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Victim or Predator: African Child Soldiers and “Non-Combatant” Status in African Warfare

by

John Ringquist

The widening of war to include children has created social problems that challenge the security and legitimacy of states. Recent African conflicts have witnessed increasing employment of child soldiers in locales as geographically distant as Sierra Leone, Uganda, and the Sudan. The African conflicts of the 1990s and early twenty-first century have been marked by increasing levels of violence perpetrated upon children across a wide spectrum of engagement. Whether abducted from family, or openly recruited for military employment, the increased utilization of children as soldiers has prolonged conflict, and impaired state efforts to demilitarize conflicts. In some cases, children have served as soldiers and participated in acts of genocide. When the status of children in war is reduced to that of refugee, soldier or victim, the social implications are deep and wide ranging. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms that enabled the shift of children to combatants may assist us in responding more effectively to humanitarian and military crises in contemporary African conflicts.

Genocide survivors and child soldiers both suffer from their experiences. In regions where the population may contain 50% or more under the age of twelve, the status of children in warfare is of extreme importance. The impact of war on children cannot be easily measured, whether the child is a refugee, soldier or survivor, their future is formed from their experiences.

This paper will examine three case studies and how children are indoctrinated, militarized, exploited, and when conflict ends, demilitarized. In addition this paper seeks to explore the effect of military violence upon genocide survivors and refugees, and how it perpetuates conflict by denying non-combatant status to children, and thus no safe haven during conflict.

“Protagonists of Embodied Pleasures: Ethnographic Encounters with Literature”

by

Isabel P. B. Fêo Rodrigues

Until quite recently, sexuality in the Cape Verdean literary tradition written in Portuguese has been the domain of masculinity portrayed through men’s writing and through the lens of heterosexuality. This paper will compare and contrast how selected postcolonial female and male Cape Verdean writers portray the intimate spaces of sexuality and desire. By comparing African literature written in Portuguese by both male and female authors, we will explore the ways in which sexuality and pleasure may be differently narrated and metaphorically construed. Thus, this paper will question—How are female and male bodies represented in the contemporary literature? Are they politicized? How is the realm of intimacy entwined with social, economic, and political entrapments?

Women – still Marginalized in the South African Mining and Construction Industry?

by

Tanya le Roux
Elnerine Greeff

Although the South African government set mining companies the target of having women represent 10% of their workforce by 2009 according to the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (28/2002) and Mining Charter (Department of Trade and Industry, 2002), there were many obstacles resulting in women still being marginalised (Le Roux & Naudé, 2005). The publication of the King III Report then put more pressure on South African organisations to create a healthy and suitable working environment for all employees (King Report, 2009). However, attracting and keeping women employees within the mining and construction industry seems to be challenging. For instance, in 2007 the CSMI reported that women make up less than 5% of the formal mining sector’s workforce (CSMI, 2007). This finding leads to the question: what is the reality for women in this industry?

This study compares the results of two studies framed within the relational theory – one completed in 2005 and another completed in 2008 – on the perception of women on the employer-employee relationship and communication management within a mining and a mining and construction company, in order to highlight some of the obstacles faced by women in this industry. The researchers also suggest some interventional steps that can assist organisations in accommodating female employees within the South African mining and construction industry.

Farming African Women: The Swynnerton Plan and African Women Farmers

by

Muey Saeteurn

My paper calls into question the absence of Kenyan women farmers from the late-colonial regime's development initiatives of the 1950s and 1960s. I argue that the 1954 Swynnerton Plan—a state-driven project intended to “modernize” and intensify African agriculture throughout colonial Kenya—privileged male farmers over female cultivators. Roger Swynnerton, the Assistant Director of Agriculture in Kenya at the time, drafted the proposal as a solution to the economic, political, and social problems plaguing the colony and metropole as a result of the Mau Mau uprising and World War II. Moreover, the plan was a sharp break from pre-World War II British colonial policies. Whereas administrators had previously discouraged local Kenyan farmers from practicing commercial agriculture, the Swynnerton Plan encouraged a community of “progressive” African farmers to grow cash crops and to obtain private land titles. My argument contends that the administration’s definition of “progressive” African farmer was problematic as it referred largely to young and able-bodied men. Despite being the main household agriculturalists, colonial officials did not consider Kenyan women farmers as “progressive.” This gendered definition of farmer consequently allowed for both elder African men and European officials to control rural women's productive and reproductive labor within 1950s and 1960s colonial society. I maintain that because rural Kenyan women farmers were too much of a threat to the political, economic, and social well-being of colonial white and black men, they were deliberately excluded from the late-colonial development projects and, eventually, nation building process in the post-colonial state.

