Empowering women through reservations of elective positions is
problematic. Although the proportion of seats held by women in national
legislative houses have increased, they are still very low ( 16 percent in South
Asia and 23 percent in sub-Saharan Africa). 56 One possible solution would
be to implement political affirmative action in statutory or constitutional
regimes. However, this strategy fails to account for other dynamics at play
in many of the countries in the two regions. Despite talk of democracy in
Africa, John Agyekum Kufuor, former president of Ghana and champion of
democracy in the region, notes that in reality, “in most of these countries,
people are not allowed freedom and opportunity to choose their own leaders
through genuine elections.” 57 Some would say that rigged elections are the
norm, with the result that most of the people that emerge as “winners” are
handpicked by the government in power. 58 The ultimate consequence of such
chicanery is that even where a substantial number of women manage to get
“elected,” they are hardly the kind that would take fistula or any other aspects
of maternal health seriously. 59 Reversing the status quo requires action on
the part of the people, those laboring under the yoke of the treachery and
tyranny represented by this sort of imposition.
C. Maternal Health
By describing fistula as a “severe maternal morbidity which can affect any
woman or girl who suffers from prolonged or obstructed labor without timely
56. Id.
57. William Yaw Owusu, Bad Governance Is Africa’s Enemy – Kufuor, DAILY GUIDE
(Dec. 12, 2013), http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Bad-
governance-is-Africa-s-enemy-Kufuor-294899.
58. See ROBERT A. DIBIE, NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGOS) AND
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA 12 (2007). (“The lack of electoral
legitimacy in several African countries constitutes one of the reasons why the political
environment is not conducive for a dynamic economy. The history of many African nations
also reveals that most of their political leaders do not like to relinquish their position or power
to other person. If they do at all, it had to be a hand-picked successor. This practice has made
most African leaders to leave office unceremoniously because they are either forced out or
they are unable to rig elections. (citation omitted) Further, many African countries do not have
periodic, open, competitive, free and fair elections. As a result, rigged elections do not provide
political executive the mandate to govern, rather it encourage [sic] them to be less accountable
and transparent to the citizens”).
59. See Sibonokuhle Ndlovu & Sani Boniface Mutale, Emerging Trends in Women’s
Participation in Politics in Africa, 3 AM. INT’L J. CONTEMP. RES. 72, 76 (2013). (“The large
numbers of women in elected offices have not fully transformed into considerable legislative
and resource gains. In this regard, while quotas are important in addressing the exclusion of
women from the public political sphere, women have not fully benefitted much from the
system. In most African countries women in the reserved seats as result of the quota systems
have been like chess pieces, as they have been moved by men. Thus there are several issues
which need to be improved or changed for women to wholly benefit from the emerging trends
in their political participation.”)
