Wassa, "Ifanang"! :)! I'll have to sit with this one over Ataya. Looks
like a very interesting read. Thanks for the effort and I shall finish it
later.
Chi Jaama
Joe Sambou
>From: Wassa Fatti <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: AFRICAN GENDER QUESTION IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
>Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2002 21:44:03 +0100
>
> AFRICAN GENDER QUESTION
> In historical perspectives
>
>
>
>As promised that I will get back to you on the question of women oppression
>in Africa – RE March 8 greetings – Friday, 8/03/02, here is my respond to
>your arguments regarding this issue.
>
>I am finding it difficult to understand your argument on this issue and I
>would appreciate if you can advance your theories for the purpose of
>clarity. Your argument on the question of women oppression in Africa is
>too
>general and universal in concept. It’s the universality of this issue that
>I
>have problems with and therefore disagreed with you. I am fully aware of
>the
>historical contribution of women in our various African societies and their
>present depravations in all aspects as well. I have no problem with your
>sincerity on this fundamental issue, but our failure to put things in
>historical perspective always exposes our shallowness in dealing with
>issues.
>
>Your assertion that “women have used songs and story telling instead of the
>modern forms of women organizations and demonstrations is an effort to
>trace
>the historical development of the Gambian women,” is an apolitical
>assertion
>of historical realities. I don’t know on what facts you have based your
>assertions, but I would appreciate if you can check your venomous rhetoric
>properly before releasing them without substance.
>
>You have portrayed Gambian women as static and passive beings rather than
>forces who are engaged in a struggle for justice and equality. To state
>that
>they have used songs and story telling to trace their historical
>contribution in our societies is too patronizing. Our women don’t have to
>“trace” their historical contributions to Gambian or African historical
>development; they are reclaiming it by right as part and parcel of the Pan
>African struggle for justice and development.
>
>You have also stated that you are of the “opinion that Lang Binta Samateh
>is
>not significant to the status of women.” If that is the case, why are we
>discussing the historical contribution of women in The Gambia or Africa
>today? It is just like saying that an African name is not significant to an
>African or black person named Benjamin or Yousupha. Or saying that there is
>no significance for us to speak and write in our language. The significance
>of this statement is a manifestation of how disempowered African women are
>today. It is very significant with regard to the historical contribution of
>women in African societies. Take note of it because the historical reasons
>will be shown later.
>
>Finally, before moving further, I would like to point out that your
>theories
>on this issue is too shallow and simplistic. One thing you failed to
>realize
>is that human history is a catalogue of unequal developments and for that
>matter; societies did not emerged uniformly to follow the same pattern of
>development. There were fundamental differences in structures, worldviews
>or
>philosophy and production relations among others. What therefore happened
>in
>one human patch or society in a remote corner of the world, does not
>necessarily mean that it was a universal reality and applicable to all
>other
>human societies. This idea of universality came into force as a result of
>European conquest and cultural hegemony over non- European societies. Take
>note of universality, I shall come back to it. Now let’s go back to the
>main
>issue and discuss the historical contribution of African women and the
>evolution of male oppression in Africa. I shall do my best and put it in
>historical perspective as requested by N’dey Jorbateh. Bear patience and
>any
>error is solely mine.
>
>We cannot deal with the present day African realities without the knowledge
>of the past. To deal with the genda issues or the question of the condition
>of present day African women, we should not deal with it in isolation of
>their historical past. Classical history of the ancient Ethiopian/Egyptian
>civilization in Africa will be incomplete without the historical
>contribution of African women. Similarly, the history of later African
>civilizations or empires will be useless without the contribution of
>African
>women. Africa’s historical pride in the world is the history of African
>women. All known African civilizations would have failed without the
>dynamic
>contribution of African women.
>
> The recorded involvement of African women in state/public
>affairs dated back to the beginning of our past civilizations. To fully
>understand it, we have to go back to 10 - 12 thousand years ago. The first
>prime minister in human political history in the world was in fact an
>African woman called Nebet, 3100 BC to 2345 BC. She emerged at the period
>referred to as the first five dynasties of the Ethiopian/Egyptian
>civilization. Egypt by then was just a mere region of ancient Ethiopia.
>
> Nebet was the best-known personality of her time. She was
>second
>in command to king Pepi the first of the Ethiopian/Egyptian civilization.
>Nebet’s strength was her knowledge of military science and strategies in
>defending Egypt from all invaders. It is stated that without her skills in
>military strategies, Egypt would have collapsed earlier than expected. That
>was why she was revered throughout the ancient world. There were other
>women
>contributors of that period whether as queens or being in the center of
>state/public affairs such as Peribson, Khasexham, Imohotep, Zoser, Sneferu,
>Khufu and Khafre. Through their contributions, the pace was set for some of
>the most amazing achievements the ancient world has ever witnessed. The
>great African scholar of Senegal, Cheik Anta Diop, said that this period he
>termed as the old kingdom, collapsed due to internal contradictions, the
>conflict between the rulers and the peasants. However, there was continuity
>since there were no external factors involved in its demise and it led to
>the emergence of the second period.