Gender Inequality in the Enrollment of Students for French in Nigerian Tertiary Institutions

by

Afusat Sanni-Suleiman

French is today the first foreign language taught in Nigerian Universities and Colleges of Education, even long before it was declared the second official language of the country. However, our observation over the years as teachers of French have revealed that female students always outnumber male students in French class whether in the Universities and Colleges of Education. The aim of this paper is therefore to investigate gender disparity in the population of French students in the Universities and Colleges of Education. The study hopes to administer a questionnaire on students of French in some higher institutions in Nigeria to deduce reasons for disparity. We will also carry out interviews with French teachers in the institutions. It is hoped that the study will explain the apparent gender inequality in the enrolment for French studies in higher institutions.

Women and the Post-colonial National Imagination Projects in Tanzania and Congo/Zaire

by

 Jonathan Shaw

This is a comparative study of the role of gender in the establishment and development of “traditionalist” national re-imagination projects in Nyerere’s Tanzania and Mobutu’s Congo/Zaire in the post-colonial period until the dissolution of each man’s political dominance in the mid-1990s. What did Mobutu and Nyerere suggest were traditional notions of gender equity they were attempting to recapture in the Zaire and Ujamaa projects? The focus in Zaire will be on Mobutism and the concept of a society with an ultimate “father” (Baba Mobutu) and “Mother” (Mama Mobutu) and the relative roles that each presented for emulation by the Congolese/Zairians during authenticite. What did the spiritualization and politicization of fatherhood in Zaire do to familial understandings and representations of gender identity in Zaire at the height of Mobutuism? This phenomenon will be analyzed as being influenced by neighboring Tanzanian reconstructions/constructions of gender in Tanzania under Nyerere’s Ujamaa project. Nyerere’s statement that 'When I first started to write about liberation I wrote about the liberation of women' invites questions about whether the “liberation” of women was achieved during the Ujamaa era of Tanzania, and what, exactly, “liberated” Tanzanian female identity was meant to be?As Mobutu’s Zaire project failed spectacularly and Nyerere’s Ujamaa project dissolved with a mixed legacy, what re-conceptualizations of gender occurred? Further, what possible connections can be drawn from Zairian constructions of male and female identity to contemporary mass sexual violence in the conflict in eastern Congo?

Women Leadership and Constitutional Rights in Africa: A Myth or Reality?

by

Ololade kazeem Shonubi

 In traditional African society, it is believed that women are to be heard and not to be seen, particularly on issues relating to critical societal decisions. By implication, women are expected to fulfill what has been ascribed to them by nature, that is, procreating and bringing up children coupled with its attendant psychological and emotional trauma. Western education has made African women to reject the saying by African men that; their office is in the kitchen however educated they are. Contrary, women believe more than ever that, what a man can do, a woman can do better. The writer assumes that such response is a result of the empirical evidence gathered about African women achievements globally, and in Africa.

The theme of the paper stems from the researcher’s experience as a student in South Africa. Taking South Africa as case study, the findings of this paper indicates that South Africa is one the first among countries in the African continent that women are more conscious of the fact that leadership should be a shared responsibility particularly in domestic, public and political spheres - That is, between men and women.Despite the upheld beliefs that women are of the “weaker vessels”, it was found that because female fundamental rights are held in esteem in South Africa, women are treated with caution in relation to their place as regards leadership positions.Recommendations were made among others that despite the awareness of women’s’ rights, African values, norms, beliefs, culture, morals and traditions must not be traded unduly because they serve as the emblem that indicates the black race as true Africans.

