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. _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To unsubscribe/subscribe or 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] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~