African Feminism: How should we change?
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African Feminism: How should we change? SYLVIA TAMALE 1
ABSTRACT Sylvia Tamale gives a critical, self-reflexive analysis of the African women’s movement, with her proposals for the changes she would like to see. She asks that African feminists transform themselves and societies into a more equitable, democratic and tolerant one. KEYWORDS Africa; professionalizing; fundamentalism; activism; transformation
One should always be drunk. That’s all there is to it; it’s the only way. Not to feel the horrible burden of Time That breaks your back and bends you to the earth, You should be continually drunk. Drunk with what? With passion, with anger, with outrage or with justice, as you please. But get drunk. And if sometimes you should happen to awake, On the stairs of a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the dreary solitude of your own room, and find that your drunkenness is ebbing or has vanished, Ask the wind and the wave, ask star, bird, or clock, ask everything that flies, everything that moans, everything that flows, everything that sings, everything that speaks, Ask them the time; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird and the clock will all reply: ‘It is Time to get drunk! If you are not to be the martyred slaves of Time, be perpetually drunk! With passion, with anger, with outrage or with justice, as you please.’
Speaking the F word This is a slightly modified version of the poem entitled,‘Be Drunk’ by the 19th century French Poet, Charles Baudelaire. I believe that feminists and women’s rights activists around the world need to be poetically drunk! The problem with the women’s movements today, particularly those in Africa, is that most of its activists are either teetotal and thus totally sober or only slightly tipsy.We need to be absolutely giddy, elated, exhilarated and drunk on our cause, our objectives, our mission and our obligations. We need to fan the flames of feminism. We need to change the way we ‘do’ feminism. Development (2006) 49(1), 38–41. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1100205
Tamale: African Feminism In the part of the world I come from, that is, Africa, most women’s rights practitioners prefer to call themselves ‘gender activists’. For various reasons, we avoid the F-word: Feminism. However, I personally steer clear of the term, ‘gender activist’. This is because it lacks the ‘political punch’ that is central to feminism. In the African context, the term ‘gender activist’ has had the regrettable tendency to lead to apathetic reluctance, comfortable complacency, dangerous diplomacy and even impotence. Somehow, society has managed to remove the element of ‘activism’ from the so-called ‘gender activists’ on the continent. More and more, we see gravitation towards ‘inactive activists’. This article is a critical, self-reflexive analysis of the African women’s movement, bringing it to bear with the changes I would like to see in its actors. The introspective analysis is meant to fan the fire under the belly of African women’s movements. Hopefully, it will provide the mu
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