Tutoring Children of African Immigrants in a Multicultural Context: A Case Study

by

Esther Some-Guiebre

Our scholarly understanding Some-Guiebre of Africa usually tends to contain the continent within its geographic bounds, thus omitting its transnational manifestation in the new Diaspora. In the past decade, dozens of thousands of Africans immigrated to the USA voluntarily through the American government’s Diversity Visa Lottery, which grants immigrant status to, at least, 50 thousand foreigners and their families who aim to work or settle in the country. One major problem of this category of immigrants is their “between and betwixt” position during their adjustment process, which can take years, depending on the immigrant’s working language and social class back in Africa. The migration literature has addressed the cultural struggles, mainly the linguistic challenges of non-English-speaking immigrants of the US, including Africans, in a significant way. There has been, however, a tendency to lump experiences of children and wives of immigrants into their fathers’ or husbands’ lot; which flaws the portrayal of the specific nature of children’s experience and, by extension, their mother’s, granted that women’s visible presence in the house relates them more to the children’s lives. This inclination to homogenize the experiences of all immigrants overlooks some realities at the micro level such as the social, cultural and educational challenges that the children and their mothers face. This paper investigates the role of a tutorial program for African immigrants’ children in their adjustment process in a Midwestern America’s town. I also examine the role and social ordeal of their mothers in the process.

Literature as a Tool for Combating Persistent Girl Trafficking in Benin City, Nigeria

by

Mobolanle Ebunoluwa Sotunsa

Edo state, particularly Benin City is reputed to be the most fertile environment for the menace of Girl Trafficking in Nigeria. The study demonstrates the tangible impact of reading relevant literature on a focused group, the indigenes of Edo state, Nigeria. It investigates through survey, questionnaire and observation, focused group discussions and interviews the pre knowledge and attitude of people in Benin City, particularly women about the myths and dangers of the Girl Trafficking trade in Nigeria. It further interrogates the social and cultural factors which evolved, sanction, sustain and advance the problem of girl trafficking in Benin City and Nigeria. The researcher then circulates Trafficked a novel by Akachi Ezeigbo which treats the issue of Girl trafficking among various respondents for reading after which a post questionnaire which measures the effect of the novel on respondents is administered. The significance test compares the difference in knowledge, attitude and behaviour of respondents to the Girl Trafficking Trade before and after reading the novel. The study advocates that the social and cultural factors which promote the trade must be explored and addressed as much as the economic factors which have received much attention. It observes that few creative literatures which address Girl Trafficking pragmatically have been produced or brought to the attention of the Benin populace. It recommends that creative works which focus on cultural factors and parents’ role in Girl trafficking should be produced and advocacy measures applied to promote the reading and absorption of the artistic vision of the artistes. It recommends that the study of literature can be more pragmatic and utilitarian if it is deliberately directed through appropriate media at target audiences who have great need to receive that message. It concludes that purpose driven, result oriented functional literature should be harnessed and exploited to eradicate negative cultural, socio- political myths, popularize scientific, technological and medical knowledge and promote positive development in Africa.

Christian Missions and Female Education in Nineteenth-Century Sierra Leone

by

Silke Strickrodt

In my paper, I propose to examine the attempt of Christian missionaries to re-define gender roles, particularly ideas about femininity and motherhood, as part of their assumed ‘civilizing’ mission in nineteenth-century West Africa. The focus will be on the Church Missionary Society’s Female Institution in Freetown, which was founded in 1840s as an elite school for girls and young women who were to become “good Christian wives and mothers’ and by their example were supposed to spread Victorian values not just in Sierra Leone, but beyond to the whole of the West African coast. Students included two of the daughters of Samuel Adjai Crowther, Abigail and Susannah, as well as Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a ward of Queen Victoria, who later became the wife of J. P. L. Davies. Using mainly teachers’ correspondences and other documents preserved in the CMS archives, I will examine how different conceptions of gender roles were played out at the school and how African parents appropriated the school for their own purposes, revisiting the debates about domesticity and respectability in the process.

