Mo!
Some more worriors!
Regards,
Kabir.
GHANA
"If you the men of Ashanti will not go forward, then we will. We the women
will. I shall call upon you my fellow women. We will fight the white men.
We will fight until the last of us falls in the battlefield."
---Ya Asantewa, an Ashanti queen who led the resistence to British colonial
rule in Ghana. She succeeded in the short run, but the Ashanti were heavily
outgunned.
THE "WAR OF THE WOMEN"
The Aba rebellion in southeastern Nigeria grew out of a traditional female
rite of the Ibo. People were outraged at the colonial government's plan to
tax women, "the trees that bear fruit." In protest, Ibo women bound their
heads with ferns, painted their faces with ash, put on loincloths and
carried sacred sticks with palm frond wreaths. Thousands marched on the
District Office, dancing, singing protests, and demanding the cap of office
of the colonial chief Okugo. When he approached one woman to count her
goats and sheep, she had retorted, "Was mother counted?"
This protest spread into a vast regional insurrection. The Ibo women's
councils mobilized demonstrations in three provinces, turning out over
2,000,000 protesters. The British District Officer at Bende wrote, "The
trouble spread in the 2nd week of December to Aba, an important trading
center on the railway. Here there converged some 10,000 women, scantily
clothed, girdled with green leaves, carrying sticks. Singing angry songs
against the chiefs and the court messengers, the women proceeded to attack
and loot the European trading shops, stores, and Barclay's Bank, and to
break into the prison and release the prisoners."
Elsewhere women protestors burned down the hated British "Native Courts"
and cut telegraph wires, throwing officials into panic. The colonials fired
on the female protesters, killing more than fifty and wounding more.
Marches continued sporadically into 1930. These mass actions became known
as the Aba Rebellion of 1929, or The War of the Women. It was one of the
most significant anti-colonial revolts in Africa of that day.
Diola women led similar protests against French attempts to exact a tribute
from their rice harvest in Senegal, an event dramatized by filmmaker
Ousmane Sembene.
All articles copyright 2000 Max Dashu
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
If you want to know who I am
I am daughter of Angola, of Kęto and Nagô
I don't fear blows because I am a warrior
Inside of samba I was born
I raised myself, I transformed myself, and
no one will lower my banner, O, O, O.
I am a warrior woman daughter of Ogun and Yansâ
---Song from an album by Brazilian singer Clara Nuńes
<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>
To view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]
<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>//\\<<//\\>>
|
