Women and Democracy: The New Political Activism in Africa

Abstract

Until the 1990s, it was unheard of for an African woman to run for the presidency of her country. To be sure, Africa had a few female rulers earlier in the twentieth century, but none had been elected. Empress Zauditu, for instance, ruled Ethiopia from 1917 to 1930; Queen-regents Dzeliwe Shongwe (1982–83) and Ntombi Thwala (1983–86) reigned over Swaziland; and Elizabeth Domitien of the Central African Republic was appointed as Africa’s first female prime minister, serving in 1975– 76. It was only in the 1990s, however, that significant numbers of African women began aspiring to positions of national leadership. In the 1990s, women ran for president in Kenya and Liberia, while others sought party nominations for the presidency in Angola, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Nigeria, Sa‹o Tome and Principe, and Tanzania. Although all were unsuccessful in their bids for power, these women set important precedents in their respective countries. The first woman to become an African head of state in a nonmonarchical regime was Liberia’s Ruth Perry, who chaired her country’s six-member collective presidency, the Council of State, in the mid1990s. In 1994, Uganda’s Wandera Specioza Kazibwe became Africa’s first female vice-president. Rwanda and Burundi elected female prime ministers in the mid-1990s, and Senegal chose a woman prime minister in 2001. By the end of the 1990s, legislative bodies in Ethiopia, Lesotho, and South Africa had all appointed female house speakers, while those in Uganda, Zimbabwe, and South Africa had female deputy speakers. Aili Mari Tripp is associate professor of political science and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and director of its Women’s Studies Research Center. She is the author of Women and Politics in Uganda (2000) and Changing the Rules: The Politics of Liberalization and the Urban Informal Economy in Tanzania (1997).