>
> The middle Kingdom, according to Diop, was from 2300 BC to 1370
>BC and covered the periods from the sixth to the twentieth dynasties. It
>was
>also the period of reconstruction from the ashes of the old kingdom and
>bitter lessons were learnt as well. The main features of the second kingdom
>was the evolution of administrative centralization, merit selection of men
>and women to occupy administrative posts, land distributions and protection
>of the rights to own property for economic purposes, the right to criticize
>those in position for accountability, the freedom for citizens to move and
>work wherever they pleased within the kingdom and the freedom of expression
>and the system of information gathering. This system was introduced for the
>first time in human history and the ancient Greeks later named it as the
>process of democratization. The Greeks never liked the idea, because they
>never accepted the equality of the woman to man. To them the man was
>superior. Within all these developments, included the contributions of such
>women as the Queen of Sheba, Queen Tiye among others. (See the names of
>African women rulers attached).
>
> The third period of this great African civilization, again,
>Diop
>dated it to 1090 BC to 661 BC., the twentieth to the twenty-fifth
>dynasties.
>It was a difficult period as Egypt has already spent 300 years of her
>existence fighting against coalition of invaders from the Indo-European
>world. The African Sudanese king, Piankhi, ended up sending an African army
>in a Pan African spirit to defend the beacon of African civilization and
>defeated the invaders. Egypt never recovered from that attack as an
>independent entity and the decline of the 25th dynasty began by 661 BC. The
>Queen at the time, Cleopatra, committed suicide rather than betray Africans
>to the Roman invaders.
>
> The worldview of Africans from the classical period to the era
>of the Arab and European interventions of the 7th century AD onwards into
>Africa was centered on the sacredness of the woman, as manifested in
>production relations. This worldview enhanced the internal dynamic and
>independent development of African societies.
>
> To understand the worldview of pre-colonial Africa, one need to
>understand the values African women have been deprived of in the past. The
>emergence of the philosophy behind the essence of “orisis” and “Isis” in
>classical Ethiopian/Egyptian civilization was the beginning of Africa’s
>matriarchal societies. The “orisis” and “isis” were the god and goddess of
>fertility and manifestation that two opposite forces must relate in order
>to
>continue the process of life on equal terms. The same philosophy can be
>seen
>today in Nigeria, the new yam annual festival to celebrate new life. Or
>among the Manding speaking people of West Africa, which includes the
>Mandingoe, Mende, Mossi, Bambara, Dioula, Malinke, Vai, Kpelle, Konja and
>sousou, in their annual seasonal harvest of products,“Musukoto” (old woman)
>and “Kekoto” (old man) symbolizing the production of new life. The
>significance of this worldview was the understanding of the difference
>between societies that were matriarchal and those that were patriarchal.
>That is the difference we need to understand for the sake of clarity.
>
> To start with patriarchal societies, which dominated the
>cultural foundation of the Indo-European world, women were barred or
>restricted to participate in the public affairs of the society. The
>economic
>role or contribution of women was limited. They were handed the burden of
>child bearing or rearing and reduced to follow the man wherever he moves.
>Since she has little economic value to the man or in terms of economic
>production, no use at all, it was she who has to leave her clan to join
>that
>of her husband. In some cases, she has to pay (dowry) for the man to marry
>her. The husband being the main economic force and decision maker in the
>affairs of the clan, he owned property and the family was part of his
>property. When a woman joins her husband’s clan in marriage, she has to
>automatically negate everything of her own being, including her family name
>and disappeared forever by taking the husband’s family name and become part
>of his property to produce children that will inherit the property when he
>(husband) died. In such societies, only male children will inherit late
>father’s property. This trend of European social patriarchal order and
>domination continued to this era.
>
> In the matriarchal societies as experienced in pre-colonial
>Africa, it was the opposite with regard to male/female relationship.
>African societies have been characterized by strong matriarchy. The lack of
>restriction or barring of women to participate in the public affairs of the
>society was the cultural foundation of Africans. The historical evidence is
>still available for us to see in the number of women rulers and warriors in
>pre-colonial Africa. These women were rulers and warriors in their own
>right
>as accorded to any one in the society. In many cases, a man cannot even
>become a king without the endorsement of women. Similarly, ordinary women
>without any link to royalty can excel on merits.
