Sir Fatty, Since you know the reason for the delay, I will not waste any more of your time. With the energy you have put into this issue, I am withdrawing my statement of sending you into exile for one more time .But I will have to tell you that I have gone beyond this level of Afro centrism in dealing with African history. I would rather lent my ears to Lalo Kebba Drammeh to a more reasoning narration of our common history than wasting my time in confronting white racism on such an issue. Secondly I will not start from where you took off, since this will mean to defend the distortions of some of the things I said earlier. History is the work of life human beings and the condition of our mothers and sisters for over 400 years is a fact of real life and not that of an African Queen who existed from or before BC.Prince Charles is not the head of the royal family in Great Britain, it is still the Queen, to call this a triumphant in the empowering of Women will be a nonsense, this you will have no problem of agreeing with me. This is the very reason why when we talk of "historical perspective" we are not talking of records of history in an empirical manner, which you have been very busy doing, what we meant was the dialectical development of the mass movement itself, in another word, the subjective and the objective development of the movement from one stage to another, through, among other things, contradictions. You did not seem to understand this and this has been the main problem of your response to my last piece and before you realise it, you wasted much of your time in diving into contradictions. Precisely, because when I did try to explain that the resistant of Gambian women from male/Society oppression have moved from just composing songs and story telling (an unorganised form of resistant) to a more concrete thing, as they are now (With the many women organisation) you take this to be a stagnation of women struggle. For more that 400 years of our history, we have never had an organised women organisation as we have today. Again, when you even attack white racism in recording the history of Africa you end up doing the same, I will tell you why later. You told us to take heed to the word "Universal", to be very frank, I was reading through with much patient, with a mind that you will start to understand what I was trying to say, but you started talking of Karl Marx, which I found very irrelevant to the discussion, not only that you distorted the meaning of the "Universal" but the whole idea of Marx in the Man/Woman relationship. Marx never saw only to the European society as the basis of his analysis of the primitive form of human relationship and listen; "…it was not only, the populist, Mikhailovsky, who tried to attribute to Marx the marking of "The Historical Tendency of capitalist Accumulation" into universal for all human development. As we showed, Marx had written a very sharp critique of Mekhailovsky's article. Post-Marx Marxists, however, continue to express similar views to Mikhalovsky's and to base themselves on the Editions of Volume 1 of Capital" WLDR (RD) Did you see your self here? And further down in your article one will find you confusing the ideas of Marx to that of Engel, most likely because you don't know of the existents of Marx's view on the question of the matricahecal societies as presented in his many unknown material as the "ethnological notebooks". Engels work on "The origin of the Family" was based on the the works of Morgan and it was on the basis of this work that he made his conclution, Even though Marx believed that "Ancient Societies" was a great work, his conclusion on the study of this work differ from that of the author and even Engel's don't find it necessary to go in to details here but just to show that you are wrong to insist that Marx works was euro-centrist and or made his conclusions to be "Universal". My challenge to you would be on the basis of the fact that the down fall of the Martichal societies that existed in some of the African societies was not brought to end by only external forces. You see Sir, when we are discussing Anta Jobe, we should do it with the understanding that his work was one based against the racist explanation of the development of African history. Without such an understanding we will be misusing the work of this great thinker. But when one differ in ideas with this great thinker, it will not even be on this assertion that; " Matriarchy must not be confused with the reign of the African Amazons or that of the Gorgons.Those legendary regimes in which women allegedly dominated man were characterized by a technique intended to debase the male…." TAOC (p145) But on the very facts he presented as the "matriarchal proper". Because, among other things, historical facts tells us also that even in " matriarchal proper" societies, there were evidences that shows that limitations existed, he (Jobe) never insisted that Matriarchal societies that existed in certain African societies by then were unique, so even where as Marx insisted that the Iroquois women did enjoy more freedom than women in the civilised world, he wasted no time in putting forward the limitations involved in these societies, he wrote; "…. The women allowed expressing their wishes and opinions through an orator of their own selections. Decision given by the council. Unanimity was a fundamental law of its action among