Pan-Africanism and Feminism - African Gender Institute

140 Pages·2014·0.58 MB·English

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Pan-Africanism and Feminism
Cover photograph: Women Demanding the Release of Angela
Feminist Africa is a continental gender studies journal Davis from Prison in Somali capital Xamar (Mogadishu), 1972.
Photographer unknown.
produced by the community of feminist scholars.
Source: http://sinbarras.org/2013/03/12/88/
It provides a platform for intellectual and activist
research, dialogue and strategy. Feminist Africa attends
to the complex and diverse dynamics of creativity and
resistance that have emerged in postcolonial Africa, and
the manner in which these are shaped by the shifting
global geopolitical configurations of power.
It is currently based at the African Gender Institute in
Cape Town.
A full text version of this journal is available on the
Feminist Africa website: http://www.feministafrica.org
This publication has been printed on Cocoon Offset, which is a 100% recycled product and is one of the
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Feminist Africa 19
Pan-Africanism and
Feminism
Issue 19: September 2014
First published in 2014 by the
African Gender Institute
All Africa House
University of Cape Town
Private Bag
Rondebosch 7701
© in published edition:
African Gender Institute,
University of Cape Town,
South Africa, 2013
ISSN: 1726-4596
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
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Published with the support of the African Women’s Development Fund.
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Cover photograph: Women Demanding the Release of Angela Davis from Prison in
Somali capital Xamar (Mogadishu), 1972. Photographer unknown.
Source: http://sinbarras.org/2013/03/12/88/
Distribution: AGI staff
Feminist Africa is a scholarly journal accredited by the
South African Department of Education.
ii | Feminist Africa 19
Editorial policy Editor
Feminist Africa is guided by a profound Amina Mama
commitment to transforming gender hierarchies
in Africa, and seeks to redress injustice and Issue 19 editors
inequality in its content and design, and by Amina Mama
its open-access and continentally-targeted Hakima Abbas
distribution strategy. Feminist Africa targets
gender researchers, students, educators, Reviews editor
women’s organisations and feminist activists Simidele Dosekun
throughout Africa. It works to develop a
feminist intellectual community by promoting Copy editors
and enhancing African women’s intellectual Anne V. Adams
work. To overcome the access and distribution Danai Mupotsa
challenges facing conventional academic Simidele Dosekun
publications, Feminist Africa deploys a dual
dissemination strategy, using the Internet Editorial team
as a key tool for knowledge-sharing and Jane Bennett
communication, while making hard copies Selina Mudavanhu
available to those based at African institutions. Kylie Thomas
Two issues are produced per annum, in
accordance with themes specified in the calls Editorial advisory group
for contributions. The editorial advisory group of Feminist
The editorial team can be contacted at Africa consists of scholars and researchers,
[email protected] located in different fields in the social sciences
and humanities, who offer their expertise
Acknowledgements to the development and dissemination of
The Feminist Africa team acknowledges Feminist Africa as an innovative African-
the intellectual input of the community of focused journal.
African feminist scholars and the Editorial Advisory group members are:
Advisory Board. Akosua Adamako-Ampofo, Bibi Bakare-
We thank the African Women’s Yusuf, Teresa Barnes, Kum-Kum Bhavnani,
Development Fund for their financial support Hope Chigudu, Tsitsi Dangaremba, Carole
towards production and publication. Boyce Davies, Simidele Dosekun, Amanda
Gouws, Pregs Govender, Pumla Dineo
Disclaimer Gqola, Shireen Hassim, Desiree Lewis, Zine
The views expressed by contributors to Magubane, Takyiwaa Manuh, Helen Moffett,
Feminist Africa are not necessarily those Chandra Mohanty, Patricia Mohammed,
of the Editors, Editorial Advisory Board, the Patricia McFadden, Ruth Ochieng, Margo
African Gender Institute, or our partners. Okazawa-Rey, Awino Okech, Charmaine
While every reasonable effort is made to Pereira, Jennifer Radloff, Rhoda Reddock,
check factual accuracy in published material, Vasu Reddy, Kopano Ratele, Ebrima Sall,
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for verifying claims made in their writings. Dzodzi Tsikata, Zenebeworke Tadesse,
Neither Feminist Africa nor the African Muthoni Wanyeki and Paul Zeleza.
Gender Institute will be responsible for errors
or inaccuracies in contributions.
Feminist Africa 19 | iii
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Feminist Africa 19 | v
Contents
Editorial: Feminism and pan-Africanism
– by Hakima Abbas and Amina Mama 1
Features
African feminism in the 21st Century: A reflection on Uganda’s
victories, battles and reversals
– by Josephine Ahikire 7
Promise and betrayal: Women fighters and national liberation
in Guinea Bissau
– by Aliou Ly 24
Reflections on the Sudanese women’s movement
– by Amira Osman 43

