GARVEY LIVES!!!
MOSIAH LIVES!!!
Afrikan people’s liberation history is uniquely replete with women freedom fighters and leaders. However, written history doesn’t always represent this, although more aspects of this are now getting documented. (1) Indeed, even Hollywood is looking to get a piece of the action – the latest instalment being a film about the ‘Dahomey Amazons’ later this year. (2)
Nevertheless, alongside more well-known figures like Queen Nzingha, Mbuya Nehanda, Nandi and Yaa Asantewaa, the history of the 8,000 strong female warriors of the Fon nation in the Dahomey kingdom (modern day Benin) in the 18th and 19th century is also one that needs telling as part of the colonial resistance narrative on the Afrikan continent. (3) Furthermore, there is the lineage of Sarraounias (“Queen/female chief”) of Azna (modern day Niger) and Sarraounia Mangou in particular who fought for the maintenance of traditional culture against Islamic encroachment as well as defeating French colonists – immortalised in director Med Hondo’s award-winning epic (completed with the support of Burkina Faso president Thomas Sankara). (4)
A similar nationalist (or proto-nationalist) pattern emerged in the Caribbean epitomised by the likes of Cecile Fatiman, Marie-Jeanne Lamartiniére, Princess Améthyste, Lazare and Sanité Belair among the female combatants in Haiti (5). Nearby in Jamaica, Hni (“Nanny”) has attained national hero status for her legendary exploits against the Brutish (6), while Sarah Francis, Mary Ward, Mary Ann Francis, Ellen Dawkins, Judy Edwards, Justina [Jessie] Taylor and Letitia Geoghegan, who launched the opening salvo of the Morant Bay rebellion of 1865, remain obscure to many. (7) Even so, the foregoing examples of nationalist self-determination could be categorised as Sista Powa.
Similarly, the “efficient Womanhood Of The Universal Negro Improvement Association” such as Any Jacques-Garvey, Amy Aswood-Garvey, Henrietta Vinton Davis, Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, Adelaide Casely Hayford, Laura Adorkor Kofey, Madame De Mena and others were the inheritors of a rich legacy. (8) In fact, Afrikan women formed roughly half of the rank-and-file membership (9) and almost half the executive of the UNIA-ACL, with the suggestion in some quarters that they utilised feminist or proto-feminist strategies to gain a foothold to negotiate the patriarchy in their midst. (10). The proportion female membership was even higher by the time we get to the likes of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defence in the 1960s where it was around 60%. (11)
In the contemporary setting, women leadership can be seen at the helm of, for example, Black Lives Matter but they unequivocally locate themselves outside of the Black Nationalist tradition they dismiss as “narrow.” (12)
This arguably indicates a larger crisis in the community as well as in nationalist Pan-Afrikanist organising attempting to mobilise communities that are increasingly factionalised and riven with internecine toxicities that are often played out on social media. (13) A feature of this condition in some areas is the seeming uncritical acceptance of the Eurocentric, capitalistic, patriarchal, Afriphobic mores in direct opposition to the Afrikan value system historically demonstrated by the likes of Nbuya Nehanda, Sarraounia Mangou and Nhi above. Perhaps the greatest challenge – and necessity then is the reinstitution of Afrikan values, the Afrikan world-view. As history has demonstrated, Afrikan women are central to this mission. Mama Marimba Ani explains:
“Afrikan women told the stories and passed on the culture in their breast milk. We held our men and let them cry and we cried in the strength of their arms. To Be An Afrikan Woman is to know that we, Afrikan men and women, are the mirrors of each other’s souls in which we find our ability to love and to be loved. To Be An Afrikan Woman is to know that your man is the voice which affirms your womaness. It is to be able to feel him say “you are an Afrikan Woman”. To Be An Afrikan Woman is to be the memory of the Race, which makes Sankofa possible. It is to “bury the placenta” so that Afrika can be resurrected. To Be An Afrikan Woman is to pick up the pieces of our Maafa-shattered lives and to make our people whole again. It is to Rebirth the Spirit of Afrika.” (14)
(1) Elizabeth Michele Jones (2006) The unknown struggle: a comparative analysis of women in the Black Power movement. https://ir.library.louisville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1711&context=etd. p. 6-7. She states: “Black women have long contributed to the Black Nationalist strain of social movements their participation and work in sustaining the community lingers near invisible.”