>
>This situation has given opportunity to women and men to participate in the
>development of society in areas such as agriculture, making of tools,
>science, technology, architecture arts, crafts and the invention of writing
>such as the Akafa writing, of which women slaves carried secretly with them
>to the plantations in the Dutch West Indies and used it as a means of
>communication among slaves to organize rebellions for freedom. In a similar
>way, women contributed to the formations of states and commerce. They also
>contributed in the specialization of labour in iron smelting, manufacture,
>mining, medicine, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, diviners, brick masons, as
>carpenters, weavers, shoemakers and potters. In many instances they had
>more
>advanced skills to produce commodities that their men used to exchange at
>the market or “Luumo” {pre-industrial forms of stock markets developed in
>many other societies).
>
>Similar developments in African history showed that women were not excluded
>in public affairs as devalued objects. They contributed significantly in
>the
>history of state formations. Read the history of the development of states
>such as the Sudan, Guinea, North and East African states, Ghana, Manding,
>Mwene Mutapa, among others, you will find that the question of the
>oppression of women in toady’s Africa has an external factor in its origin.
>I will come back to that later.
>
>Now let us turn to the next chapter regarding the oppression of women in
>Africa and place it in its historical context. One of the main the reasons
>since the classical period that led outside forces to attack the continent
>were to destroy the influence of African women in public affairs. The
>history of the male Indo-European is a history of power, control and
>ownership. (When I say Indo-European, I am referring to Europe and Middle
>Eastern continents that were in contact with Africa since the earliest
>times.) Indo-European states viewed African matriarchal society as a
>dangerous signal to the security of the male dominated societies. Their
>women were already domesticated and Africa was sending a bad message to
>them. Even the great Arab traveler and chronicler, Ibn Battuta, was
>appalled
>in 1352 to see how African women were free to become leaders To
>understand
>this reality, one needs to know the history of the economic modes of
>production in Indo-European civilizations.
>
>Both Karl Marx and Frederick Engels stated in their work on “the origin of
>the family, private property and the state,” that the exploitation and
>oppression of women has its origins in the emergence and development of a
>society stratified along class lines. They went on to assert that the
>inequalities inherent in such a society could in the final analysis be
>traced to the socio-economic formation prevalent at a particular period.
>They therefore gave examples of the European modes of production as
>primitive communal society, slave, feudal and capitalist societies.
>According to them only the primitive communal society was classless.
>
>According to Engels, in the primitive communal society, men and women were
>equal as there was in existence a division of labour between them: women
>managed the household and the rearing of children, men procured the food
>and
>the implements required. As a result of this social order, everything was
>owned in common by the community as a whole. That “this situation changed
>with the emergence of different classes in society more or less coinciding
>with the domestication of animals and the breeding of herds” therefore
>reduced the women to be domesticated too (Italics mine). Engels further
>stated, “This developed a hitherto unsuspected surplus of wealth and
>created
>entirely new social relationships.” The social changes therefore altered
>the relationship between men and women in human history. The man according
>to Engels became the dominant force as a result of his physical ability to
>capture animals. The women in this new social setting lost her public
>character and became a private property of the dominant man.
>
>Both Marx and Engels believed that their observations on the question of
>the
>oppression of women was a universal reality and applicable to all human
>societies. The observations of these two great European thinkers were
>problematic and seriously debatable in relation to Africa. The
>universalisation of this theory was born out of the idea of European
>superiority over non-Europeans and therefore all human developments should
>seen through the eyes of the European social evolution (Eurocentricism).
>Within the context of European social and economic history (patriarchy),
>they were right, but with regard to the African social and economic history
>(matriarchy), these great thinkers were wrong. African modes of production
>did not follow the same path as that of Europe and secondly, feudalism
>never
>existed in Africa.
>
>Marx and Engels were writing at a time when Europeans have already ravaged
>and dismantled African societies through slavery and on the verge of
>colonizing the African continent. History is the point for us to clarify
>this obscurity that has affected and reduced the thinking of so-called
>progressive movements in Africa to mechanical thinking. The best way to
>start my disagreement is to bring back the great African thinker, Cheik
>Anta
>Diop, into the picture.
>
>Diop (Cultural unity of Black Africa) critically analysed the modes of
>production between the North (Europe/Asia) and South (sub-Saharan
>Africa/Melanesia/pre-Columbus America) from antiquity to the emergence of
>Europe as a dominant force in global affairs. He questioned the theory of a
>universal transition from matriarchy to patriarchy and proved that Marx and
>Engels were not clear with the history of the South. Both men highly relied
>on the works of European anthropologists who conducted research in
>non-European societies. These European anthropologists were imbued with the
>hot air of European cultural superiority. They were dealing with Africans
>as
>primitive and backward peoples who have no history. Therefore any history
>they may have made must be seen through the European experience. This was
>why Diop concluded that their works were inadequate with regard to the
>cultural foundation of Africa’s matriarchal evolution.
>
>African women were not oppressed through out history as it is being
>propagated today for other reasons that I am not ready to deal with here.
