In South Sudan it is perfectly okay for women and girls to strut their breasts in public devoid of any clothing. It used to be so prosaic that no one really bats an eye lid even today if they see an uncovered bosom strolling down the street. The South Sudanese culture deems it an acceptable cultural practice that dates back thousands of years.(Perhaps going as far back as when the only cover on breasts was the shade of nearby trees in the garden of Eden)
The irony is that women are now being punished for covering them up (at least in part) by wearing what are considered decadent western-styled clothes. The people who sell these clothes also face instant deportation if they are foreigners and constant harassment by the fledgling South Sudanese police or more aptly the police militia.
It derives a weird kind of logic in which propriety is turned on it's head and one is left to wonder what can be more explicit than the barest of breasts. If adornment of little or no article of clothing is acceptable as the norm --far much more explicit in my humble view -- then isn't it a bit hypocritical to lunge at young women and traders who wear or sell these clothes that are considered visually evocative but which still in any case cover most parts of the body?
Anyone who watched the cultural dancers during the Declaration of Independence of R.o.S.S. would understand what am talking about. I will not pretend here to know what are the markers of propriety and the cultural context of Sudanese dress codes. Though I am aware, that what was televised globally during that joyous occasion and ceremony in itself does not imply that this is the way people there normally dress.
Nonetheless anyone who has been to the northern parts of Kenya going all the way into the hinterland of South Sudan right up to the outskirts of Juba, will know that what the civilized world considers as adult nudity is still very much a common sight in these regions.
What is happening in Juba is like the Turkana admonishing and punishing their teenage girls and women for wearing tank tops yet most of the time they are stark naked from the waist up, barring the intricate mass of beads around their neck .
All of our african societies had similar dress codes barely a century ago. Yet it seems so foreign and outlandish a thing today for women in modern african societies to expose their torsos. You have to jump from South Sudan all the way down to the mesmerizing reed dance in the enclave kingdom of Swaziland to see as many uncovered breasts in a single place on the African continent.
In the massive continental area in between, the practice or rather fashion has disappeared -- you can blame bashful christian missionaries and colonials for that. It was they who hammered into the natives heads that going about practically naked was not what Christ would want and that nudity and modesty don't mix. Another example perhaps of the utter savagery of the domineering nature of the colonialists, who nevertheless successfully made us their ardent clones.
It is all in the mind I guess. What is taken to be acceptable by a given society and what that society does in reaction to what it perceives as threats to its social fabric (particularly with regard to morality, cultural practice and ethics) is that society's business. But within the context of a globalized world and with the increasing convergence of values, that which is deemed as culturally acceptable is bound to change even in the remote villages of South Sudan.
M. Wycliff
Nairobi,
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