Crystal Asige may be visually impaired, but she has set her sights on making the world a better place, fighting for other people with disabilities. Despite having suffered from glaucoma in her early 20s, Asige forged ahead and was appointed as a senator in Kenya’s parliament. She has been the official representative of the disabled community since 2022.
The 33-year-old, who goes by the abbreviation “VIP,” which stands for “visually impaired person,” has changed her title to “visually impaired parliamentarian.”
The trailblazer, an established musician and activist, told TV47, “I did not plan to join politics. Everything in my life has just been God surprising me everyday. I think what has been constant in my life is using my voice.”
However, she told TRT Afrika, “Becoming a senator is an extension of my voice and my God-given gift of singing. Earlier, I would use my singing to advocate people’s rights. Now, as a senator, I speak up for rights.”
Her experience fighting bullies on the playground at her early childhood school inspired her to become an activist and advocate. Rather than complaining to her parents, she would go home and sing about the intimidation she had endured.
Asige first felt her eyesight worsening in high school, and when she moved to the UK in 2007 to study film and theatre at Bristol’s University of West of England, she was obliged to have an eye checkup, which revealed she had glaucoma.
She had multiple procedures to relieve the pressure in her eyes, but she remained miserable and even considered suicide when doctors said she would go blind by 2013.
After finding comfort in music, she put out her debut album, Karibia (Get Closer), in 2014. The album’s lead hit, “Pulled Under,” went to No. 1 on one of the UK charts in 2016 and won her many accolades.
Even though her singing career was booming, she still had to gradually establish herself as a public speaker given that she had to speak in front of sizable audiences across the globe in a legislative capacity.
“I hardly spoke during my first few months in Parliament. It was intimidating being among all those political heavyweights who had been in the field for up to 30 years,” she recounted.
Yet, when she spoke, “my peers started seeing me as an expert in my field, not just the little girl who had been brought there on affirmative action.”
She recently released her song “Tattoo” in response to the rise in femicide and gender-based violence in Kenya. She also successfully lobbied for women lawmakers to wear black on Valentine’s Day this year in place of red in support of the women who have been abused physically or have lost their lives to gender-based violence. On the same day, she moved a motion to adjourn Parliament to discuss the femicide cases.
In an unprecedented turn of events that placed her among the nation’s top senators, four proposals that the visionary had introduced for discussion in Parliament were unanimously passed by February 2024.
Included in the bills are the Learners with Disability Bill, which aims to integrate disabled students into mainstream classrooms; the Kenya Sign Language Bill, which guarantees deaf learners equal opportunities within the educational system; and the Startup Bill, which acknowledges the critical role start-ups play in drawing foreign direct investment and combating youth unemployment, including that of individuals with disabilities.
Even so, Asige feels particularly proud of the Persons with Disability Bill, which aims to do away with the Persons with Disability Act of 2003.
She explained, “The previous legislation ensured that people with disability are tax-exempt once they get into employment. But what about people with severe disabilities who cannot get jobs because they are fully dependent on their caregivers?”
In addition, the singer-activist expressed her desire for more disabled people to enter politics to draft laws that specifically support the cause of empowering disabled communities.
About 918,000 people aged five and above have a disability in Kenya, according to the 2019 Population and Housing Census.
Asige remarked, “I am the only visually impaired parliamentarian in both the Senate and National Assembly and one of two people with disability among 67 senators. Out of 359 parliamentarians, we are about 11 people with disabilities. So, there is definitely a need for more representation.”
