Kukataa: An Afrocentric Exploration of Nongovernmental Organization Refusal in the Context of Female Genital Cutting in Tanzania

Abstract

Female genital cutting is often depicted in media spheres through numerical statistics and one to two-lined captions that do not effectively capture the full humanity of the Black girls and women they are describing. The numerical statistics and pictorial captions provide myopic and ahistorical interpretations of African people and paint Africa as a homogenous continent riddled by its own barbarity. Through an Afrocentric analysis of the practice of female genital cutting, Tanzania people and people throughout the African diaspora can be imagined through a Sankofa return to their Maatic and ubuntu humanity. The Maatic and ubuntu lens opens the radical possibility to understand that Black girls and women do not need to be circumcised to reach the fullest potential of their humanity. Using the Afronographic methodology, rooted in the Afrocentric metatheory, I analyzed how young Black women can become rhetorically lost in translation through nongovernmental organization (NGO) rhetoric, an extension of the fieldwork I did at the Network Against Female Genital Mutilation (NAFGEM) in 2019. Additionally, I deconstructed NAFGEM’s refusal to allow me to conduct interviews in 2022 unless their NGO personnel were present. The refusal revealed how NGOs become discursive embodiments of Eurocentricity invested in maintaining victimizing narratives based on the debasement of African humanity. Therefore, an Afrocentric metatheoretical analysis proliferates Eurocentric algorithms by centering the Kemetic humanizing principles of Ma’at and ubuntu to prioritize the word magic (nommo) of Black women and girls.Africology and African American Studie