(Repost from 18 October 2020)
African feminist thought organizes itself around the truth of the matricentric organization of the African family and larger community. The truth itself lies in the ability of an African mother to wield their socio-cultural power to lay down order as well as obedience and many scholars, including popular theorists in and around the field of international relations and political philosophy have acknowledged the social capital of maternal design. But now, a conflict arises in that same paradigm when the reality of the position of the woman in society is put on the stand; contemporary African society seemingly does not protect or acknowledge the subjective existence of women that have not taken up the mantle of motherhood. Would the #ShutItAllDown protests in Namibia have garnered more support from older, traditionally inclined stakeholders if the young protesters had the support from actual and symbolic figureheads? Does the systemic silencing of younger female voices translate back into a lack of vocal amplification of their cries by national maternal figures?
These questions beg a discussion surrounding the issue of how power relations can be negotiated between the mothers and women of the African continent – especially during a wave of radical female uprising that challenges the uncritical and oppressive social framework that currently stands.
Understanding power and motherhood
All around the world, across history the power of the mother has been undeniable. In the past, especially, female industriousness was important because women were workers; sentenced to get married and go off to work to build families, raise children and shape households. Women collected soft cultural power from the age-old patriarchal constructions of motherhood and the household and utilized this power to wield influence and sway decisions, by using their important position in the household. On the continent, the mother may have yielded the most crucial power because linear hierarchies counted on the maternal strategies of non-violence and social organization was designed around maternal blood lines. Pre-colonially, the larger autochthonous groups were either matriarchal or matrilineal including the Aawambo and Okavango peoples of Namibia, the Asante of West Africa. Moreover, the southern half of Malawi (except the most southern tip) is matrilineal, as well as northern Mozambique and north-eastern Zambia. In Tanzania, the broad coastal belt south of Tanga, including Dar-es-Salaam, Morogoro and the Uluguru mountains is matrilineal.
Even folklore has memorialized the importance of motherhood by explaining that supernatural manipulation could be effectively exercised through maternal ties, for example, notions of Eezimo in Oshiwambo metaphysical thought can symbolize this transcendent maternal power.
In the colonial space, we see an import of western systems of social organization and the replacement of negotiable gender roles with rigid structures of gender and role. We also see the amplification of problems of gender-related violence and discrimination which historical sociologists partially attributed to a mix of colonial emasculation and Judeo-Christian notions of gender and subservience. It is important to note that at the same time that women were exercising the maternal power, the dominant organizing principle of the average African community was seniority. Seniority determined access to power and social hierarchy and this in itself, amplified the influence of older mothers – who would not only be powerful in their right as a mother but also as an older member of the clan or tribe.
Wielding the Maternal Power
In contemporary practice, motherhood was utilized as a political tool in innumerable accounts, the most personally notable of which were the Liberian Women’s protest, the death of Anna Kakurukaze Mugunda and the 1956 South African March. In all these cases, African maternal figures would use their power influence as a political tool. the killing of a young mother mourning the of a loss of a son, carried the liberatory motif of emancipating the women and children and the Second Liberian civil war brought together thousands of women across religious and tribal lines to protest the war. The women wielded this soft power – they staged a sex strike, publicly disrobing to invoke symbolic traditional shame to the militants that had been terrorizing their cities for months on end. Their efforts culminated in the negotiation of a peace deal and an eventual end to the war.
Lastly, the scope of motherhood today extends to symbolic maternal figures - more than anything, it is the role of symbolic motherhood that carries social sway in contemporary socio-political circles. The emblematic mother is the senior female figurehead occupying a position in prestigious settings, be it government, parliament or in communal structures. Because of the social pressure and difficulty that surrounds her ascension to power she carries the role of protector and defender of the woman under the umbrella of her power.
Symbolic motherhood is perhaps the most complex to analyze because it involves nuanced discussion on consent and extent of influence. However, it is important to recognize and highlight because emblematic mothers wield perhaps the most social power to bolster radical change.
Womanhood: An uncanny juxtaposition
To paint the contemporary young woman as having power over a society of uncaring men would be to trivialize the perpetual struggle of being a woman in Africa. Every year, thousands of young women and girls report cases of sexual and physical violence and discrimination to police or peers. That coupled with the general existential trauma of existing in the world, puts into words what can never be measured linguistically: The African womanhood is under threat. This is not to say that the African mother does not experience these same worries, however, ontologically at least it is significantly less – taking into consideration the respect held in African society as well as, the traditional notion of protecting motherhood.
However, the young and today, millennial African woman does not necessarily prescribe to traditional notions of womanhood or aspire to ascend to the seat of motherhood. Without confining the contemporary woman to outdated notions of definition; it is easier to say that womanhood does not exist in a familial vacuum. This conceptualization merely serves the role of juxtaposing the contemporary woman to the traditional motherhood figure, who is stereotypically more conservative. Most importantly, the contemporary African woman seeks to unshackle themselves from the chains of the patriarchy, colonial definition and limiting prescribed roles. This has manifested in the large global movements to tackle these very ills; the Namibian #ShutItAllDown protests against sexual and gender-based violence are the most recent of such movements, spearheaded by young voices. These protests were a national response to the disproportionate sexual and physical attacks along the lines of gender, with the recent statistics standing at 1604 reported rape cases between the January 2019 and June 2020.
Protesters met peacefully in the CBD of the nation’s capital, but were met with animosity from many bystanders, the police and state mechanisms themselves. However, for purposes of contextual analysis, we look at the response of the symbolic maternal figureheads who exist as stakeholders of the protests.
To begin, we note the protestors call for the resignation of the Namibian Minister of Gender Equality, Poverty Eradication and Child Welfare, who in her role has been insensitive and subjective to the plea of women including discourse on abortion and critical gender theory. Moreover, in her role as the minister of Gender and Child Welfare, her silence on the protests as a topic of the very sector her ministry was designed to overlook was deafening to protestors. Similarly, other symbolically maternal figureheads such as the Prime Minister and youth representative to the President were also criticized for their inability to overtly stand alongside protesters.
The question however, is not whether or not the responses of these stakeholder were, in and of themselves, legitimate, but rather whether their inability to stand and carry the metaphorical protest poster was what could lie between a protest frowned upon by many and a movement able to get the gears turning even in the most apathetic of individuals.
The short answer is yes. The quest of any liberatory movement is to gain traction amongst the masses and support from the larger superstructure, the political institutions and the culture itself - in hopes of achieving their demands. To borrow Sonia Alvarez’s term (1990), "politicized motherhood" utilizes the dominant gender ideology of the African geo-political space that valorized women's motherhood roles to bring about radical social change. And because gender ideologies in specific contexts can shape the way in which the goal of female emancipation can be discursively constructed and manipulated by women’s movements to achieve their goals, larger symbolic maternal figureheads have the power to lead such movements and shield African women from larger scrutiny. The faces of Doreen Sioka, Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila, Sophia Shaningwa and other female powerhouses, not just at the protests but across the board of the womanist plight, may have achieved unmeasurable sway.
Feminist discourse highlights the danger of shifting blame to other women in attempts to analyze where the shortcomings of social mobilization lie, however, it is also critical to note that various power systems can do much to amplify the voices of African women - even if these systems surround women themselves. The idea of using the cards that have been dealt to benefit you is not new, we have seen the likes of the Liberian Leymah Gbowee have shown the power of politicized motherhood and we acknowledged the existence of the symbolic maternal figure.
The cause calls for less division, we cannot eat solidarity but it can feed life into the fire.
until next time,
Down South