My sister Ndey,
I have personally tried to stay on the sidelines in this debate not because
we are not interested , but as a matter of respect to our great sisters
whose contributions to what we are today (positive or negative) cannot be
denied. I am convinced that our womenfolk can represent themselves better
than men have been doing for years. Though there is need for male
solidarity, we should all be careful because mankind has a vested interest
in the present system of biases which  disadvantage womankind. We should
therefore be careful about men who instead of  listening to our sisters to
workout the solutions to their problems, are always manipulating behind the
scenes.
It is indeed disgusting to note how some of our sisters have fallen prey to
the politics of patriachal society. Besides succumbing to the manipulations
of patriachy, some of them have simply joined the club and become predators
like their male counters.
Like students, women were in the forefront of the liberation struggle
throughout Africa. But since independence the real issues that affect the
lives of women have hardly been touch. In the context of the Gambia, the
most important in this regard includes inheritance laws. The supreme law in
the Gambia is the constitution, which clearly speaks against all forms of
discrimination. But daily when parents die, we are faced with the lion share
of their properties going to their male children. Its about time that
someone tells us all that this practice is unconstitutional as it
discriminates against the girl child on the basis of her gender.
The interestingly disgusting things about polygamy can be found when we look
at the household as a unit of production. In rural aggrarian societies, men
marry multiple wives to get more hands for labour. Though the products
belong to the household, the real powers for decision making belong to the
male members of the household. Let me explain based on my fathers household.
My father had two brothers and two sisters. Their sisters got married and
went to live with other families. They had no control over the rice fields
which they used to work on with their mothers. My mother and other women
married into the family and were given control over the rice fields. But it
must be stated that if anyone of them got divorced, she would have had to go
home without having any rights of cultivating the rice fields. Thus
everything belonged to my father and his brothers. My aunts, stepmothers and
mother in reality, had nothing. This is the situation we have inherited, and
the same scenario still obtains between me, my brothers and stepbrothers on
one hand, and our sisters and wives on the other. It would be very difficult
for one to be an advocate of social justice and yet condone the unjust
scenario I have given as a way of illustration.
Wth regard the women liberation struggle being western, I dont think that
should be regard as a big issue. The west is the source of many of our woes.
The status of women in Africa (in terms of legal rights), has never been as
bad as  the status of the Elizabethan woman. At some point the Elizabethan
woman could not enter into valid contracts. The situation was so bad that if
an employer direcly pays a female employees salary, her gentleman husband
had legal rights to ask for the salary again.
However, the point to make in our case is that colonialism was as patriachal
as feudalism. It destroyed the vast majority of matrilineal institutions in
place and generally replaced them with patriachally biased systems of
administration, jurisprudence and production. Colonialism reinforced the the
indigeneous patriachal structures we had to such an extent that by
independence, the status of women had deteriorated significantly to leave
behind a colassal system of patriachy. Thus since our interaction with the
west through colonialism has contributed greatly towards the current
predicament, it would not be wrong for our sisters to borrow from the ideas
of women involved in the liberation movement in the west.
But be aware, even this is a brother's perspective!
The Struggle Continues.
Omar Joof.



>From: Ndey Jobarteh <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Polygamy
>Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 12:48:48 +0000
>

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