Examining the “New Enkanyakuai”:

How the Schooling Imperative Effects Local Gender Categories

by

Heather Switzer

Based on interviews with 98 primary schoolgirls conducted in Maasai communities of southern Kenya (northern Kajiado district), my paper examines the gendered implications of what I am calling the “new enkanyakuai.” According to these schoolgirls, enkanyakuai is the Maasai concept used to describe and define the liminal period between a girl’s circumcision (emurata), when she remains in her father’s home, and when she joins her husband in his home. After this move, the girl becomes esinkiki, a young bride, and a woman in the prime of life. At this point, she is no longer a girl and takes her place as an adult among adults. Enkanyakuai is a gendered space; there is no similar space for newly circumcised boys. The development driven schooling imperative, however, is changing this liminal space. Schoolgirls, like their cohort who are not in school, typically pass through emurata between the ages of 11-14. Unlike their cohort “at home,” schoolgirls do not “become women;” instead, they remain “schoolgirls.” To complete secondary school is to effectively extend enkanyakuai; in fact, if the schoolgirl manages to attend college, womanhood is further deferred. What does the “new enkanyakuai” offer Maasai schoolgirls? What are the rewards of this new subject position? What are the risks? My paper examines these questions by examining the locally derived gender category of enkanyakuai as it has been constructed by Maasai schoolgirls themselves.

The Role of Women in the Development of Christianity in Ekitiland (1893-1923)

by

Temitope Thomson Bello

The concern of this paper is to look into the role of indigenous African women in the development of Christianity in Ekitiland from 1894 to 1924.  It has been viewed from the point where Christianity began in Ekitiland, brief survey of the history of the people of Ekiti, that is, their historical, geographical, cultural and the religion of the people before the era of Christianity in Ekitiland.  Questions had been raised on how women can partook of Christianity in a cultural setting where women are not allowed to lead the people.  The answer is here in this presentation. Women’s evangelical work is examined.  I will also examine the historical situation of women from 1893-1923.  I will deal with the life history of these women that were involve in the development of Christianity in Ekiti within the given period.  I will also look into the situation of the places where Fatoregun Helena Doherty and Mary Ojo, who were the women that fell into the period between 1893 and 1923.

This paper will examine how both helped in the development of Christianity in Ekiti and its environments.  The strategies and modalities used in the development will be considered also.  Despite the fact they left their home towns as slave girls, they eventually paved the way for evangelism and came back as freed slaves to establish a virile Christianity in Ekiti.  And despite obstacles and persecution, Mary Oja and Fatoregun Helena Doherty were able to make their landmark in the development of Ekitiland, evangelically and educationally, which were their major contributions as African women in the development of their own are a and community.

Representing the Nation: Reflecting on District 9, South-Africa and Nigeria.

by

Olivier J. Tchouaffe

The movie District 9 (2009) , has drawn international controversies for its one-dimensional marketing of Nigerians as mainly superstitious criminals and prostitutes. This paper reflects on these controversies to discuss the porosity between the concept of nation-state and symbolic systems of representation and how they are both structuring each other.

Accordingly, this paper breaks down the role of speculative fiction in District 9 to analyze the movie both as a political thriller and an alternative metaphor about two increasingly technological-driven societies, South-Africa and Nigeria, the important remnants of anachronism they need to overcome and the kind of social policies South Africa and Nigeria need to achieve in order to effectively manage and fulfill the kinds of broad social transformations that technology introduces. It means that the future depends on how both South Africa and Nigeria will both respond to the democratic demands of its citizens, their concerns for social mobility in order to empower them to play their role as African superpowers in the realm of Globalization.

“Motherhood, Women’s Body and ‘Eating Well’:
Pregnancy, A Metaphor of Life in the Cameroon Grassfields”  

By  

Bridget A. Teboh  

Post-colonial Africa has witnessed through literature fundamental differences in people’s social and economic relations, cultural experiences, and public sentiment. In the Cameroon Grassfields during the 20 th century, a woman’s lifecycle was clearly defined, and her journey had an ultimate destination—motherhood. Any discussion of women’s bodies necessarily included a related discourse on the reproduction of society and an interest in the symbolism of procreation. Much of the literature often by women and about women has been pivotal in questioning gender subordination, traditional female roles and advocating for the empowerment of women in the political, social and economic fields.

