African Feminist Research Articles

Becoming conscious of the self: Spatial dynamics, character pairs and the feminist vision in Amma Darko’s beyond the horizon

The relationship between spatial dynamics, character pairs and how this is constitutive of the feminist vision in Amma Darko’s Beyond the Horizon has rarely been explored, despite the growing critical reception. The paper explores how Darko’s women become awakened by the redemptive roles of their fellow women through the narrative’s climatic journeys. Drawing on theories of spatiality and African feminisms, this paper argues that Darko’s attempt at associating specific characters within particular geographical contexts helps us to rethink controversial and conventional discourses on the African woman – sisterhood solidarity, education, financial freedom and bodily integrity as routes to the total emancipation of the African woman. Thus, the study suggests a shift from the rather clichéd argument that the text is male-targeted.

The politics of knowledge in South African universities: Students’ perspectives

Knowledge-making in South African universities is set up and framed in particular ways, with a Euro-centric bias. We argue that many of the contributions that African first year entering students could make to this process of knowledge-making are dis-abled, leading to alienation. In this article, we argue for a different perspective and approach to teaching and learning in the humanities. Former Extended Studies students from a South African university have worked collaboratively in a knowledge-making project, and using data generated from this, suggest different kinds of environments and strategies for more inclusive teaching and learning. Using an African feminist theoretical and methodological lens, we consider alternative ways of knowing, and recognition that supports powerful senses of belonging and agency, using examples from student experiences of an Extended Studies humanities programme. We contrast this with how humanities programmes are experienced by some first-year students at the university, sometimes with tragic consequences. Finally, we recommend pedagogic, curricula and extra-curricular changes that can be made, to realise the possibilities of decolonised knowledge-making that is more relevant and inclusive. The authors believe that the ideas around decolonising knowledge that are explored here are more broadly applicable and necessary.Contribution: The article contributes to the conversation on decolonising the humanities curriculum, by including students’ experiences, concerns, and suggestions.

Intersectional Feminism in Irene Salami’s Sweet Revenge

Feminism has become a major topic of discussion and research in African drama over the years. Playwrights as well as critics have written numerous works on different aspects of feminism in Africa, Irene Salami’s Sweet Revenge. But the burden of the African feminist ideology and the different ways it is reflected in the African feminist dramatic texts (the different dimensions of feminism) have not gotten the needed critical attention. This caught the attention of the current study. The study used a literary qualitative and analytical approach, with the primary play texts chosen for the study being critically analysed using feminism as the guiding theory. The study concludes that the play chosen for the study is a feminist text because it deals with the burden of the woman. Beyond this portrayal, the play deals with the place of women and their responses in different ways, thereby attending to the different strands of feminism. The study concludes that the only way to wholly appreciate the play is by connecting the various strands of feminism in their appreciation. The study recommends that there are new emerging approaches to feminism, such as "burial feminism," “snail sense feminism and that these approaches should be studied alongside the existing strands using intersectionalism.

Intersectionality and the Oppressive Incidents of Women in the Old Testament and the South African Context

The oppression of women and young girls in the biblical texts, with special reference to the Old Testament, mirrors the oppression of women and young girls in the South African context. Such oppression of women and young girls continues to engulf everyone, directly or indirectly in the South African context. Thus, this article aims to examine certain incidents in the Old Testament in which the subjugation of women is a pertinent subject. This shows that the oppression of women in the Old Testament is not so different from the oppressive incidents that continue to sabotage the social lives of many women in South Africa. Intersectionality is utilised herein as a qualitative research technique to appreciate these oppressive incidents as a source of data, while African feminism is employed as a theoretical framework to examine these incidents. Among other issues, it becomes clear that male-orientated structures are the driving force behind women's oppression and require reasonable solutions to the conundrum.

‘What is gender to you?’: An Africana Womanist take on perceptions of gender reality on women’s agency among a rural Malawian Community

ABSTRACT Historically, knowledge about African gender reality has predominantly been through a Western canon of feminism. However, overtime, there have been alternative theorisations influenced by African feminisms and African gender scholars. This article draws from a study that aims to illustrate alternative and decolonial knowledge about Malawian gender reality with a specific focus on participants’ expressions of agency. Africana Womanism is utilised in making sense of participant data as it is rooted in an emphasis of the unique socio-cultural and historical context of African women and men such as those participating in the study. The article extends knowledge on ‘resisting dominant discourses’ within gender education and research.

