arrested and taken from neighborhood to neighborhood by the military. They would call people out to come and stone them and chant very mean words to them terrorists, criminals. So growing up in that environment the worst thing that can happen to any of the kids is to be an activist, and I had to battle loved ones feeling that way to the point where, for almost a decade now, so many of my immediate family members I don't have any relationship with them, I don't even know what's happening in their life, because they were so afraid of my activism that they would rather not even know I exist than to have anything whatsoever to do with me.
Farida Nabourema:But today, thanks to social media, things are changing. I belong to one of the very first generation actually the first generation of Togulis activists using social media for activism and technically called the cyber activists and the Togulis government owns world cyber criminals because activism is so good to the time and belonging to that generation has allowed us to demystify activism in so many ways, and today I'm proud to see young people coming to me and telling me for real we are so inspired by your bravery and what you're doing, we want to work with you, we want to be an activist. I am extremely humbled and really honored to be along with that generation that is actually changing the norms, that is demystifying social engagement, civic engagement and activism overall in Togul, and I call it a liberation from fear. For a long time, people were afraid that fear. They have been overcoming it thanks to the work of tremendous and amazing, courageous activists for many decades.
Farida Nabourema:Unfortunately, many of them have left us, but today it feels good to see the result, because they live in an era where there was no way for them to know if people were listening, if people were supporting them, if people were approving what they were doing, if their sacrifices were worth it. At least we can, from social media comments to people responding to protest calls for people signing petitions. Back in the days in 2011, when I first launched the movement, we put out a petition. The majority of the people were afraid of putting their names on the petition, even in the diaspora, because they were afraid that if the government find their names on the petitions, them and their families will get in trouble. But today, people sign petitions, the protest, and I am lucky to belong to a generation that is witnessing that change, and it just makes me feel so grateful to those who have kept the light and the flame of the struggle alive for decades, since 1967. Absolutely.
Marie Berry:I mean in all of the things that you've shared with us so far. I mean the importance of that legacy, those that came before right. I mean not only in terms of inspiring and motivating the work that you do, you know, standing on the shoulders of your father and your grandfather, but also in understanding that, like the battles that we're fighting today are not created yesterday. They are deeply rooted in these systems of colonial right, of the kind of the violence embedded in the colonial project and the way in which I mean One of the other things you talked about in other contexts is the way in which the patriarchal order of Togolese society was also shaped during that colonial period.
Farida Nabourema:Absolutely Freeing women in Africa is literally decolonizing patriarchy. Today, the unfortunate thing is that people, whenever they hear about feminism or women's right, the first sentence that comes out of their mouth is it's a Western concept especially in Togo and many African countries.
Farida Nabourema:You guys are importing Western concepts to Africa. It doesn't apply to Africa. But the funny thing is that the misogyny is actually what's they imported from the West and they don't realize that a lot of the laws that we have today that are detrimental to Togolese women are imported from colonialism. And I'll give you a very simple example From my mom's tribe. They have a system where women gets to name their children.
Farida Nabourema:You take your mom's family's name, you don't take your father's name, and from your name people can tell from which community, from which village your mom comes from. And what was the basis for this? It came from the very simple fact that the only true parents, biological parents you know his roles is your mom. And by taking your father's name, what if you find out in 20 years that you have a different dad? It happens, because it happens everywhere. So will you have to change your name? And on that basis, that tribe and many other tribes in Togo and in West Africa in general inherited from their maternal families. You inherit from your mom's siblings and your maternal grandparents and not your paternal ones, because their understanding was number one. Yeah, at least you know for sure that that family is your family. And number two, they wanted to ensure that if the father dies, your children do not be in a situation where your paternal family takes everything from you. At least your mom's family can provide something. Instead, you always know you have a home in your mom's family, but then on that basis, in colonial Togo and after the independence of Togo, togoese women could not give their citizenship to their children, and this was imported from the French family code, the Code de la famille, which is the legal legislations around family law, and in the French family law women could not give their citizenship to children.
Farida Nabourema:So traditionally, if I have a child, my child is a full citizen from my community. He has my name and now legally, because of colonialism, I as a mother cannot pass on my citizenship or my name to my child. And they don't realize it when you tell them. This is where the misogynist is coming from. So now we have laws that are restricting women that we didn't have in the past, or at least for communities that were very patriarchal, because you have tried to meet that many communities in Africa was also very misogynistic and patriarchal. There were no legal frameworks around it. It was more of what was said in the community and people are bad by it. But there was no going to jail because there's a law preventing you, as a woman, to do ABCD In colonial Togo.