This paper examines pregnancy as a powerful stage in a Cameroonian woman’s lifecycle. Whereas anthropologists and social scientists have investigated women’s traditional roles, few have discussed pregnancy as a powerful stage in the life of a woman. While this paper locates women and motherhood as focal points in Moghamo belief system, it also critically examines political and economic changes and their impact on women’s lives, health and wellbeing and their fears regarding infertility. Within this context, pregnancy becomes a metaphor of life, and in/fertility as a tool to reveal the dynamics of gender inequality and notions of success or failure for both women and men.

by

Bridget A. Teboh

This paper explores life histories and the biography as important sources for the reconstruction of African history. By focusing on the life of one woman [Esther Dassi], the first woman ever to become Mayor of Batibo in 2002, this paper not only chronicles her journey-alongside the nation-state of Cameroon-towards multi-party democracy, gender equity, health care, political participation, but also elucidates the changing historical role of women. Using data from recent research, it raises general questions about the historical production of knowledge and the representation of the other. This paper also examines the process of selection of the ‘subject,’ data collection and interviews, and writing process. Through her story I explore the contours of production of the biography , examine my positionality and highlight challenges that I face as an African woman doing research on women in Africa.   Why a biography? Although biographies have increased elsewhere in Africa, in Cameroon, they are still taking baby steps. Yet, not only does biography help to recuperate and celebrate women, to restore them to history, it continues to offer a valuable space for feminist historical scholarship. The implications for theoretical and methodological issues that transcend the field of History, cutting across the disciplinary boundaries of African Studies, women’s history and gender studies are enormous!

Archiving the Popobawa:
The Circulation of Sexual Knowledge through a Coastal Tanzania Urban Legend

by

Katrina Daly Thompson

Since the mid-1960s, the urban legend of the popobawa (‘bat-wing’ in Swahili) has circulated on the coast and islands of Tanzania. The popobawa, a giant bat-like creature, is said to break into people’s homes at night, paralyzing men and raping them. After he rapes a man, the popobawa tells him, “You must tell ten people what I have done to you or I will make you my wife.” Men use storytelling, as well as cell phones, text messages, and radio broadcasts to spread the word that they have been sodomized. Other versions of this story circulate in print and illustrations in Tanzanian popular magazines, including some that feature attacks on women. The popobawa has received limited attention from scholars, with the exception of anthropologist David Parkin (2004; 2006). My work extends the existing research through a comparative approach with a focus on discourse.

The legend was first documented in Pemba in 1965, a year after the ethnic massacres that led up to Zanzibari independence, and recurred there in 1995 in the period leading up to multi-party elections. Journalists also reported popobawa attacks in 2000, when they were again linked with elections. In 2001 and 2007, the story circulated again, however this time seemingly without a political explanation. Might the reasons for telling popobawa stories, and even the stories themselves, have changed since the periods of political change that were first documented? My preliminary analysis of data collected in Unguja and Dare es Salaam focuses on the circulation of popobawa stories: the instruction that ‘victims’ must spread the legend, and the various means they choose to do so. Those who say they have been attacked by the popobawa are not only victims but also discursive agents who choose to tell their stories despite risk of great shame. Although the legend is not strictly urban and shares with traditional oral stories a supernatural theme, its concern with non-traditional sexuality aligns it with the urban legend genre.

Urban legends, as contemporary, orally-transmitted tales, typically depict a social tension arising from a clash between tradition and modernity. My hypothesis is that this legend depicts the social tension surrounding the (real or imagined) rise of sodomy, and transgressive sexuality more generally, on Tanzania’s coast and islands. Swahili culture places a high value on veiled speech and metaphorical discourse, especially around issues of sexuality, so it makes sense that such critiques would take the form of a cautionary supernatural tale. Indeed, the popobawa’s name and form suggests a similarity to vampire legends in the West, which have been variously interpreted as representing illicit sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and homosexuality. Thus, my analysis explores the linkages between the discursive phenomena associated with popobawa and the construction and circulation of attitudes toward modern sexuality in coastal Tanzania. Since sexuality, and homosexuality in particular, is taboo in public discourse, and thus difficult to research, urban legends like the popobawa are an important archive for scholars of sexuality in Africa.

