DEDICATION

Abstract

This book is dedicated to two special women born in Africa in the first decades of the 20th century into two very different worlds. To the Iye Oba, Queen Mother Aghahowa Ovbi N'Errua of Benin (Nigeria), a queen, queen mother, priestess, and woman of power. Her sharp mind and firm hand drew me across the bridge of time to some understanding of cloistered life at court and of many remarkable women who had lived behind Palace walls. And to Hilda Kuper, African born (Zimbabwe) anthropologist and professor, a spiritual grandmother of studies of elite African women—whose work among Swazi royal women in the 1930s paved the way for those who came after. THE QUEEN MOTHER OF BENIN, Iye Oba Agbabowa Ovbi N'Enua, was born about 1907 in khan. Renowned for her beauty she was brought to the court of Oba Eweka 11, and became the first wife of the Crown Prince (later crowned Oba Akenzua 11, in 1933). Breaking with tradition, her husband did not put her aside after the birth of their first son (the reigning Oba of Benin, Oba Erediauwa, 1979-present). She bore more sons and daughters, and as the Eson, his first wife, managed his growing harem of wives and children. She first befriended me in 1984; and over the years shared her experiences as royal wife and the first Iye Oba to hold court in nearly 100 years. The Queen Mother, according to custom, was given her title three years after her son's coronation as Oba of Benin. The Iye Oba Aghahowa is also a priestess of Olokun, the deity of the sea, bringer of wealth and children; and in that role she is believed to wield considerable power gained in the spirit world. HILDA KUPER's long and distinguished career as an anthropologist is inextricably intertwined with her research in South Africa, beginning fieldwork 1934–36 in Swaziland, continued in 1936–39; and intermittently up to 1978. Her fieldwork was interspersed with teaching in South Africa, as a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, University of Witwatersrand (1940–45), and at the University of Natal, Durban (1961–63); and with work as a Senior Research Fellow, National Council of Social and Industrial Research, South Africa (1953–57). She lectured in England (Birmingham, 1951); at Makerere College, Kampala; and in the LJnited States, University of North Carolina (Visiting Lecturer, 1947–49). She was a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles (1963–78), and retired as Professor Emerita, UCLA. For her fieldwork in Swaziland and South Africa, Kuper was awarded the Rivers Memorial Medal from the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland; numerous grants, and fellow-ships abroad including a Guggenheim (1969–70). In 1982, she was awarded the Medal of the Royal Order of Sobhuza 11, Counselor. Born in 1911, in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), she married Leo Kuper of Johannesburg in 1935. Hilda Kuper's contribution to gender studies was recognized at her presence in New York, in 1991. Eighty years old, her eyesight failing, she had traveled alone from Los Angeles. She brought a still contemporary vision, more than a half century after her pioneering work, to the four-day international conference at New York University that is the basis of Queens, Queen Mothers, Priestesses, and Power. Part of her legacy lived on in the work of her able student, Dr. Theresa Thoko Ginindza (deceased, September 1996), who made her own unique contribution to knowledge of royal Swazi women in this volume. We were conscious of the privilege of having this venerable woman amongst us at the conference. All the more so, now that Hilda Kuper is gone, having passed away in 1993. The book and the conference, thus, proved to be a timely ritual and a celebration of the past—as much as a beginning.