Colonization was a far more superior tool than slavery because it enslaved whole nations in their own countries and exploited their resources for the advantage of the colonial occupiers in a grand scale. Neo-colonialism on the other hand is a far more developed scheme than colonialism because it is insidious, invisible and imperceptible to the enslaved.
I think the time has come to overhaul colonial and neo-colonial ideals and institutions and reimagine our way of life – modelling society and government after the African Ubuntu Philosophy. The Ubuntu Philosophy most aptly captures the indigenous African spirit of community, sharing, spirituality, and purpose. It is this philosophy that was the bedrock of ancient African civilizations such as the Imamate of Futa Jallon, Egypt, Manding Empire and the Zulu kingdom.
In this system, a child belongs to the community (I am told the notion inspired Hillary Clinton’s ‘It Takes a Village’.) Here, spirituality, education, and work are seamlessly integrated with community – not in an odious and diabolical way, but in a wholesome and edifying style.
African feminists need to look further than the western concept of gender relations and equity. African women need to care to read academic articles and books inspired by modern day gender consciousness writers for example “On Mariama Ba’s novels, stereotypes and silence”. And other publications such as: “Women and Colonialism” by Kathleen Sheldon, “Women and Gender; Colonialism and Political Rethinking” Journal Articles of African History edited by Helen Bradford.
The idea of a housewife, which people use to appeal to the impact of colonialism and capitalism on African gender relations, is not an African concept. So, it cannot be “traditionally African.” This capitalistic-materialistic duality of evil underscores the biggest problems blighting society in the 21st century. It has brought forth a class of militant feminists who have sworn to oust the system of values that previously undergirded family and social life. With the ensuing denigration of family and social values such as the sacredness of the womb, chastity, faithfulness, and family cooperation — divorce, separation, and their corollary problems have been on the rise.
The image of the housewife started during the industrial revolution and the rise of imperialism in Europe. In France, the image of the housewife was promoted during the years of Napoleon in both Europe and its colonies in Africa. In Europe, the housewife was the bourgeois wife who stayed at home to take care of the children of the emerging industrialists, while in Africa; the housewife was the model of European womanhood which African women were supposed to be trained as, so that they could become wives for the African elite being trained by colonial schools to become Frenchmen.
The subject of home science was taught in colonial African schools to train African girls to become European-style wives for the African elite. And in French colonies, this business was serious. After an African man finished his colonial education, he applied to become a French citizen. Part of the interview meant the government inspecting his home to see if it was arranged in the bourgeois European style, and if his wife had European manners.
One would need to check colonial Francophone African countries, Senegal for example, but I suspect that a similar dynamic was at work with the African womanhood in other part of colonial Africa. So African rural women are not housewives. They are simply rural women, most often poor, and who often work very hard. They go to the “farros”, herd cattle, sheep, and goats. They are also engaged in horticulture farming or take fruits and vegetables to the market. THAT IS WORK, whether the men in parliament think so or not. Those are not women staying at home doing nothing.
So, we must stop naming women without access to colonial education and capitalist employment “housewives.” Housewives were educated white women married to rich men, who could spend their lives bearing kids and sipping afternoon coffee or tea in small cups served by the cook, on the land they grabbed. We need to set that straight.
The other thing to set straight is that if colonial education and capitalist employment are disempowering for men, alienating them from their roots to serve the interests of imperialism, they have the same effect on women. No one imagines that colonial education empowered men. So why do you think it empowers women? All it does is expanding capital to include women, because capital needs numbers.
It is not empowering to work under capitalism, whether you are male or female. And all of us know that because we can hardly wait to jump out of employment and be on our own. Employment comes with schizophrenic lives, depression because we must pretend to smile and to like the boss, and taxes and deductions to support the rich lifestyle of the thieves in parliament and in government.
No female is empowered by being employed. At all. In fact, women want a democratic workplace where they who work and generate profits for sharks should also have a say in how the profits, they make, are distributed. Now, there is a common narrative of women ending relationships with men who don’t bring home any money. Well, men that comes with money is not exclusive to women. Our constant complaint about politicians is how much men become richer (from stolen loot) than women are. That man goes all round. I’ve heard numerous stories of women coming home to find their husbands in the marital bed and told by the husbands to deal with it because the men bring home the money.
Victims of domestic abuse stay in their abusive marriages because they have no income to live on their own. Capitalism is bullshitting all around, and to be told that somehow, it’s a privilege for women to now be included in it is an insult, largely from men who were emasculated a long time ago by capitalism and haven’t realized it.
With that in the backdrop, we begin to see why Dambisa Moyo’s recommendations for state capitalism appeal to a class of Commonwealth citizens of like-minded people of the 21st century who are not convinced with classic capitalism, especially in its failure to be a succor for economic liberty. A true economic model must emphasize and ensure equality of opportunities – at least.
Probably the most important piece to be published by JN in 2019.