The "Triadic" Relationship: Diasporan Lagosians and Transnationalism

by

Hakeem Ibikunle Tijani

Decolonizing Homosexuality in Uganda as a Human Rights Process

by

Caroline Tushabe

The closet paradigm has, in recent years, been deployed in Uganda in theoretical frameworks and politics of liberation for people who do not cross sex or those identified as homosexuals or people who engage in homosexual behavior. On the contrary, since the amendment of the 1995 Constitution that emphasizes the colonial penal code that prohibits homosexuality, each sitting parliament has adopted the closet paradigm to “protect” citizens from “Western illicit and inappropriate sexualities.” In 2000, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni pledged his personal commitment to “locking up” all homosexuals in the streets. In September, 2009, the eighth parliament released a proposed Bill, The Anti-Homosexuality Bill, no. 18 that protects the traditional family from homosexual behavior. The logic driving the desire to “protect” emerges at the intersection of two ideologies: Uganda’s freedom to define itself and the construction of a progressive “civilized” system of sexuality. These ideologies contradict each other as none of them is characteristic of Uganda’s freedom to define itself. Both ideologies are oblivious of their support of the colonial construction of “primitive” system of sexuality and the “progressive” system of sexuality. Drawing on Marlon Ross’s, “Beyond the Closet Paradigm as Raceless”, this essay situates itself at the intersection of global queer politics, global sexual identities, U.S. Women of Color feminist theory, and decolonial thinking. I argue for a decolonial thinking that re-members the knowledge, languages, communities and practices that, as a result of colonial legacies so evident in Uganda’s eighth parliament Bill, we have been taught to forget, denigrate and erase.

Widowhood Practices and Women Emancipation in Igbo Land, Nigeria

by

Emma Osonna Ugwulebo

Widowhood practices are one of the obnoxious cultural practices prevalent among the Igbos of South Eastern Nigeria. The practice subjects widows to an avalanche of sufferings occasioned by the degree and intensity of the rituals they pass through. The Umuada (patrilineal daughters) are the evil heads discomforting the system as they constitute a big factor in the perpetration of this retrogressive customary practice on their fellow women. Widowhood practices as currently in place in Igbo land cages the women and acts as a cog in the wheel of their social progress and emancipation. To ameliorate this problem, the Igbo society should undergo enormous socialization and re-orientation. Religious bodies should help in championing the liquidation of this practice as Igbo people are highly religious and naturally obey religious injunctions. Education should be further exploited and strengthened so as to contribute towards changing the people’s psyche with a view to making them embrace the envisaged change in their cultural practice. If the above is done, women will be free and emancipated and will be in a position to meaningfully contribute towards development of their society.

African Widowhood& Visibility: Challenges and Possibilities in the Modern World

by

Iniobong I. Uko

Widowhood in Africa often portends evil. Not only is the widow subjected to rigorous, oppressive, and humiliating mourning rites as stipulated by tradition, her husband’s relatives often strip her of the family’s properties. Many times, the children she had with her deceased husband are taken from her, and then, she is expected to be inherited by her deceased husband’s male relative. These and such other practices constitute the challenges that confront the widow in Africa. However, this study posits that there are possible agenda that can be evolved in the contemporary society to protect the interest and ensure the welfare of the widow, and empower her to surmount the ubiquitous cross and crises of her reality. This paper situates this discourse within the framework of Ifeoma Okoye’s The Trial and Other Stories.

Gender and Health: A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Management of Zoonoses and Transboundary Diseases

by

Florence Wakoko-Studstill
Margaret L. Khaitsa

In spite of a growing body of literature that now recognizes the centrality of gender in African development, little is known about the role of women, men, and sexuality in the incidence of Zoonotic diseases management. About 70% of the human and animal pathogens affecting production, public health, global trade and security are found in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Eastern and Central Africa ( ECA). While strides have been made in understanding how to design and implement interventions that take into account gender-based vulnerabilities in agricultural production, the ways in which women’s reproductive roles affect their access to animal health resources are unclear and empirical results are disparate. This paper draws on the feminist theory to discuss a framework for understanding the intersections of gender and sexuality in social institutions and how this affects the management of Zoonoses and transboundary diseases in Africa. Using empirical analysis of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Makerere University, it discusses efforts made to recognize the need to look at health and disease not in isolation but within a given socioeconomic context. Consideration of the role of gender and sexuality in animal public health may help to add another dimension to the growing interest in integrated disease management approach in Africa.