Farida Nabourema:And still, 1993, togoese women have to fight for the right to own a passport without the authorization of a male sibling or a male parent or spouse, because in colonial era for women to leave the country they need a handwritten authorization called Otoizasum marital marital, sparsal authorization allowing you to obtain a passport and allowing you to travel out of your country. Back in the days women could just travel whatever they feel like it and when they were married and they no longer wanted the marriage, they just picked your stuff and they leave. Now we have laws preventing women from doing that. So there are a lot of residues from the colonial system that are embedded in today's laws. But because they have been there for so long now people come to think that those are traditions and they'll think that it is the liberty of women and the freedom of women that is a foreign concept, that they don't want it. But it's rather the opposite. It is the misogynistic law the misogynistic law sorry, I'm saying it's different that are completely foreign to our culture.
Marie Berry:Oh my gosh. I mean I think we see so many echoes of this in so many places where we do, by looking at the deep history, that the gender relations of the present and the kind of real divisions between men and women and the kind of legal codifications of that gender discrimination are not something that is always existing, absolutely Right. It's so easy to assume that what exists is what will always exist, and I think one of the things that really motivates this podcast is to think about untangling and troubling that idea that what the world will become doesn't have to look like it always looked and in fact it can look like some of the more imaginative, creative, radical experiments and kind of bold visions on the margins, rather than the kind of status quo which takes these systems as inevitable and as fixed. So what do we do about this, rita? I mean, what are you doing?
Marie Berry:How do you tackle that simultaneous struggle of authoritarian dictatorship and misogynistic, sort of deeply patriarchal social dynamics that obviously factor into the emboldening of that authoritarian regime and certainly of the regime's many tentacles? The security forces, the savages, as you put it, that security force, those institutions that are charged with defending the regime? I mean, what is the work then that you're doing to really tackle these systems of violence.
Farida Nabourema:Interestingly, the more you navigate through this struggle, the more realize that everything is interconnected into time. Initially, when I set as an activist, it was specifically against authoritarian regime. Then, down the line, I realize that the returnism is deeply rooted in colonialism and the colonialism is rooted in imperialism and capitalism, and the misogyny are also derived from this. It's a system that you have to completely dismantle and it's a very tedious and long and difficult task. But how do I go about it? For me, the first one is education. The more people know and the more people understand it makes a huge difference, because, unfortunately, our educational system is extremely colonized. We haven't decolonized our education in Togo. Till day, we are told in Togo that the person who abolished slavery is this very nice French guy called Victor Chouchet, and I grew up believing it and millions of Togolizian people grew up believing it, and millions of Francophone Africans grew up believing that slavery was abolished single-handedly by a single French man. There was never a single reference about the struggle of people in Haiti, in Guyana, in the United States, of how slavery revolted. And the Nat Turners, the Toussaint Louverture, the Jacques Desalins? We have never heard a single of those names. Slavery was started by white people and then, when they realized it wasn't, neither stopped and capitalism was started by white people, and when they were not happy about it, they stopped it. So, literally, our education system prevents us from accessing the truth and true history.
Farida Nabourema:Number one thing that I have been doing has been writing. Over the past 10 years, I've written more than 500 articles. I try as much as I am able to to do that. In the past, I used to also use other channels, such as WhatsApp and YouTube, to give people facts, and I am actually revolted each time I share those facts and I receive hundreds of messages of people saying we didn't know that, and I feel as angry as they felt, because it's like your whole life is a scam, because it's just like everything I've been taught about myself, my people, my history, my nation is false. Then, explaining things in a different context, because sometimes, because conversations are not even started, people only reflect what they were told was the right thing, and when you provide a deep analysis and deconstruct things for them, they understand.
Farida Nabourema:One example I give is the fact that my mom's grandmom was a construction worker. She used to build homes and paint homes from scratch, and that was her job. And back in the days, building homes was women's job. Women were the one building the homes, they were the one doing the painting, they were the one doing the plumbry and everything. And when colonialism came, they would only recruit the men into the construction sector. And today, by over 95%, construction workers in Togo are male and if you're a woman and you want to venture into that, they feel like what kind of woman are you? You're not a good African woman.
Farida Nabourema:But the real African women for centuries were building their own homes. It wasn't until very recently, because my mom's grandma died in 1980. So that's barely 30 years since she passed away. So we have a generation of those women who are still alive today, who grew up building homes, who didn't have any segregation when it comes to the labor sector.