>If
>African women were oppressed or domesticated throughout history, how come
>there were more women rulers in Africa than in any human society? Diop
>answered that matriarchy existed on a continent – wide scale. He cited
>evidence of this from Zimbabwe, Ghana, Congo, Bostwana, among others:
>“Women
>took part in public life and had the right to vote, decision making, they
>could become queens through merits and enjoyed legal status equal to that
>of
>men.” It’s not surprising that the first society to be ruled by a woman was
>in Africa, Queen Hatshepsut, 1500 BC, Ethiopia.
>
>Let us qualify this observation to advance the argument further. Diop
>examined the matriarchal system in Africa very seriously. The difference
>between the matriarchal system and the patriarchal system was in the
>culture
>of the value or devalue of woman in a given society. In the matriarchal
>society, the child does not inherit from the father but from his maternal
>uncle (the reason why uncles were important in African culture). The
>political rights also were transmitted through the mother. The husband
>therefore was considered as a stranger to his wife’s family, a concept
>totally opposed to that of the Indo-European patriarchal system.
>
>In addition, in the African matriarchal system, the mother occupied a
>highly
>revered position and anything that related to her was sacred, including her
>bed, which male children were not even allowed to sit or sleep. In Africa,
>this was evident of the respect accorded to the woman. It was believed that
>how a person conducts himself towards his mother will determine or not how
>he will lead a happy or settled life. In fact in The Gambia, there was a
>time a boy can insult one’s father and escape in tact, but insult someone’s
>mother was an invitation to a fight or a broken nose.
>
>Further more, throughout the African continent, the woman retains her
>family
>name or clan name, which supersedes the nuclear family. From one’s family
>or
>clan name one can trace several generations of ancestors, family history
>and
>past achievements of one’s family. Among all the African peoples, there was
>no equivalent title for “Mrs. Brown” because she married to a “Mr. Brown.”
>A
>woman retained her family name or clan name throughout marriage and for the
>rest of her life. Ties with her family remained strong. A woman also has
>right to be referred to in the naming of her child- such as “Lang Binta”
>(meaning Binta, mother of Lang).
>
>To properly assess the question of women oppression in present day Africa,
>we must search for the historical roots. The question is that if women were
>once sacred in African history, how were they dispossessed? If they were
>once equaled to African men, how did the African men domesticate them?
>Marx’s and Engels’s argument on the oppression of women would not help us,
>as both failed to show even in the European context, the transition of a
>specific society from matriarchal society to patriarchal society. In
>Africa,
>the transition from matriarchal society to patriarchal society happened
>because of external factors and not due to any internal factor or
>contradictions as some suggested. This should be the premise where any
>question of the oppression of women in Africa must begin. Otherwise the
>African man oppressed by finance capital (imperialism) will be solely
>blamed
>as the sole oppressor of the African woman. The external factors were
>slavery and colonization.
>
>The slave trade was the most destructive period that has undermined
>Africa’s
>internal dynamic and independent path to development. This period started
>the dehumanization of the African woman. The nations that raided Africa to
>capture slaves came with ready-made minds that they were capturing beasts,
>not human beings. They also came with the mind of a male chauvinist who
>considered women as nothing but objects of pleasure. That was how they
>viewed the women they left in their homelands. These chauvinistic believe
>were in fact sometimes disguised, as religious believes.
>
>Both the Arabs and Europeans (Indo-Europeans) were responsible for this
>barbaric destruction by uprooting Africans from their motherland to other
>lands to be used as beast. Arab slave trade started first on the East coast
>of Africa. Arabs were not only dealing in slavery, but also taking African
>women as sex objects. When they no longer needed them, they were killed or
>sold to another Arab male for the same purpose. The European slavery played
>the same role in Africa by shipping Africans to other parts of the world to
>work on plantations that were to serve the interest of European industrial
>development and the process of Africa’s underdevelopment. The historical
>fact with regard to slavery was that it has commodified the Africans and
>enhanced the profit and capital accumulation of European powers and made it
>possible for them to invest in the development of science and technology
>and
>transformed Europe and U.S.A to economic giants they are today.
>
>The most devastating and savage attack that would finally destroy the
>physical well-being of African states and the psychological
>dislocation of the African mind was slavery. The most despicable features
>of
>this trade were also the destruction of the self – esteem of many Africans.
>Infact, since the collapse of ancient Egypt, Arabs were kidnapping African
>Abyssinian women and using them as concubines, a trend which continued even
>during the period of the Prophets and still continuing today against Black
>African women in many Arab countries and in Africa in places like Sudan and
>Mauritania. I do not want to waste my time here on slavery. Much has been
>said about it already. The significance of it here is that it was one of
>the
>factors that contributed to the oppression of African women. It was the
>beginning of the erosion of the value and dignity of the African woman in a
>very inhuman and humiliating fashion.
