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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