Her name is Theresa Kachindamoto, and she is a senior chief – political leader of a region with a population of about 900,000 people.
She didn’t run for election; she was appointed, without her knowledge, while she was living and working in a completely different part of the country. She just received a call one day telling her to come back to her childhood home, because she was in charge now.
So she did; and when she arrived, she discovered widespread sexual abuse of children. She browbeat 50 uncooperative local leaders into accepting her decision to annul all the marriages. She then fired four of them when they continued to allow children to be married off in their areas. She still faces widespread opposition from parents who consider it their right to sexually abuse their daughters if they want to; but Kachindamoto very evidently does not give a fuck, and is continuing to use political and legal means to protect children in the region.
She’s not just an anonymous do-gooder; she’s an effective political leader despite incredibly difficult circumstances. Theresa Kachindamoto.
I used to work at the National Gallery in London. Old men came up to me fairly regularly to complain about the young girls (and sometimes the tourists of a particular ethnicity or nationality) taking selfies with the art. I’d smile and say, it’s an interesting diptych because so many of the most celebrated works in the Gallery are portraits– the ‘selfies’ of yesteryear– and indeed, Van Eyck’s /Portrait of a Man/ (1433) may be the earliest known panel self portrait, ant the very least in western art history, so framing oneself in that context, comparing the methods of portraiture over a span of a little under 600 years, is at its heart a commentary on the human desire to remember and be remembered, to catalog one’s existence and give it authenticity.
They did not like that let me tell you.
Thank you for fighting the good fight, unicornsandbutane.
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