>
>The second factor was colonization. The system of European domination over
>Africans. It was a reality of post slavery in Africa when Europeans decided
>to physically divide Africa among themselves as they wish without
>consultation. By the early twentieth century, colonial empires were
>associated with ideas of national greatness, pride, competitiveness and the
>survival of the fittest in the world of power and exploitation. The
>“natives” were to be civilized by the Europeans and for that matter; vast
>areas of Asia and Africa were forcefully occupied. The objectives however
>were different as the main reason of occupying vast areas of Africa and
>Asia
>was to exploit their raw materials and other resources, including human
>resources, for the benefit of metropolitan or European states.
>
>Through colonization or the physical domination of Africans, European laws
>were imposed on them. European culture was introduced and everything that
>was associated with Africa was portrayed as backward, primitive,
>uncivilized
>and barbaric. African religion and African gods were considered to be
>“pagan” believes or “haram” by people who have no understanding of the
>African environment. This was the beginning of the control of the African
>mind by foreign intruders, whether Arab or European.
>
>If slavery contributed to the dismantling of African matriarchal societies,
>colonization was to reorganize and remolded the old structures into
>something different to suit their interest in order to further disempower
>African women. After dividing Africa among themselves at the Berlin
>conference in 1884-1885, each newly created artificial African state was
>also internally divided by grouping communities into districts, divisions
>and regions, to make or render tax collectors and colonial officers to
>enforce and monitor colonial policies. This form of colonial practice has
>allowed them either to rule directly or indirectly, depending on the nature
>of colonization.
>
>Through this process, social relationships among Africans were also
>artificially created to render us dependent and stagnant in history. This
>is why the so-called “traditions” in Africa today are by no means the true
>image of pre-colonial African traditions. In the pre-colonial African
>traditions, men and women were equal in participating in the affairs of the
>society and women oppression and torturing of women were virtually unknown.
>Further more, in pre-colonial Africa, kinship relationship was a
>manifestation or expression of production relations as demonstrated in the
>matriarchal period of the continent.
>
>What introduced the oppression of women in Africa was the Western colonial
>economic penetration into Africa, which has destroyed pre-colonial African
>societies and transformed African traditional societies. In the process
>they
>reduced the work and function of African women in society as the producers
>of cheap labour force to serve the profit interest of Western imperialism.
>That is, colonial forces needed laobour in the mines and the cash crop
>plantations of the colonized states and male laobour force was preferred.
>African societies were forcefully changed from matriarchal societies to
>patriarchal societies as experienced in the Indo-European world. African
>societies were no longer to serve the interest and development of Africans,
>but the interest of the economic demands of the Western world, which
>reality
>is still killing us today.
>
>Profit making in any situation required human labour. Under colonialism,
>the
>recruitment of labour was usually through force. African male labour was
>needed for the construction of structures that were to make the removal of
>raw materials from Africa to the Western world easier. To serve that
>purpose, docks, roads, railways, wharves, mines and plantations spread all
>over the colonies. At the same time taxes were introduced by the colonial
>forces as a strategy to recruit labour through force payment of taxes.
>Africans were longer in control of their own flesh, but alienated from
>their
>land and their own flesh. They have to work to earn cash in order to pay
>taxes and feed their families.
>
>This tendency caused adult African men in the 1920s to migrate and shifting
>from village to the towns, from country to country or from Africa to Europe
>to sell cheap labour in search of cash. These movements of labour was
>either
>as a result of colonial compulsion as seen in the case of colonial Upper
>volta (Burkinafaso), or voluntary migration as seen in the Senegalese
>migrants of St. Louise, who settled in the Banjul area to work as labourers
>in the construction of colonial wharves. That was what brought the Joof,
>Taal, Njai, Jon, Jeng, Faye, Secka, Sallah, Nyang and N’dure surnames in
>the
>colonial settlement of Bathurst (Banjul). The labour force that remained in
>the rural communities was tied to the land to produce cash crops for the
>colonial economy. In The Gambian case, men were to produce groundnuts for
>the colonial market and women were to produce rice to feed the men to
>survive as a labour force. Those who can not stand the burden abandoned the
>land and migrated to the towns and became labourers. Thus, surnames such as
>Jaiteh, Kamara, Ceesay, Samateh, Fatty, Dibba, Conteh, Saidy, Barrow and
>Marong appeared in the settlement of colonial Bathurst. It was very late in
>the 1940s and 1950s, before rural migrants who settled in the Banjul area
>were allowed to bring their wives to join them, thanks to the anti-colonial
>campaigns of the late Rev. J.C. Faye and Edward Frances Small.
>
>These movements of the male African labour has its own consequences in the
>communities they migrated from, as women were left with the burden of child
>bearing and rearing which paved the way for the domestication of the once
>noble, mighty and gallant African women. This reality happened as observed
>by the late A.M. Babu of Tanzania, because Africans were no longer
>consuming
>what they produce and consuming what they were not producing. What this
>indicated was a double barrel reality: African women were reduced to be
>dependent on men who earned wages and the African colonies reduced to be
>dependent on European finance capital (imperialism).