Why it has got no comments is a bit puzzling. I mean this should be an opportunity for all of us, especially our women folk to ask critical questions regarding gender roles in our societies, control of resources in both the family and in the community, and how the current social settings came to be.
Madi’s article has garnered close to sixty comments. In my mind, with the calibre of active and dedicated commentators on this platform, this article should be exhaustively discussed to be true to our commitments of learning from each other but also to share the little in our possession.
Andy, Tilli Bo, Kemo, Bourne, Bax, et all, are we going to let this one just pass under the bridge?
Someone’s got to bell the cat first, I guess. I haven’t read it yet, but it is an interesting topic and be rest assured, justice will be done it.
Alagi Yoro,
I would agree with you that neocolonialism is insidious but I can’t agree that it’s invisible and imperceptible. The Gambian case is a good case in point. We’ve had two neocolonial and reactionary regimes (Jawara and Barrow’s), and one of the most pragmatic PanAfricanist governments (President Jammeh’s). When the West and America pat a leader on his back, there are visible and perceptible symptoms of neocolonial and reactionary conducts. Fancy French President Macron, who cannot govern his country, telling Barrow that he will continue to support The Gambia, a former British subjugated and dehumanized country.
These two vices perpetrated by our learned men are always rooted in corrupt, tribalist and sectarian conducts.
On the other hand, the African woman has always been respected, though with some some insane atrocities meted out at her. Remember the Mandinka saying: what a man refuses his wife in public during the day is always accepted in bed at night.
Our women have always been powerful and authoritative in all sectors of society. It’s only with the advent of some wrong Islamic interpretations that their role diminished.
There is absolutely nothing progressive that slavery and colonial rule offered us.
We practiced capitalism and sold slaves long before others came to our shores.
What is impactful in our gender relations, is religion, cultural norms and practices.
Moving forward, we must:
1. Respect our Mothers and Daughters.
2. If we respect our women, we will protect them.
3. To protect them, we must educate our sons.
The problem with The Gambia is our SONS.
1. Our men are patently unreliable, irresponsible and lazy. They can’t even FARM!
2. Poorly educated, arrogant and incompetent in all things, small and large.
3. Mostly impotent in matters of work, science and biology.
4. Untrustworthy about family unity. All they care about is second wife. Rich or Poor.
5. Steal anything that looks shinny or in skirt.
6. Kill other humans for power.
7. They misrepresent the teachings of Islam at will.
Stop deluding yourselves, all you know about Gambian women, how you view us, and how you treat us, is what you’ve learned, what has been passed down for generations. The beatings, the verbal and psychological abuse, the disrespect, the isolation, the lack of love and affection, all the things you saw you mothers and sisters endure. All the things that you are repeating.
That is a disgrace and most impactful.
It doesn’t take much to see why most of you guys are NOT well. Does it.
Broadly agree. Violence is a problem.
I am a humanist. PERIOD. I was born in a very large KABILO with about 65% female and grew to respect the HUMAN BEING. In my district in the URR we equally shared work on the rice fields and peanut farms.
I am not asserting that we were perfect in the treatment of our women but we had always been educated to love, share and respect.
I have passed that philosophy down to my kids and here we don’t even refer to gender problems because it does not exist in my house.
I have stood to defend gender equality for years and there is nothing I can learn from anyone about that!!!
Babu Soli,
I guess what Alagi means is that neocolonialism in its perversivity is so deeply ingrained into the DNA of every systemic structure, making its presence invisible to the ordinary human eye.
There is obviously an urgent need to rethink and recalibrate gender issues in The Gambia. The suppression of women and their natural rights has gone on for far too long. In that struggle, men need to take a pro active stance for women’s empowerment and gender parity.
I do not see any reason to warrant the demonization of all men because they supposedly have innately learned from generations to be mean to women.
The most interesting thing in Alagi’s piece is how a binary classification of gender and gender roles was a product of the industrial revolution in Europe, which was totally alien to all Afrikkan cultures. But very convenient for the white man to sit on top of the food chain and exploit all others.
Before the advent of the transatlantic slave trade and the Islamization and Christianization of Afrikka, there existed matriarchal kingdoms in Afrikka. In such a setting, it could not be imagined that men make (unilateral) decisions over the women or the general welfare of whole communities. Furthermore, there is linguistic evidence that gender played no role in social power relations. For example, if we look at some personal pronouns in English like (he, she, it), in German (er, sie, es), in French (il, elle) etc, no such thing exists in the Afrikkan languages I have so far come into contact with, and that runs into the hundreds.
Why is the question. Because we have never had a need to express and identify ourselves along gender categories in such an explicit manner. Men, women and all the gender shades that exist have all lived in harmony before the white Caucasians came to visit, without invitation.
First, I’m acknowledging the difficulty of holding discussions on gender relations without being influenced by our biases (informed or not) and personal experiences. Thus the tendency, unfair as it may be, to “paint all with one brush” is strong, but understandable and I hope we sympathise.