Farida Nabourema:Women could be traders, they could be teachers, they could be healthcare workers, they could be in construction, in fields and sectors that were deemed completely masculine in the Western world, because when the colonialists came they changed everything, and today we have multiple campaigns promoting women's education and I feel outraged whenever I see those campaigns portraying African societies that are so misogynistic to the point where they don't want to send their daughters to school, they want to send the boys to school and keep the daughters at home. But the reality is that when the first colonial schools were opened, they were not taking girls. It started as the colonial schools refusing to enroll girls in the first place. Then, eventually, when they started taking the girls, there were no jobs available for the girls.
Farida Nabourema:So the parents coming from poor communities felt like, if we have enough money to send one kid to school, well, what I said, the one kid that we know will get a job and it's the world. So those are changes and people had to adapt to situations which created a gender disparity we have in education today, but it's portrayed as being typically African, typically primitive, but it's not rooted in that. So they're constructing the needs through education. In addition, organizing communities. Organizing communities by creating small groups of people, young people, who come together and debate around those issues, so that we live in a society where everybody's voice matters, where we bring in different ideas and see ways we can challenge the system at multiple levels. And we do this through art, we do this through music, we do this through streets, actions, community service and many others.
Marie Berry:Can you give us an example of that, how you're organizing people through art and through straight movements and things like that?
Farida Nabourema:So we have a film, a documentary coming up, but before those documentaries, one of the things we were doing was to actually organize I don't know how to say the other in English the place in communities where we use fiction to tell the real stories, because usually when you do it under fiction you get less in trouble than when you're doing it in real life. You can all put it under the banner of acting. So we had those. And then we had reading clubs where we assign books for each club in different communities for young people to actually come and read. We have recently launched what we are calling a digital democracy program, and I really wanted to see this because I believe that the internet has played a huge role in helping us organize and because dictators are fighting back, we as citizens have to also take a step further and to organize digitally. So the digital democracy program has three components. The first one is that we created a community of young people who we are training, who have been trained to train others on how to use social media for social justice. So they train them on how to create hashtags, how to use Facebook and Twitter and use them in different channels, how to create stories and how to share those stories among the communities. Then we have another one, which is about financial liberation, because, in total, the government have a huge control over the financial system and they say in French la hajjol, you know the like? Money is the nerve of the world. So literally, spending money has been a problem and people are now afraid to donate and to contribute to fundraising because they don't want to get in trouble with the regime. So now we have explored using the Bitcoin as an alternative for fundraising in Togo and we created a special program called EGAE, which in our language means new money, and we are training young people, especially women, about how to trade Bitcoin asset, bitcoin as a form of payments, invest in Bitcoin in many other ways, because we believe that we need to be part of that monetary revolution.
Farida Nabourema:But then, at the same time, we have to have an alternative to the government financial system, because we can trade Bitcoin asset forms of payments and donations with Bitcoin in all anonymity, while preserving the data and information of our members.
Farida Nabourema:And in addition to that, we have invested in a mobile application, and the application actually uses the mesh system, and this weekend we have the idea of having something like this because we have witnessed internet shutdowns in Togo in the past, sometimes social media shutdown. Whenever we announce, the citizens announce a protest, the government will shut down all means of communication, thinking that by doing this they will have all the protests and create fear and prevent communication among organizers. So we are spirits using the mesh system for communication only among some activists, and now we have developers working for us to build a whole app on which we can connect thousands of people without the internet. This will reduce costs in terms of accessing a messaging system and it will also prevent the government from having any form of control of our communication means. So if you cut the telephone and the internet, they are fine, they can do it. We also have an alternative. So the digital democracy program is something that we hope will help us align tech with our struggle for democracy in Togo.
Marie Berry:That's remarkable. I mean the internet shutdowns, of course, and the tight control of particular sites is just and digital surveillance, and absolutely it's becoming the kind of calling card of all authoritarian regimes around the world, and I think what you're doing here is a really innovative way of trying to work within that reality but circumvent, while also protecting the people that are involved in this work.
Farida Nabourema:While the Bitcoin provides an opportunity for governments to invest in funds, which they have been doing in many forms, it's also providing an alternative to citizens to also raise funds, keep their money in a safe way that the government cannot control or access Exactly. So it's for us to have alternatives, because there's one thing that I preach in my teams and my community is that when the government shoots one bullet, they kill one person at a time, but when we shoot with the digital space, the internet, we touch millions of people at a time. So we have technology on our side to touch spaces, to enter communities, to reach people that we couldn't have reached in the past, and we should be able to use that technology to innovate in our activism. We have to be a step ahead of them.