The Routledge Handbook of African Theology

The Routledge Handbook of African Theology

Vulnerabilities, power, and gendered violence in food systems

abstract Food systems present a complex web of interests and within this web exists different levels of vulnerabilities, inclusions, or exclusions, depending on the levels of power accessible to different interest groups. In addition, due to the global interconnections, more complexities have been added to local and national food systems. As national boundaries and rules enmesh into more powerful global trade rules, salient hierarchies based on race, class, nationality, and gender emerge with social and economic outcomes in food systems. There is consensus that women carry a disproportionately larger burden of productive and reproductive labour within food value chains, yet they are more likely to face greater distress and violence over scarce food and other life enhancing resources. This article is empirically informed by the life histories of 21 elderly women farmers as they navigated the different epochs in Zimbabwe’s political, economic, and agrarian reforms. An African feminist standpoint provided the lens through which the narratives and agency of elderly women farmers are framed as they negotiated with gendered structural biases and the violence coded into power asymmetries within food systems from production to consumption. Women’s acts of resistance are explored, including transnational collaboration through food justice social movements as acts of radical political resistance to forced assimilation into unsustainable modes of capitalist extraction. The voices of elderly women are centred in articulating alternative pathways to food sovereignty based on mutual reciprocity in a non-violent and ecologically sustainable food system.

Learning Financial and Business Skills for the Sustainability of Female Necessity Entrepreneurs in the Informal Street Trade in South Africa

Western-centric studies on opportunity-based entrepreneurship have dominated the literature on female entrepreneurs. Existing research has also tended to focus on the experiences of women in the formal rather than the informal sector. In this article, we examine female necessity entrepreneurs' experiences of learning financial and business skills in the informal street trade in South Africa. The theoretical framework for this research, which was located within a critical feminist paradigm and used a feminist phenomenological design, drew on African feminisms, resilience, and informal learning. Phenomenological, in-depth, face-to-face interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of twelve women in the informal street trade in the Durban area of KwaZulu-Natal, to capture the essence of their experiences of running their businesses. The main findings showed that poor black women, especially those trading without permits in the informal street trade, faced multiple challenges, but were able to learn some of the financial and business skills necessary for survival. However, this learning was reactive, problem-centred, observation based, imitative, and partial. These findings emphasised the need for these entrepreneurs to upgrade their financial and business skills in order for their businesses to remain sustainable. The study recommended various targeted policy initiatives to support female necessity entrepreneurs.

AFRICAN WOMEN’S QUEST FOR MOTHERHOOD IN FLORA NWAPA’S NOVELS EFURU AND IDU

The African classical tradition finds its development in African novel as African novels deals with variety of themes such as art, religion, apartheid, culture, tradition, ironies of life, colonial and post-colonial realities etc. African and Caribbean writing often celebrates black womanhood in a move towards a specifically African feminism. Mother is a person who nurtures and protects. African Literature in all ages celebrates motherhood and gives prime focus to motherhood in women’s’ life. Flora Nwapa, the Mother of female African Literature in English also treats motherhood as her main theme. Nwapa through her works portrays Igbo culture and Igbo Tradition. The lead characters in Efuru and Idu log for motherhood in their life and suffer in life because of it. Though successful in life in all other aspects they are considered incomplete because they are barren. Both the works deals with Motherhood and marriage as its prime focus and suffering of a woman and her quest for selfhood in the family and in society at large.

Navigating through Challenges in Marriage: A Study of Women in Ayotunde Mamudu’s Ruffled Butterflies

The family setting is an integral part of any society and the woman plays the role of a nurturer and home maker. The rancour and discord in a home have reverberating effects on other fabrics of the society hence the need to ensure the maintenance of a harmonious and peaceful home. Anchoring the study on Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo’s snail-sense feminism, a variant of African feminism, we examine the strategies that are key to engendering peace and progress in homes as exemplified in Ayotunde Mamudu’s Ruffled Butterflies (2019). While the woman asserts herself and strives towards her personal emancipation and fulfilment, she is confronted with intimidating challenges at the home front that can pose as great threats to the actualisation of her dreams and goals. The study reveals that the strategies adopted by the woman helps her maintain a stable and happy family while ensuring that her efforts towards personal development are not undermined or thwarted. The study concludes that family members should eschew all forms of deviant behaviour that can endanger the home. It also encourages partnership and complementarity between the sexes.