>
>To ensure that women were put in their “proper” place, the colonial system
>stereotyped them as being lazy, weak and conservative and therefore men
>must
>become heads of households since they were the breadwinners through earning
>wages. As a result, colonial laws were enacted in ordinances to discourage
>women migration. This has left the men in some cases to become seasonal
>migrants as seen in The Gambia, to come to the towns after rainy seasons to
>work as labourers or petty traders and returned to the colonies (rural
>areas) for the next rainy season to produce cash crops. In the mining areas
>in other colonies, it was to keep the men to and from the mining zones to
>their villages and empowering them to earn wages to keep the women at home.
>
>This process imposed on the African environment and the women again can not
>have taken place without an ideology. The ideology the colonial forces
>re-enforced were that of Islam and Christianity, two foreign religions that
>has undermined African societies to paved way for slavery was also useful
>to
>further push African women behind the back of African men. Western form of
>Christianity came into Africa later than Islam, a religion introduced in
>West Africa around the tenth century AD. It was at that period that the
>Arabic influences that the practice of children adopting the father’s
>surname rather than the maternal name was introduced. Both religions also
>contributed to the erosion of the African women longstanding tradition of
>freedom and contribution to the scientific development of African societies
>prior to slavery and colonization. The circumstances leading to this
>erosion
>was the believe that women need protection and they must be covered from
>head to toe, for being a particular man’s property and not to be viewed by
>other men.
>
>African women however resisted against slavery as well as against
>colonization through out the continent, but let us pay attention to the
>forms of resistance adopted under colonialism in response to their
>disempowerment. The forms of African women resistance as observed by M.R.
>Cutrufelli (Roots of oppression) is important to mention in this discourse.
>According to Cutrufelli, the African women resistance was against certain
>form of colonial industrialization in Africa rather than being culturally
>conservative. The status of a “wife” rather than equal partners in marriage
>as known in pre-colonial Africa, has been undermined negatively by the
>introduction of new modes of colonial production which deprived the women
>of
>their own means of survival.
>
>She cited the case of colonized Nigerian women as an example, against the
>introduction of oil mills and their effort with little success to prevent
>it. The introduction of oil mills definitely improved the quantity and
>quality of palm oil and the wage level of men. At the same time it has
>deprived the women of work and resources of their own and increased their
>dependence on men. Before the introduction of oil mills, women used to
>prepare oil and give it to their men to sell for the wellbeing of the
>community. Similar incidents occurred in many colonial parts of Africa.
>
>In the 1920s, while the great Gambian Pan Africanist, Edward Frances Small,
>was leading Gambian workers strike against colonial oppression, Nigerian
>women also took to the streets of Lagos, to protest against taxation (the
>Aba riots) on their palm products. They cut down telegraph wires, attacked
>the European banks, destroyed European shops, attacked the prisons and
>released the African prisoners and beat Africans who were collaborating
>with
>the colonial forces. Many were shot and killed by colonial African
>soldiers.
> In The Gambia of the 1940s, similar situation forced women to also
>marched
>to the colonial Governor’s residence (State House) to protest against
>poverty and deprivation (Bread & Butter riots). The protest also was
>attributed to the introduction of the oil mill at “Sarro,” (This need to be
>studied). The colonial field force seriously battered them in the compound
>of the State House.
>
>Other forms of resistance included sorcery, magic, witchcraft and even the
>formation by women of independent African religions and churches to empower
>African women. These attempts were not backward as seen by men, but dynamic
>against colonization and male oppression in the colonized societies.
>
>Sorcery was a form of expressing suffering and hatred of African men
>collaborating with the European colonial forces. Witchcraft was a source of
>cohesion and strength of women practicing it. Africans are still afraid of
>witches isn’t it? African men will avoid any woman considered to be a
>witch.
>In the Banjul of the 1920s to the late 1970s, Hardington Street was popular
>for being the street of witches. The reason was due to the self-assertion
>of
>women against maltreatment. In some cases in the Banjul area, in a compound
>where women achieved academically and led independent life even in
>marriage,
>their mothers or grand mothers were considered to be witches. Among the Luo
>people of colonial East Africa, women deprived of their rights to land or
>other means of survival, will resort to witchcraft or methods of sorcery to
>fight men in order to gain their freedom from oppressive marriages. Magic
>was another source of strength to women. Women who have learned the secrets
>of magic can assert themselves to society that they have right to their own
>life and be feared. Which African man will marry a woman who can turn you
>into a dog? To destroy these believe system of women, men adopted more and
>more forms of physical violence to subdue women or became more religious
>than the colonialist became, in order to control their minds. All these
>internal contradictions between the African man and woman, benefits
>colonialism, as it has polarized African societies further.
