Colonial legacies

Colonial powers in Africa took great interest in African women’s fertility and reproduction, largely because they wanted plentiful local labour. Administrators were concerned about high maternal and infant mortality rates, which appeared to them to be linked to FGM/C. The concerns of British (and to some extent French) missionaries were different, though attitudes were not uniform (e.g. see Murray 1976). Protestant missionaries in Kenya saw FGM/C and related cultural practices as ‘backward’, unhealthy, indecent, and morally repugnant, and tried to stop them (ibid.; Thomas 2003). By the late 1920s, some Protestant missions in Kenya were expelling Africans who were pro-FGM/C; others chose to be more tolerant, leading to deep divisions between different missionary societies. The expulsions led many Africans to rebel, boycott mission-run churches and schools, and set up independent churches. The state, meanwhile, was more reluctant to ban FGM/C, preferring to leave it to Local Native Councils of elders (ibid.; Murray 1976). Though other factors including land hunger were key drivers of the Mau Mau rebellion, the so-called ‘female circumcision crisis’ (1928–31) helped to stoke this anti-colonial revolt that paved the way for independence.1 Mau Mau was the name the British gave to this rebel movement (1952–60). Its supporters called it the Land and Freedom Army. Clitoridectomy and attempts to ban it became intertwined with (largely) Kikuyu resentment over land loss, forced labour, and other grievances (e.g. Anderson 2018; Frederiksen 2008; Pedersen 1991; Thomas 2003).

In British-ruled Northern Sudan, some medical missionaries and midwifery trainers were in favour of medicalisation, as were some missionaries in Kenya (see Murray 1976 on the Reverend William Rapley; Thomas 2003).2 Thomas cites the case of a Methodist nurse who taught her Kenyan trainees how to make a small incision in the scar tissue of cut women who faced problems in labour, in order to loosen it. The development of this technique ‘attests to how colonial medicine adapted to excision. Within hospitals, amelioration made more sense than obstinate condemnation’ (Thomas 2003:74). Boddy (2007b:5, also 2008) describes how British midwives in Sudan in the 1920s and 1930s ‘devised an attenuated form of infibulation as a cautiously remedial first step’ toward eradication, which is mirrored in some medicalised practices today. By the 1940s, the colonial government tried to end pharaonic cutting, against the backdrop of a British parliamentary campaign against infibulation (see Carver 2024 for parliamentary debates on Kenya and Sudan from the 1920s to 1940s; for Kenya, Thomas 2003). But a 1946 prohibition was unenforceable and sparked a revolt (Boddy 2008; Garcia 2021:283; Gruenbaum and Ahmed 2022).

In French West Africa the practice was also a subject for concern and investigation. In August 1949 the British Colonial Office contacted its French counterpart to ask what measures France was taking to combat FGM/C in its colonies (Garcia 2021:278ff).3 There was a change of government in France in 1949, and an investigation into FGM/C was not followed up. Dr Léon Pales, based in Dakar, had proposed to government ‘a synthesis of numerous studies by scientists, doctors and ethnographers’ who had examined the issue. Pales was also a Professor of Anthropology (Garcia 2021:286). French medical and ethnographic studies, informed by racial and moral theories, influenced official thinking. But the authorities decided not to intervene. Doctors said that attempts to stop it did not work. The government sought to avoid a rebellion, while missionaries feared losing their converts. As in Kenya, Protestant missionaries in French colonies tended to be more virulently anti-FGM/C than Catholics. Leonard (1996:261) writes of Chad that ‘Catholic clergy have been more tolerant of local practices, preferring to integrate them, where possible, into the life of the church, and generally taking a less combative stance’.

What are the other historical continuities? The movement towards harm reduction is one, as is empowerment through encouraging access to education for girls and women. Some may see the intrinsic violence of colonialism mirrored in (some of) the narratives used in anti-FGM/C campaigning that explicitly promotes the use of violent language and graphic imagery to describe FGM/C. Actively encouraging moral outrage and condemnation might gain the attention of governments and international donors, but we should also question whether this is an appropriate approach and what impact it might have on different stakeholders. Furthermore, some Africans regard moves against FGM/C as a neocolonial attack on their cultural traditions and bodily rights, just as they did in an earlier era (see Kamau, Chapter 12). In addition, some African practitioners and activists working towards FGM/C eradication are sensitive to being told to ‘change’ their culture, and regard this as deeply offensive and neocolonial.