Second, it is difficult (at least for many people, myself included: for lack of exposure to relevant material on the subject ) to definitively say how men and women in our part of the world have related to each other in ancient times, but the observation by Mwalimu (about the lack of personal pronouns to denote male/gender in African languages) is quite interesting and a strong, possible evidence to support views that gender differences wasn’t a significant factor in our power play, prior to the arrival of outsiders.
Unfortunately, very little consolation is derived from that possible fact, as the reality today, is that gender based violence and discrimination is wide spread, and deeply rooted in what has become part of our culture and religion.
Hence, for a new Gambia to be attained, our discussions for change must not be restricted to only the political and economic matters, but must include all aspects of our existence that impact our inter-personal relationships and general wellbeing.
For a start, The Gambia, being a modern state, has got a Constitution (even if it is not perfect) which clearly states how her sons and daughters MUST relate to each other. Our role should be to educate and sensitize each other about it, to uphold it, to live by it and to continually improve it to create a better society.
That way, we can achieve a society completely free of all kinds of violence and discrimination within a relatively short time, if we are serious about it.
That Slavery, colonialism and Neocolonialism have impacted the way we lived and continue to live today is not in doubt, but whether they are the sole reasons and explanation for the violence and discrimination directed at sections of our societies, especially women and children, is a matter of debate. I think it will be unreasonable and probably unsupportable too, for us to think that there was no violence and discrimination against women, prior to the arrival of outsiders. Man’s (human) very nature is wired for survival, through competition for resources, and where there’s competition, there are bound to be “winners” and “losers.” Thus men, due to their superior physique, have dominated life of communities and controlled their resources throughout the centuries, right down to our times, even in supposedly advanced societies.
Obviously, being a social being with the capacity to think progressively and (perhaps) a conscience to feel guilty, man has tried to make this competition for survival much fairer, through legislation and practice, with some societies having more success at it than others.
What we must do in Africa and The Gambia, in particular, is to constantly engage in mature conversations on what suits our circumstances and what we can take from others to create a society that guarantees equality, fair treatment and fair access to our collective wealth and resources.
We should use our experiences from the past to ensure that, we not only create more fairer and equitable societies, but also build civilisations that can be protected from the injustices of the past that we suffered at the hands of outsiders.
If we fail to do that, then there is no reason to think that those who enslaved and colonised us would not do it again, because they have the power and means to do it again, with no consequences.
In Benin, Togo, Nigeria, and other Afrikkan states, the existence of political systems run entirely by women before slavery and colonialism is well documented.
The existence of a non-binary system of gender classification exist even today in a particular ethnolinguistic group in Kenya. Women marry women in this communities if one’s husband is deceased, but not for sexual purposes. This maintains a system of support where no member of a community is suppose to feel alienated.
But I also understand where Bax is coming from, in not apportioning the entire blame on “outsiders”. Of course there have always, there is and there will always be power dynamics that will keep one group of people over the other. Some might consciously use this power to abuse or to uplift.
The enslavement, colonization and the consequent dispossession of blakk people of knowledge of self (including the abjection of womanhood) is on a totally different scale. We are talking about the mother and father of all crimes known to mankind since the beginning of time. It does not only lead to political and economic collapse, entire cultures (ways of living including gender relations) are totally displaced and or annihilated. Then even our memories become replaced by what they brought to us, including the concept of the “house wife”.
Capitalism’s obsession with numbers and a binary gender system spelt the birth of the oppression and suppression of women as we know it today.
Legislation and smart policy development will take us a long way in achieving balance. But a government that hires men for women and children’s affairs is insensitive to the reality that women should first have the voice to represent themselves.
In the domestic area, chores were not distributed according to gender, rather on ability and potential. The same thing goes for economic/commercial labor. Ability and potential define who is ascribed which responsibilities . Were men cooking and washing dishes? Yes but so were women too. Were women farming and bringing firewood home and taking arms to defend the village or the region? Yes, and so were men too. Western propaganda and lies about gender constructions in Afrikka are meant to hide the atrocities they have committed on us. Often than not, they succeed because we have an inherent fear of their violent nature and can’t seem to trust ourselves that we in fact know better and more than THEM.
According to Doctor Cheikh Anta Diop, there is tremendous and remarkable distinction between Afrikkan slave practices and those that come to be known as the AST and THE MAAFA. One is indentured servitude and the other is total ontological and genealogical alienation.
Let me break it down further. In the Afrikkan enslavement tradition, slaves are known to have become kings because the condition of servitude is a temporal one. Some buy their freedom with labor or anything to substitute that with and marry in the society of their captors. The enslavement of blakk people by the beast is an entirely different phenomenon. This is an objectification and commoditization of the blakk body and the blakk soul.
Our ancestors were not subjects in the territories they got transported to. Their humanity was taken away from them, they were humiliated, beaten and worked to death, without a prospect of ever tasting freedom in their natural existence. So blakk was equated to no security of own being. Is it different today?
That question is for all esteemed readers and commentators?