Western Religions and Female Sexuality:
Engaging the influence of Dualist thinking on African Women’s Sexuality

by

Mary Nyangweso Wangila

What has Greek culture got to do with the sexuality of the African woman? More than we want to admit.. In most societies, sexuality is has been as a social factor of control. Female sexuality has been targeted for gender related issues. While, female sexuality has often been traced to patriarchal structures of various communities, few studies have examined the matrix surrounding the different layers of patriarchal structures as they are embraced by a given community through adoption of different cultures and religions in particular. The African woman’s sexuality is one that finds itself under multiple layers of sexual control norms. The need to disentangle and single out how each one contributes to the status of African woman’s sexuality is crucial if each aspect of these norms is to be isolated and addressed. In this paper, I examine the reasons behind sexual control in the three western religions; Judaism, Christianity and Islam, to highlight how areas of continuity or discontinuity in reinforcing indigenous norms surrounding sexual control of the female. Drawing examples from experiences of select African women, I will illustrate the need to deconstruct the matrices informing norms of sexuality control of the female in Africa if basic human rights of these women are to be restored.

"State of Love and War:  Masculinity, Violence and the Nyiginya Kingdom, 1770-1896"

by

Sarah Watkins

This paper explores the centrality of violence to the political culture of precolonial Rwanda during the period in which the most dramatic centralization of power took place, between the reigns of Mwami Rujugira (c. 1770-c. 1786) and Mwami Rwabugiri (1867-1895). I argue that the character of the state in this period can be most clearly understood by observing two phenomena: the incorporation of the entire populace into the cattle armies (inkore), and revenge killings involving entire lineages, ultimately turning the great families upon one another. Through these we can see that increasing violence and brutality became symbols of spiritual and political power, and that these values formed the essence of the national culture by the of German colonization in 1896. At the same time, we can observe the construction of an elite masculine sexuality among the warriors and central court that was predicated on life-long relationships between the men of the inkore, aristocrats, and the Mwami himself. The warrior state was a world of men, a homosocial space that developed due to the exclusion of women not only on the battlefield, but in the herding sections of the cattle armies. Thus, the nature of state expansion, while predicated on violence, also created a space for men to love one another.

Old Wine in New Vessels: Situating the Testimony of Grace Ihinde Within Nigeria’s Literary Tradition

by

Jessica Wilbanks

Independent Pentecostal churches in Nigeria are currently providing a new arena for literary production (via oral narrative) by lay Nigerian women who are otherwise marginalized. In her 2009 book, Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria, religious scholar Ruth Marshall appends the sixteen-page transcription of the testimony of one such woman, Grace Ihere. Ihere’s oral narrative of her conversion, circulated to thousands via cassette tape in southern Nigeria, tells the metaphorical story of her kidnapping at the age of two by the Queen of the Coast and her subsequent journey through the spirit world, where she meets devils and is compelled to drink blood before returning to share her story with other Christians.

If viewed independently, Ihere’s testimony seems to resist analysis, but the testimony is not an anomaly. Instead, it is an oral manifestation of the postcolonial Nigerian quest narrative, a long lineage which also includes the first full-length Yoruba novel, D. O. Fagunwa’s The Forest of a Thousand Daemons and the first Nigerian English language novel, Amos Tutuola’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

Like her predecessors, Ihere relies on a highly episodic narrative structure to relate the spiritual autobiography of a child who exists in the liminal space between the dead and the living. Fagunwa and Tutuola’s novels have sometimes been misread as uneasy pastiches of traditional Yoruba folktales and Western influences, but like Ihere’s testimony, the texts instead demonstrate organic, heteroglossic responses to moments of dramatic social rupture within Nigerian society.

Warriors, Women, and the Emergence of a New Egungun Masquerade at Otta, Southwest Nigeria, 1882–1901

by

John C. Willis

My paper speaks to the themes of 1) gender and Colonialism, and to 2) power, visibility, and agency, 3) men, women, and masculinities. Egungun is a Yoruba ancestral masquerade tradition and masking society that has been the focus of intense debate in discussions of gender relations among the Yoruba. Unfortunately, following the lead of nineteenth-century missionaries, scholars by and large have portrayed the relationship between Egungun and women as inherently antagonistic. I argue that scholars have oversimplified and misrepresented the complex historical relationship between Egungun and women, and therefore gender relations among the Yoruba. In this paper, I examine an oral tradition that focuses on the role of a warrior and his two wives, one of whom was a wealthy market woman, in the introduction of an Egungun masquerade figure in a Yoruba town during the last two decades of the nineteenth-century. This marked an era in which overseas trade in agricultural products for European markets had supplanted the slave trade and in which a colonial order was emerging to replace a political order dominated by warriors. I situate the history of this new Egungun and the domestic group the promoted it within an historical era characterized by the decline of slave-owning warrior elite and the elevation of wealthy commercial merchants and colonial figures. I contend that both the husband and his wives drew upon the power and authority of the Egungun masquerade tradition to solidify and advance their positions in the town as a colonial order was being forged.

