Decolonization and Afro-Feminism

Sylvia Tamale

• Publisher: Daraja Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781988832500
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Feminism & Feminist Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

Sylvia Tamale's Decolonization and Afro-Feminism makes a compelling case for unlearning imperial power relations by 'shaking off' the colonial filters through which we view the world. This process, she argues, is a process of relearning that re-envisions Pan-Africanism as a more inclusive decolonizing/decolonial movement that embraces afro-feminist politics. Tamale also challenges the traditional human rights paradigm and its concomitant idea of 'gender equality,' flagging instead the African philosophy of Ubuntu as a serious alternative for reinvigorating African notions of social justice.

In Decolonization and Afro-Feminism, Sylvia Tamale provides a powerful guide towards the elimination of two interconnected challenges in contemporary Africa by situating her text as 'part of the narrative that does not simply commit to the struggle for decolonization, but also recognizes the dynamics of gender within the struggle for new ways of being'. - Emmah Khisa Senge Wabuke: Feminist Legal Studies (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10691-021-09470-6)

Overall, this book is not only about how Afro-feminism has been excluded from decolonisation efforts, but how its inclusion can nourish decolonial epistemology... Although it is dedicated to students of Africa, this book goes beyond an excellent teaching tool, to make important contributions to socio-political organising in furtherance of the Afro-feminist decolonial project on the continent. - Emmah Khisa Senge Wabuke, Centre for Gender Studies, Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. Feminist Legal Studies (2022) 30:121-123

3

Feminists and the Struggle for Africa’s Decolonial Reconstruction

There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle
because we do not lead single-issue lives.

— Audre Lorde^[1]

African feminisms have always stood between the hard rock of Western influence and domination and African relativism and disparagement. There is consequently a need to move into the next phase of Afro-feminist activism by getting rid of those parts of Western feminism that were uncritically adopted and to reconceptualize the struggle for more meaningful and contextually relevant ways of addressing the marginalization of women. While patriarchies everywhere stem from the same roots of male power, and whereas there are some overlaps in the way women experience oppression globally, the preoccupations and priorities of African feminists cannot be similar to those of orthodox Western feminists. This is not only because race is a deeply constitutive element of gender, but also for the reason that the African continent occupies a separate cultural, social, economic and geopolitical landscape from the West. Moreover, the enduring legacies of slavery, colonialism and imperialism continue to slip through, intersect with patriarchal domination and come out on the other end as subjugation with different strands from those found in Western paradigms.

As Africans, our colonial education systems largely delimited our thinking to Western theorizations of ourselves and our environments. Right from the nursery rhymes through to the philosophical and literary classics, to the mediums of formal instruction, we are oriented to apply alien concepts. “Modern” colonial education deliberately avoided honing the creativity and problem-solving skills of the colonials. Worse still, it reinforced racist and sexist stereotypes about the superiority of Western nations and patriarchal conventions of male dominance. Neocolonial powers ensured that the status quo remained intact well after the attainment of flag-independence. It is time to change that, to remove the scales from our eyes and focus on pathways that re-centre Africa and its people.

Paradigms that are founded on polarized dualisms such as male versus female, husband versus wife, public versus private and so forth only heighten adversarial camps. And yet, African women have to collaborate with men in fighting off economic subjugation. This calls for fresh transformative feminisms on the continent. As John Marah notes, “transformational feminism reconstructs the traditional barriers between men and women, femininity and masculinity; it is eclectic and recognizes the integrality of humanity; it also critically examines the grey areas between what is masculine and what is feminine, economically, socially, and even sexually.”^[2] Equally, the decolonial drive must recognize the integrality of race, gender, class and other oppressions.

African women started challenging colonialism alongside their male counterparts from the outset. Imperialism dealt a double blow to women. First of all, women suffered as Africans who had been robbed of their resources, freedoms and pride, but also as people whose status had sharply regressed with colonialism.^[3] Through various feminist struggles, ranging from boycotts and protests to armed rebellion, to intellectual awakening, African women have resisted the empire in all its forms.^[4] Unfortunately, the tendency is not to conceive of such struggles as feminist. As Ella Shohat remarks:

Within standard feminist historiography… “third-world women’s” involvement in anticolonialist struggles has not been perceived as relevant for feminism. Since the anticolonialist struggles of colonized women were not explicitly labeled “feminist,” they have not been “read” as linked or as relevant to feminist studies… Yet, the participation of colonized women in anticolonialist and antiracist movements did often lead to a political engagement with feminism. However, these antipatriarchal and even, at times, antiheterosexist subversions within anticolonial struggles remain marginal to the global feminist canon.^[5]

In Africa, women’s struggles against oppression predate colonialism. There is a long history of women mobilizing in creative ways to resist patriarchal and political domination, asserting their personal and collective rights.^[6] Several legendary women helped transform their societies even before colonizers stepped foot on their soil; examples include Queen Eyleuka (Dalukah) of Ethiopia, Queen Lobamba of Kuba (Congo), Princess Nang’oma of Bululi (Uganda), Queen Rangita of Madagascar, Queen Nzinga of Angola and Queen Nyabingi (northern Tanzania & western Uganda).

But the term “feminism” itself is not without controversy; while traditionalists tarnish it with the brush of “aping the West,” it has also been rejected by some African scholars and activists because of its Western origins and the exclusion of non-Whites from its theoretical frameworks. Alternative Indigenous variants, rooted in African histories and cultures, have been devised to connote Afro-Feminism including womanism,^[7] stiwanism,^[8] motherism,^[9] femalism^[10] and nego-feminism.^[11] These frameworks have themselves been variously criticized for their heteronormativity, exclusions, contradictions and ambivalences which “signify a difficulty in proposing a single theoretical framework for a multiplicity of peoples with varied cultures and histories.”^[12]

Regardless of their imperfections, the loud message that rings from all these alternative theorizations is that: if African women are to successfully challenge their subordination and oppression, they need to carefully and rigourously develop home-grown conceptualizations that capture the specific political-economies and cultural realities encountered, as well as their traditional worldviews. It reminds us that, given the history of the continent and the lingering legacies of colonialism, imperialism, racism and neoliberalism, theories and paradigms formulated in the West do not necessarily apply in Africa. It also underscores the need to develop alternative schools of thought and counter-hegemonic narratives that expose the subtle and intricate power relationships embedded in mainstream theories.

This chapter focuses on some attempts taken by African feminist scholars to theorize the connections and interdependent relations between oppressive institutions and gender hierarchies. In the first instance, the chapter sketches a mapping and review of institutional spaces where feminist thinking takes place on the continent. Next, it addresses the important issue of how multiple social categories impact on the oppression experience of different women in ...