A playwright in Africa hopes to break the cultural silence on rape

BAMAKO, Mali — Under a spotlight in an otherwise dark room, Oliva Ouedraogo held up a piece of fabric that looked stained with blood. “Long live the girl!” she cried, her voice competing with the loud hum of a generator.

Ouedraogo was starring in her own play — “Queen” (known by its French name “Reine”) — at the Acte Sept cultural center in Bamako, Mali, earlier this month. More performances are planned in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.

It depicts the fictional journey of a girl who is raped by her stepfather on the night of his marriage to her mother, and decides to speak out against her family’s wishes. Ouedraogo said she wrote the play to address the culture of silence about rape and sexual assault.

“I cannot understand that you could be raped, and it’s you who is considered dirty, trash and — excuse my language — a whore. It’s you who must hide from the world,” she said.

Ouedraogo began acting in plays at 11 or 12, when she took interest in a theater company near her childhood home in Burkina Faso. She said what pushed her to write “Queen” was her anger that rape victims feel obliged to stay quiet in order to avoid familial conflict.

“I have to break this barrier of silence. In Africa, these barriers are here. Too many,” she said.

Adama Traore, director of Acte Sept, said sexual violence is felt in every corner of the world, from Africa to Europe, but is rarely talked about.

“So, at some point, we need to be able to confront the audience with these dark sides of ourselves,” he said.

In Mali, gender-based violence is widespread and underreported. A 2018 health survey by the Malian National Institute of Statistics reported that 45% of women aged 15-49 have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lives, the vast majority of this perpetrated by a family member – mostly their husbands, followed by parental figures. The report noted that of those that have experienced this violence, 68% have never spoken about it to anyone.

In comparison, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network in the United States reports that one in nine girls under the age of 18 experience sexual abuse or assault. Amnesty says one in 20 women aged 15 and over in the European Union has been raped.

Mariama Samake, the director of the Malian organization Girl in Distress, said the culture of silence that Ouedraogo campaigns against is widespread.

“I can say that in every family, we have girls that have been victims of rape,” she said. “Mali is a patriarchal society, so these victims are forced to keep quiet, to not speak.”

Ouedraogo said that she hopes that governments can prioritize laws that protect victims, and that talking about sexual assault in the open can encourage them to speak about it and get help.

“There is not a space where these victims can find each other, or have psychological care or a psychologist who can listen to them, talk to them. There just aren’t. So we see these girls and we say that ‘She’s crazy, she’s not well in the head,’ but no. There is something she has suffered, and that she just can’t express,” she said.

“So for me, the question is how to push these victims to come out of the shadows.”

___ The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.