Cultural Practices: A Base for Gender Based Violence

by

Hauwau Evelyn Yusuf
Adefarakan Adedayo Yusufu

Violence is a common feature of most societies, even though its incidence, patterns and trend vary from one society to the other. The aggressiveness inherent in all human beings and animals engenders violence. In the era of states formation in Nigeria, wars had to be fought in order to form large scale centralized political organizations within the present day Nigeria’s political divide. Consequent upon this, men were made to take up arms against their fellow men and women leading to violence of great magnitude.

Gender based violence is one form of violence that has various implications on societies all over the world, it is found in many spheres of human endeavor, both formal and informal settings. This paper looks at the African cultural settings as it affects and encourages gender based violence using Kaduna state as a case study it concentrates on discriminations along gender lines in both the formal and informal sectors. Household surveys were conducted among three cultures in Kaduna state, the Hausas, the Gbagyis and the Atyaps and questionnaires were administered in a few organizations in the state capital. It was established that the incidence of gender based violence is largely influenced by culture in different but similar circumstances.

Radical African Feminist Reactions to Patriarchy

by

Jonathan Zilberg

This paper revisits radical attempts in African studies which contest patriarchy as a colonial invention. In order to do so it contrasts instances in the literature on Nigeria, Ghana and Zimbabwe so as to establish a context for examining the way in which the patriarchy – matriarchy debate has evolved recently and where the debates on gender and the family in Africa may be leading. Towards that end, it reflects upon these issues in terms of escalating violence against women in numerous African contexts, and proposes that academia has in cases become an overtly political field for advancing personal agendas and narrow notions of matriarchal power rather than for advancing partnerships and advocacy for women’s empowerment in Africa.

The paper compares two important recent studies Family Matters: Feminist Concepts in African Philosophy of Culture by Nkiru Uwechia Nzegwu (2006) and Making Men in Ghana by Stephan F. Miescher (2005). It assesses the relative merits of these studies against each other with special relevance to broader issues raised in Le Mouvement Mondial des Femmes (2007) by Peggy Antrobus, Manning the Nation: Father figures in Zimbabwean literature and society edited by Kizito Muchemwa and Robert Muponde (2007) and Women, Religion and HIV/AIDS in Africa: Responding to Ethical and Theological Challenges by Teresia Hinga et. al.(2008). In bringing this literature together, and commenting on violence against women in Africa, the paper proposes that when read against each other, these works will inspire intense debate in African studies for years to come.

Gender equality in South Africa: Where are we in terms of the customary law?

by

Celumusa Zungu

The Republic of South Africa’s constitution prohibits gender based discrimination. This is contrary to the past wherein black women were excluded from certain rights and freedoms on the basis of gender and race. Not withstanding a constitutionally guaranteed right to equality ,a number of South African women are still subjected to customs and practices of succession to leaderships operating in terms of the principle of male primogeniture. Some writers argue that women’s inclusion in traditional leadership must be achieved through an evolutionary process rather then by rigid judicial or legislative decree.

This paper argue that South Africa has made tremendous progress towards achieving equality in general more especially in placing women in leadership roles but a lot still need to be done to achieve equality in traditional system. The approach adopted by South African courts in dealing with people’s rights to develop and practice their custom when that is in contravention of a right to equality will be discussed. There will be a special discussion of the landmark judgment of Shilubane vs Nwamitwa as this case dealt with the issue of pro male practices governing succession to traditional leadership.

This paper will further examine problems hindering more progress towards achieving equality in traditional systems. Chief amongst those problems are illiteracy and poor socio economic conditions. Opportunities for an environment that foster expeditious transformation of traditional system to accord equality to women will be outlined.

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Africa Conference 2010: Women, Genders, and Sexuality in Africa

Convened by Dr. Toyin Falola and Coordinated by Saheed Aderinto for the Center for African and African American Studies

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