The mosaic of African feminisms: An historiographic approach of political eras

Resumo A historiografia feminista tradicionalmente é narrada por meio de ondas, que demarcam momentos e agendas da mobilização das mulheres. Essa narrativa, porém, é centrada primariamente nas experiências euro-americanas. Alternativas a essa abordagem têm surgido recentemente como forma de conferir significado aos feminismos de outros lugares, em particular do Sul Global. Os feminismos africanos, mais especificamente, inovam sua historiografia ao chamar a atenção para o colonialismo como eixo analítico das experiências das mulheres do continente. Neste artigo, discuto a proposta de analisar os feminismos africanos a partir de eras políticas centradas no colonialismo. Discuto como as feministas africanas articulam suas interpretações acerca dos movimentos de mulheres no continente vis-à-vis esse eixo analítico e em cada uma das eras políticas. Com essa abordagem, argumento que os feminismos africanos são melhor compreendidos como feminismos em mosaico, dada sua diversidade e multiplicidade de agendas e demandas.

A Theological Analysis of 1 Timothy 2:11–15 and its Implications for HIV/AIDS as a Gendered Epidemic in Zimbabwe

his article is an analysis of 1 Timothy 2:11–15 and its implication for HIV/AIDS as a gendered epidemic in Zimbabwe. The aim of this study is to examine the role of this text in perpetuating attitudes that precipitate susceptibility of women to HIV/AIDS infection. It employs a desk research method and African feminist framework as lenses to examine the text for its applicability in the African context. The study comes to three conclusions. First, if the behaviour prescribed for women in the text under examination is applied in today’s context, it exposes women to HIV infections. Second, the Bible and some of the Zimbabwean cultures collude in the subjugation and manipulation of women. Third, there is a need to liberate both the biblical text and the receiving culture in an effort to protect women from vulnerability to sexually transmitted infections, including susceptibility to HIV infection. The article concludes by asserting that, though 1 Timothy 2:11–15 is often categorised as a “text of terror”, it can be an asset in curbing HIV/AIDS in men as well as women if it is read and interpreted in a liberating way – a gender-sensitive and HIV/AIDS-aware reading and interpretation. Keywords: Emancipation, Gendered Epidemic, Gender-sensitive, HIV/AIDS Pandemic, Vulnerability

“Measuring Silences” in the Translation of Awa Thiam's La Parole aux Négresses

An overlooked, yet significant text in the genealogy of intersectionality and Black feminist theory is Awa Thiam’s 1978 text La Parole aux Négresses. This paper examines the ways that the English translation, Speak Out, Black Sisters: Feminism and Oppression in Black Africa,though widening the audience for Thiam’s work, engages in various practices of erasure that undermine Thiam’s academic authority, theoretical contributions, activist insights, and ultimately, her own voice. Namely, I contend that these practices, which scholars have linked to receptions and English translations of Black Francophone texts in particular, include de-formalization, domestication, de-philosophizing, untracing, and invisibilisation. I seek not just to focus on the “negative” aspect of these silences, but also to enact a partial restitution of Thiam’s insights from the original French text. Further, re-engaging with her text, contributions, and insights calls for more reflexivity around the politics of translation, English language hegemony, and recognition of African feminist scholarship.

Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in South Africa: An Interdisciplinary Discourse Analysis of One Selected isiZulu and One Selected isiXhosa Literary Text

Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in South Africa is a post-colonial social ill. Women and young girls suffer double oppression in the country. First, they are oppressed for being women and young girls; and second, they are oppressed for being women and young girls of the lower class. This article aims to utilise one selected isiZulu and isiXhosa drama, respectively, to effectuate a meticulous examination of how and why GBV is a recurring pattern. The ultimate aim is to underline the unprejudiced reality that South African literature (isiZulu and isiXhosa, for example) engages contemporary social ills such as GBV, subordination of women and young girls, gender discrepancies, and neolithic stereotypes. African feminist technique is utilised as a conceptual framework to advance the said aims of the article. In the process, the qualitative research methodology is employed to describe and explain the nature of the data source. The discussions and findings demonstrate that although women and gender discourses research has been undertaken extensively, the fact that women and young girls continue to be tormented is enough to prove that there is a conundrum in South Africa and possibly, elsewhere.