the Iroquois…." RLWMMP (p182) But where do we go from here. If Anta Jobe insists that the position of the women in the Matriarchal system was due to their economic power, in my opinion, it should be logical that there were limitation, which might have been the bases for the contradictions that existed in those societies, but no this is what he wrote; "The matriarchal system proper is characterised by the collaboration and harmonious flowering of both sexes, and by a certain prominence of women in society, due originally to the economic conditions, but accepted and even defended by men" TOC (p145) I beg to disagree with this great thinker, if we have women, and in their large numbers too, defending a semi feudal, capitalistic, fascist oppression of Gambian women and society, I see no reason why it should not happen in any other form of society that is not based on the equality of men both in terms of economic, social and political. If you think that it will take a man to wait for an European or and Arab invader to resist against the economic dominance of women in a any given society at any given time of history then you must be seriously mistaking. But let us move to your other points. You wrote; "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" I will not take you seriously on this point. Had you known the time I have spent in collecting typical Gambian names through this forum you would have had another conclution. What I have said was that and still mean to say is, Lang Binta Fatty has been used and still in use for the purpose of identification and not necessary that it is a remnant of the past Matriarchal society. We leaved in a society where men do get married to more than one woman and being a patrichal society one father could be the "father" of all the children in the clan or the family. That is to say, you become automatically the father also of the children of your brother and both you and your brother could have a child with the same name in the same house or compound, to identify these children, they do refer to the mother and not you the farther. What relation has this to women liberation or given a child a Gambian name or a written African language's have given you another examples which sounds more logic in tracing the matrimonial linage system in our society, the Wulli example. Wassa only two people in my family are constantly referred to through the name of my mother, but not the rest of us. Do you know the reason? I believed that the reason is, these two people have a name that is very, very common within the Samateh clan in Badibu and these two names are; Kebba and Samateh-Nding.Should I explain more? See here you go again, listen to your self; "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." It would have been interesting for you to state where in my article did I refer to world history as one and the same. But I can see your confusion here too, are you talking of individual States, societies or empires or are you talking of Africa as a country, this is what racist historian do, unless your "Universal" is misinterpreted here. But see what you wrote; "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." Egypt/Ethiopia becomes Africa and Rome becomes Rome and not Europe, who is now treating African past and reality as an entity. I can sense an Afro centrist way of dealing with African past and reality, which should now be a thing of the past and I have reach the same conclusion as Fanon did for more than 40 years ago. To even believe that because we had a "Queen" in Egpt/Ethopia with so much power angered European/Aran chauvinist to invade the continent is a falsification of history. There were times when advanced and evil empires/States/Societies exist side by side in the continent, if racist White historian wasted much of their time in talking about the evil societies/States/Societies that existed in the Continent and refused to see the wonderful human development that were taking place in other societies/States/Societies in the continent, should not give us the liberty to use the same method because this will not be in the interest of the struggle we are involved in or whish to involve in, but systematically forced us to be on the defensive, we have no time for this. Why should even a white racist you read your piece should not be of the notion that African history, culture and people are of the same? Afro centrism is narrow nationalism, it could be understood under certain circumstances, more so in the racist environment some of us are surrounded with, but it could never solve our need for a theory of liberation, you can end up glorifying even the oppressor or that which is oppressive unconsciously. With the 4000 years of historical narration you have made here, the only Africa that existed in your piece is the continent that has been oppressed and destroyed by only Arab and White intruders until after independence, this is not serious. In conclution, the struggle for the empowering of Women, is not the same as a struggle for a Martriarchal society, not even your Matriarchal African society you presented in your piece, the empowering of Women should lead to the uprooting of the semi feudal, chavinist and capitalist society we are living under today, to a new form of human relationship without any form of oppression or exploitation and equality between all. 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