>
>In the era of the struggle for independence from colonialism in the mid
>1950s to the 1960s, the forces that were at the fore front of the struggle
>against colonialism, had no clear objectives or programs that was geared
>towards resolving the women question or gender issues. The forces of the
>independence struggle were divided into two camps: The progressives (led by
>the great Kwame Krumah of Ghana) and those serving the interest of former
>colonial masters (led by the former President Tubman of Liberia). Both
>camps
>had one thing in common and that was their lack of clarity on the question
>of women oppression. The only forces that even attempted to discuss the
>issue of women oppression in the process of their struggle were the
>Liberation fighters of Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Guinea Bissau, Algeria
>and the Anti- Apartheid movements in Azania (South Africa).
>
>Another common factor in both camps was that of the combative spirit of
>African women in the struggle against European colonization. The women
>anti-colonial struggle was a two-sided battle within the struggle for
>independence. They were struggling to free Africa from colonialism at the
>same time struggling for clearly defined objectives to deal with specific
>conditions, such as their domestication and deprivation socially,
>politically and economically. As a result, women groups emerged to work
>within political parties or Liberation movements through out colonial
>Africa
>and they had a leading woman figure to organize and mobilize women for the
>battle. Women were even at the forefront the of the Liberation movements in
>the settler colonial states that were waging wars to be free.
>
>The women question for that matter has taken the nationalist tradition to
>struggle against colonialism, in the process, to also change their
>conditions in a future free Africa. Both attempts failed partly due to the
>nature of the leadership of women groups within these parties or movements
>and partly due to the betrayals of the leadership of post independent
>African states, because it has never been part of the nationalist agenda
>towards independence.
>
>The contradictions within these women groups born out of the nationalist
>revolution of the anti- colonial period was their failure to study the
>nature of the leadership based on their historical experience as women. In
>many cases, the women leadership (mostly educated) shared the same petty
>bourgeois tendencies of the leadership of the male dominated political
>parties who were not sincere to the masses of the oppressed peoples’ of
>Africa. Prior to independence, the nationalism of the leadership was a
>force
>determined to gain independence. After independence, the sense of
>nationalism died and commitment to national development was mortgaged to
>the
>interest of the former colonial masters, and a system of Neo- colonialism
>emerged (new forms of colonization) that is still ravaging the hell out of
>our people today in all aspects. The reigns of white power was handed to
>African stooges who have no interest to national development, much more the
>question of a just society. The reality was that post independent Africa
>failed to produce the calibre of bourgeois nationalist leadership committed
>to national development as the type of leadership Asian countries produced,
>such as in Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hongkong, among
>others.
>In Africa, Western Governments with the collaboration of Africans
>eliminated
>all genuine leaders who were sincere and committed to the progress and
>development of Africa. The last among them was Thomas Sankara of
>Burkinafaso, who more than any post independent leader of Africa did more
>in
>resolving the question of women oppression with clear intentions than any
>one.
>
>The other aspect of the contradictions within the women groups was that
>they
>made demands that reflected the oppression of African women in terms of
>programs to be dealt by the parties they allied with in a very
>uncompromising manner, but the principles of those demands were compromised
>even before independence was attained. The dilemma confronting the various
>women groups was the internalization of men oppression since the foreign
>intruders succeeded in dismantling the pre-colonial matriarchal societies.
>The blunt truth was that their confidence was a bit dented. They feared to
>make demands that would be seen as too progressive by the “comrades” in the
>progressive nationalist camp and by the “brothers” in the petty bourgeois
>nationalist camp.
>
>The worst part of these dilemma African women confronted was their lack of
>knowledge of the historical evolution of women within the African
>historical
>context and how it related to outside interventions. The thinking was too
>alienated from the historical realities of Africa and as a result, they
>failed to produce any concrete demand they can defend on historical
>evidences of their experience. They therefore made demands, which has no
>critical assessment of their situation and the ideology they used as a tool
>to assess their condition was a product of a different historical
>experience
>far removed from the African realities. The problem with that confusion was
>the inadequate explanation of women oppression that has not existed in the
>continent prior to slavery and colonization. African women therefore failed
>to produce a model of women struggle for liberation and became dependent on
>western feminist models. Cultural alienation hindered their programs and to
>this day, African societies are not properly addressing the fundamental
>question. Unless it is seriously dealt with in our struggle to development,
>African development will be hindered.
>
>
>Attached is the list of names great African women that Africans are not
>even
>talking about. We must celebrate their achievements.
>
>
> GREAT AFRICAN WOMEN CONTRIBUTORS
>
>1) Ahmose Nofretari- Mother of divinity and ruler of Egypt – 5000
>years ago.
>2) Hatsheput, Ruler of Egypt - 15th Century BC. She sent African
>navigators
>to sail to the southern part of Europe when Europeans where still living in
>an underdeveloped world.