Farida Nabourema:It wasn't until 2020 and 2021 that the whole world started focusing on Pegases. Togo was one of the very first users on the continent, but before then we already got dozens and dozens of TogoLiz activists and journalists trade on that Pegases. So knowing and anticipating the threats and finding solutions to counter them and finding alternatives is the best way for us to ensure we continue this struggle and we eventually win it. So, for me, whatever is going to increase our chances of mobilizing resources and empowering people in this struggle is very much welcomed, as long as it's not illegal. Even if it's illegal in Togo, it depends on the type of legalities we could still challenge. But the most important thing for us is to keep mobilizing resources and strengthening people so that we eventually win this struggle one day.
Marie Berry:Absolutely. You have a remarkable ability to find those alternative structures and to build them if they don't already exist, and it seems like you've been doing that for you. Thank you.
Farida Nabourema:I'm still learning too. The good thing about social activism is that there is not a single struggle that you are actually leading that people haven't fought in the past, because the issue that we are facing in terms of oppression, abuse, dictatorship, misogyny, colonialism have existed for as long as we could remember and people have done amazingly well in different contexts and some have overcome those systems. And back in 2016, when I decided to dedicate my focus entirely on this activism because I was living in the US back then, I lived in the US for eight years before deciding to move back, initially to Togo. I went back to Togo at first and didn't turn out well and had to leave again. My goal was to not go back to the US, but to stay around and to seek as much help as possible from activists from other African countries that were fighting the terrorists or that have fought the terrorists and were successful. And I was lucky. I had an amazing team that really believes in me, because they have seen how dedicated I was to the struggle, and they supported this venture in many ways by purchasing tickets for my flat to go to other countries to meet activists from there, just to exchange from them and try to find out what they were doing new or different from us in Togo, because we felt like in Togo we were just cursed, because we were like we have been fighting this for decades and countries have been winning and we are still at the same place. So we felt like maybe there's something people are doing different that we don't know and we should try to approach them to find out how they were doing it.
Farida Nabourema:So in that effort, I travel all over the continent. I started with the Gambia, because I used to protest with Gambian activists in Washington DC every weekend and then they succeeded. And then Nigeria and Ghana and Tanzania and Bukina Faso, senegal, and by going through, I used to just buy a ticket and show up and try to find a contact there or somebody who knows somebody there, and I asked to speak to movement leaders, activists and organizers and I'll spend days or weeks in those countries just to have meetings with them and to learn from them. It was just a knowledge sharing opportunity and whatever I learned from them, I got the results and I go back to my team and I said this is what they are doing that could be helpful to us, and that's how we ended up creating the Togo Lease Civil League because initially we only had the former Go movement and the former Go movement wasn't registered. So fundraising outside of Togo was a little difficult for countries where people want to donate to a tax exempt organization. So we decided to register Togo Lease Civil League.
Farida Nabourema:As a result of that, and even meeting people that introduced me to Human Rights Foundation so I could speak at the Oslo Freedom Forum, it was true Another activist that I met in the Gambia that introduced me to somebody else who introduced me to them. So I realized that networking is the most powerful tool in social justice and luckily, when you invited me at EGLE at the University of Denver, I also made wonderful connections there. You won't believe it, but thanks to one of the participants of EGLE, we were able to find a good lawyer in Israel who helped us file a claim at the Department of Defense in Israel to open up all the archives about Israeli gun sales and weapon sales to the government of Togo. It's incredible. When I came to my team and I said we got a lawyer in Israel, they're like for real. I'm sure we are afraid of you.
Farida Nabourema:How in the world did you get a lawyer in Israel? I said I have connections, but these are amazing connections that I made through other activists like myself, in multiple spaces and ideas. Some of them you just have to add a little twist to it to suit your own environment. But don't be afraid to seek the help, and I have been receiving a lot of. There are many, countless suggestions and proposals and support that we receive from people. Some of them, we can fulfill all of them, but those that we think are completely necessary to us, we just go for it. So what I will say is I cannot claim that I am so smart that I came up with all those ideas by myself.
Farida Nabourema:But I was lucky to be in spaces where people shared some innovations and people shared. They were generous to share their network with me and connect me with the right people who helped us create those programs and launch those different initiatives. And I'm sure we're only getting started.
Marie Berry:Oh, frida, I love that so much and I just think it really underscores the power of connection and of networks and of the way in which we are all facing similar systems of oppression that uphold each other and that it will take a collective sort of. It will take many, many, many small and middle and large scale collective initiatives that are focused on justice, that are focused on freedom, that are focused on eradicating some of these oppressive systems in order for all of us to face the possibility of a more free future. I believe that so deeply and I think your work really tests to that.