2 envoys exude African vitality
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Rwandan Ambassador Emma-Francoise Isumbingabo, left, and South African Ambassador Nozuko Gloria Bam talk about the progress made by their countries on female empowerment during a recent interview at a Seoul hotel. / Korea Times photo by Oh Young-jin
By Oh Young-jin
At one table at an open restaurant in the foyer of a downtown hotel, a discussion was underway about women’s empowerment.
The din coming from the busy environment
passersby, employees and paging noises
couldn’t dampen two passionate ambassadors from Africa.
The subject of women’s rights is often about the lack of progress and the resulting inequality.
But the two
Rwandan Ambassador Emma-Francoise Isumbingabo and South African Ambassador Nozuko Gloria Bam
talked about the results
remarkable ones in such a short period of time.
For one who participated in that conversation and often played the role of the listener, what was most striking was the conviviality with which the two ambassadors sometimes finished a sentence the other started and the infectious sense of camaraderie pulled in a bystander who happened to be within an ear shot of their chat.
“Soon,” Amb. Isumbingabo said. “Why not?” answered Amb. Gloria Bam.
The question was when they thought their respective countries would have a female head of state. But before the two ambassadors’ gender, came their efforts to overcome humble beginnings.
The South African ambassador talked about the lack of electricity and tap water in the village in which she was born and lived during her childhood.
“When I woke up, I would take cattle to pasture and fetch water from a nearby river,” said the South African ambassador, when it was observed that she must have been from a well-to-do family.
She assumed that the Rwandan envoy shared similar beginnings to hers, Amb. Isumbingabo said yes and no at the same time. “I was not born in a village,” she said but added that in her childhood, about 1 percent of Rwandans enjoyed the benefit of electricity.
She remembered that she studied with the help of candlelight.
“I am lucky,” Amb. Isumbingabo said, when asked how she made it to be an ambassador to a major country such as Korea.
Her story was sad but inspirational.
As told in such tales as Hotel Rwanda, the 2004 movie about inter-tribal genocide, the nation was devastated with the slaughter of its population.
Both men and women suffered but the men were targeted more, resulting in the lopsided ratio by gender: six to four in women’s favor.
Everybody was called in to rebuild the nation. Women have been given chances they didn’t have before. Now, Rwandan women account for 40 percent of the Cabinet,
nearly 50 percent of duty ministers and 64 percent of lawmakers. About 43 percent of judges are women.
For the young generation, the ratio by sex is now about equal, the ambassador said.
“Now, boys and girls are taught to respect each other,” she said. “Our society is very much merit-based. I am the ambassador to Korea by dint of my ability to perform.”
She also said that all this has been made possible by what she called the “right leadership” who chooses people on the basis of ability and gives them discretion to fulfill their potential.
For South Africa, the abolition of apartheid was the key to the equity-based society, unleashing people to engage in a test of talent.
“When I was young, a male child was expected to be head of the family,” said Amb. Gloria Bam. Now she added that the system has been altered to provide a level playing field for women as well.
Listening to them would invite one to dare to think that gender equity may be closer.