The first Mrs Garvey and others: Pan-Africanism and feminism in
the early 20th Century British colonial Caribbean
– by Rhoda Reddock 58
Pan-Africanism, transnational black feminism and the limits of
culturalist analyses in African gender discourses
– by Carole Boyce Davies 78
Standpoints
Being pan-African: A continental research agenda
– by Dzodzi Tsikata 94
Unnatural and Un-African: Contesting queer-phobia by Africa’s
political leadership
– by Kenne Mwikya 98
vi | Feminist Africa 19
Reviews
Sojourning for freedom: Black Women, American Communism,
and the Making of Black Left Feminism
– by Maxine Craig 106
Women, Sexuality and the Political Power of Pleasure
– by Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah 109
Queer African Reader
– by Danai S. Mupotsa
113
Daughters of the Niger Delta
– by Simidele Dosekun 121
Contributors 125
Editorial | 1
Editorial: Feminism and pan-Africanism
Hakima Abbas and Amina Mama
In May 2013, the African Union (AU) officially celebrated its 50th anniversary,
adopting ‘Pan-Africanism and Renaissance’ as their theme. Marked with
a lavish gala, the summit brought dignitaries from all over the world, the
occasion saw Africa’s Heads of State congratulating themselves on rising
Gross Domestic Products (GDPs), visibly excited at the prospects of increased
foreign investment. Their enthusiasm contrasts starkly with more sobering
realities that belie pan-Africanist visions. Instead of the liberation pursued
by generations of Africans, the continent has entered the 21st century
with increasing inequalities and social abjection facing the majority of
Africa’s peoples, crudely indexed by poor performances on the Millennium
Development Goals (2005-2015). Africa’s lack of progress on what might be
better referred to as the “Minimal Development Goals,” reveals the unpalatable
scenario of an African continent characterised by the extreme social injustices
that economists refer to as “growth without development”. The implications
for the multiply oppressed majorities of African peoples are dire.
What are the conditions that legitimise a development trajectory that
sees social injustices and inequalities – among them those based on gender
and sexuality – deepen while GDPs grow? How should feminist movements
challenge the yawning gap between the pan-African vision for Africa in the
millennium, and grim material, social and political realities? How does this
gap relate to the contradictions between rhetoric and reality with regard to
the liberation of African women? Issues 19 and 20 of Feminist Africa ask:
what can a radical pan-African engagement contribute to the transformation
of systemic oppressions, including those based on gender, which continue to
sustain the under-development of a resource-rich African continent?
2 | Feminist Africa 19
Feminists have a responsibility to critically appraise just what half a century
of African liberation from colonialism and institutionalised pan-Africanism has
delivered to women. Indeed, feminists ask the same question on behalf of all
those African peoples who are not part of the global capitalist elite or their
local political and military functionaries. Hard struggles have seen women’s
movements achieve modest legal and policy inroads (on paper at least) and
gain some (often problematic) forms of visibility, but the overt oppression
and exploitation of most women continue. There is a troubling irony in the
sudden “discovery” of African women by the AU, multinational corporations
and development agencies, half a century after women actively participated
in independence struggles and contributed significantly to African liberation
movements. However, the terms of this new-found recognition need to be
scrutinised. Some such questioning occurred in the parallel civil society
sessions convened by Nkosozana Dlamini Zuma, first woman Chair of the
AU, who also set up a panel to speak directly to the Heads of State in a
novel attempt to be more inclusive. By way of example, this issue of Feminist
Africa includes Dzodzi Tsikata’s closing statement to the intellectual debate
convened by CODESRIA to generate a pan-African research agenda.
In an article revisiting the gender politics of the liberation movement in
Guinea Bissau, historian Aliou Ly asks: “Is the recognition, by Africa’s Heads
of State, of women as agents and equal partners true or is it just a hoax?”
Unfortunately the prevailing neoliberal construction of African women as
the capitalist world’s latest “emerging market” is more than a hoax. It places
women in particular relation to corporate-led globalisation, within which
Africa remains a source of raw materials essential to the functioning of silicon
valleys all over the world, while being further captured as a market from which
profits can be made. Neoliberal constructions of “gender equality” set up
women – most of whom are still impoverished - as fair game for profit-seeking
investors interested in them only as fee-paying consumers of privatised public
services. Critical perspectives argue that the current GDP data heralds a renewed
scramble for the wealth of Africa. There is evidence of massive land and resource
grabs jeopardising communal access to land and water, as the interests of
industrialised agri-business corporations prevail to secure monopolies through
patents, and create new market dependencies among the impoverished.1
Corporate exploitation runs counter to the interests of over a billion
African citizens, just as it has since the early encroachments of colonial