(2) Sandy Schaefer (13/04/22) It Took Viola Davis Six Years To Get The Woman King Made. https://www.slashfilm.com/831222/it-took-viola-davis-six-years-to-get-the-woman-king-made/; Jill Robi (22/11/19) Harriet biopic erases white violence – and that’s a big problem. https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a29871460/harriet-tubman-review-violence-slavery/
(3) Jazzi Johnson (23/02/18) If You Loved Black Panther’s Dora Milaje, Meet the Dahomey Amazons. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/black-panther-dora-milaje-dahomey-amazons
(4) Antoinette Tidjani Alou (2009) Niger and Sarraounia: One Hundred Years of Forgetting Female Leadership in Research in African Literatures, Spring, 2009, Vol. 40, No. 1, Oral Literature, and Identity Formation in Africa and the Diaspora. Indiana University Press p. 43-4; Aboubakar Sanogo (2020) By Any Means Necessary: Med Hondo. https://www.filmcomment.com/article/by-any-means-necessary-med-hondo/
(5) Thomas Brandstetter (31/07/15) Women Combatants in the Haitian Revolution. https://wargamingraft.wordpress.com/2015/07/31/women-combatants-in-the-haitian-revolution/
(6) Ray Uter (1987) Nanny Of The Maroons in Ray Uter, Virginia McLean, Lesnah Hall & Frank Forde, Black Makers of History: Four Women. The Bookplace. pp. 4-11; Ann (12/02/09) Black History Month: Black Heroines, Part 6: Nanny: The National Queen Of The Maroons. https://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/black-history-month-black-heroines-part-5-nanny-the-national-queen-of-the-maroons/
(7) Mimi Sheller (2002) Quasheba, Mother, Queen: Black Women’s Public Leadership and Political Protest in Postemancipation Jamaica. Department of Sociology, Lancaster University, Lancaster. http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/papers/Sheller-Quasheba-Mother-Queen.pdf
(8) Natanya Duncan (2009) The‘Efficient Womanhood’ Of The Universal Negro Improvement Association: 1919-1930. (Dissertation). https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UFE0021545/00001
(9) Keisha N. Blain (2018) Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom. University of Pennsylvania Press. P. 28-9;
(10), Nzingha Assata (2008) Women In The Garvey Movement. N. Assata. p. 3.; Blain. P. 9.
(11) Jones.Op. cit.
(12) Barbara Ransby (2015) The Class Politics of Black Lives Matter. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/class-politics-black-lives-matter. The founders make clear their intention to move “beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within Black communities, which merely call on Black people to love Black, live Black and buy Black, keeping straight cis Black men in the front of the movement while our sisters, queer and trans and disabled folk take up roles in the background or not at all.”
(13) Chez Chardé (20/10/21) An Honest Critique of the Black Manosphere @Omowale Afrika. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beXx8v9oAM8
(14) ) Marimba Ani (2007) To Be An Afrikan Women inBurnett Kwadwo Gallmanm Marimba Ani & Larry Obadele Williams (Eds) To Be Afrikan. M.A.A.T. Inc.p. 43
we ask the question:
Sista Powa: Where is it at?
1) What to we gain from knowing about Afrikan women in our liberation history?
2) Do Hollywood representations help our ovahstanding of Sista Powa?
3) How useful a tool is feminism in advancing Sista Powa?
4) Is our Nationalism too “narrow”?
5) What role does an Afrikan Spiritual focus play?
Our Special Guests:
Bro. Ldr. Mbandaka: Resident guest who is Spiritual Leader of the Alkebu-Lan Revivalist Movement and an Afrikan-Centred Education Consultant. Bro. Ldr is a veteran activist of almost 40 years standing, a featured columnist in The Whirlwind newspaper and author of Mosiah Daily Affirmations and Education: An African-Centred Approach To Excellence.
Sis. Kai Ouagadou-Mbandaka: is part of the leadership of the Alkebu-Lan Revivalist Movement’s and is Chief Officer of its Education and Health & Social Welfare Departments. She Head Teacher for the Alkebu-Lan Academy of Excellence Saturday School, and Co-ordinator for the Ma’at Academy of Excellence Home School Collective. She is also head of ARM’s Rites of Passage Programme for Girls and a Columnist for The Whirlwind Newspaper. Sis. Kai is one of the original co-hosts of Afrika Speaks with Alkebu-Lan when it first launched in 2006.