>3) Queen Tiye – Ruled from ancient Egypt to present day Sudan 4000
>years
>ago.
>4) The Candace – Women rulers of the ancient Kush Kingdom – 3rd
>Century BC.
>5) Queen Makeda, Ruler of Ethiopia & Egypt (She was known as the
>queen of
>Sheba in the Bible)
>6) Daurama – Queen of the Hausa Kingdoms in West Africa.
>7) The warrior Queen Yennenga of the Mossi kingdom – 1132 BC.
>8) Sonkolon Konteh of Mali, the mother of Sundiatta Keita.
>9) Aminata Kruballi of the Kabbu empire.
>10) Aminatou of Zaria, the warrior queen of the Hausa people.
>11) Queen Heleni of Ethiopia & Egypt and defender of Africa –14th
>Century
>AD. She sent her army to defend African states attacked by muslim or
>portuguese invaders.
>12) Queen Ngola Zinga of present day Angola – 1581 AD to 1663 AD.
>Great
>warrior and Pan Africanist. She even called for African unity in her day
>before her sudden death in 1663.
>13) Queen Mentowah of Ethiopia – 1732 AD.
>14) Queen Kimpa Vita of Congo – 1706 AD. Led bitter wars against
>European
>invaders and Arab slave traders in the East and Central Africa.
>15) Queen Awura Poku of Sikassou in modern day Ivory Coast – 1742 AD.
>16) Queen Sunkari Touray of Mali who led wars against Arab invasion
>and
>Islamisation of her people.
>17) Queen Nandi of the Zulu Kingdom (Zaka Zulu’s mother)
>18) Queen Tata Ajeche of present day Benin. She rose from slavery to
>royalty.
>19) Queen Modjadi the first of ancient Zimbabwe – 1800 AD –1850 AD.
>20) Queen Ronavalona the first of Madagasgar – 1828 AD to 1861 AD. She
>led
>many wars against European and Arab invasions and defended the East African
>coast against Arab slavery and European colonization. She outlawed Arab or
>European names in her Kingdom for her people not to betray Africa to
>foreign
>invaders.
>21) Ndateh Yaala of Walo/Ndarr (St. Louise). She was the last Queen of
>Walo
>or Ndarr. She bitterly fought French colonizers for long to defend her
>Kingdom. The French at the end sent new weapons and 15,000 soldiers to
>defeat her. On January 25th, 1885, Walo was ravaged and destroyed and on
>January 31st, 1885, Captain Louis – Leon Faidherbe defeated the great
>Ndateh
>Yaala and she fled to Kajorr where she died in exile in the 1900s.
>22) Queen Nongqawuse of South Africa. Like Ndateh Yaala, led a serious
>resistance against European invasion in 1853 AD and almost succeeded in
>unifying the whole of Southern Africa. As usual, she was betrayed.
>23) Queen Sarrounnia of Nigeria. Led a serious resistance against
>colonization in 1890s before she was finally defeated.
>24) Queen Naga of Benin. - She was the ruler who led her people to
>rebel
>against the 1885 Berlin conference, which finally divided Africa among
>different colonial rulers. She never surrendered.
>25) Queen Manta Tisi of South Africa. - In 1853 led a serious
>rebellion
>against European invasion and colonialism.
>26) Queen Bethel of Ethiopia. – In 1889, fought and defended Ethiopia
>against European invasion and protected Ethiopia against colonization.
>27) Queen Ranavalona the 3rd. – She was the last woman ruler of
>Madagasgar.
>In the 1890s, she led her people to war rather than surrender to French
>colonization before being defeated in the mid 1890s.
>28) Queen Waganne Faye of Sine Saloum. She led her people against
>French
>colonization at a difficult time in the 1870s. This was a period when
>Senegal was invaded by two competing forces: The French and the Arabs from
>the North Africa. Lat Jorr was fighting against the French and Waganne Faye
>was fighting around the Sine-Saloum area and into The Gambia.
>29) Mma Ntatisie of South Africa – 1781 AD to 1835AD.
>30) Queen Nehanda of Zimbabwe (the last woman ruler). She led a
>liberation
>war against the British in1862 for a long period before she was captured
>and
>executed in 1898.
>31) The great Yaa Asante waa of Ghana (1840 –1921). She led a serious
>of
>liberation war against the British in the 1890s for a long period, before
>being captured and exiled by the British.
>32) Alison Sitoyee Jatta of Senegal. In the 1940s waged and led one of
>the
>most fiercely guerrilla warfare against French colonization in West Africa.
>33) Queen Cleopatra of ancient Egypt - 69BC to 30BC. She was the last
>Queen
>of ancient Egypt before the Romans finally conquered it. Cleopatra
>committed
>suicide rather than sell Africa to foreign invaders.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>_________________________________________________________________
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