'Intra-Genderism' in African Feminist Discourse: the Dynamics of Female 'Unbonding' in Ifeoma Okoye's the Trial and between Women

'Intra-Genderism' in African Feminist Discourse: the Dynamics of Female 'Unbonding' in Ifeoma Okoye's the Trial and between Women

From the Editor

From the Editor

An action research case study of the San tsî Khoen Digital Archive 2020-2022

The United Nations declared 2019 the International Year of Indigenous Languages[i] for the promotion of language development, peace, and reconciliation. One of the stated aims of the awareness campaign is the integration of indigenous languages into standard settings, bringing about empowerment through capacity building and through the elaboration of new knowledge. The San tsî Khoen Digital Languages Application & Archive is a project based in the San & Khoi Centre at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Established in 2020 and funded by the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture, it is informed by a co-design digital curation process with the community. The project archives the endangered and erased languages of the indigenous San and Khoi communities of southern Africa, with an initial focus on N|uu and Khoekhoegowab. To obtain this, the project integrates decolonial scholarship within a digital environment of human languages technologies that creates a visibility of not only erased and endangered languages but also indigenous African feminist knowledges that have been lacking in scholarship. Its co-design digital curation process challenges the insular and fragmented nature of academic output, thereby allowing for a greater degree of critical analysis. This action research and digital curation processes are not without its challenges, as co-creating knowledge in an attempted decolonial framework that aims to foreground African feminist knowledge in a region of historical linguicide that was subjected to epistemic violence, as a consequence of colonialism and neo-colonialism is in itself not without its various contestations. This paper critically discusses this collaborative research and co-design knowledge production process engaged with over a process of forty research workshops [ii], over the past two years. The analysis and discussion in this paper are derived from a thematic analysis of this co-design digital curation process facilitated by the San & Khoi Centre between 2020 and 2022.

MANIFESTATIONS OF MATRIARCHAL TENDENCIES IN THE ABAGUSII ORAL POETRY OF WESTERN KENYA

Abagusii of Kenya, like many traditional African societies, were (are) thought to be patriarchal in their social setup. Contrary to this belief, however, there exist cultural art forms from the community which suggest a balance, if delicate, of power across gender. One such art form is oral poetry. Abagusii oral poetry is performed in all rites of passage and activities in the community such as birth, harvest, circumcision, and marriage-related ceremonies, to name but a few. When examining the oral poetry of Abagusii closely, it becomes evident that gender relations among Abagusii are much more sophisticated than generally assumed. On some occasions, matrimonial power is not only seen to exist but suggestively acknowledged as well. The study is mainly guided by the ideas of such African feminists as Oyèrónké Oyĕwùmí, Ifi Amadiume, among other gender intellectuals as Lugones [1], Gullestand (1993) Vilar [2], Shannon (1985), and Chinweizu (1990), this article examines manifestations of matriarchal power in Abagusii Oral poetry. In this regard, it explores purposively selected oral poetry of birth, courtship, and marriage. The study establishes that contrary to common assumptions, women are not only conscious of their place in the society but also serious contenders to societal influence, power, and authority. Motherhood emerges as a system that runs much deeper than most observers have been able to acknowledge. Above all, the study demonstrates that the most effective approach to uncovering "the subtleties, contradictions, and ambiguities" of gender relations in different communities is simply that of considering them within their own contexts and on their own merit.

African feminism, activism and decolonisation: the case of Alimotu Pelewura

ABSTRACT Consequent to colonial policies that restricted women’s participation in public space, the Nigerian woman of the colonial era experienced strenuous socio-political and economic marginalisation/oppression. This marginalisation spurred many of the affected women into acts of subtle and overt resistance. However, historical narratives have typically downplayed narratives portraying women’s agency as an integral and essential part of the anti-colonial resistance. Contemporary efforts at redressing this imbalance have resulted in the identification of women activists including Funmilayo (Ransome) Anikulapo-Kuti (FRK), Margaret Ekpo and Oyinka Abayomi to mention a few. Such efforts at identifying feminists and women activists have nevertheless significantly downplayed or outrightly ignored earlier generations of women activists whose successful activisms paved way for this group of identified activists. This study, therefore, sets out to interrogate the socio-economic and political philosophy of Alimotu Pelewura, an unlettered activist and the leader of the first mass-based women’s interest group in colonial South-west Nigeria. Utilising historical and analytical research methods, it presents an exposition of Pelewura’s economic, social and political activities and subjects such to critical analysis, with a final aim of distilling her socio-political and economic philosophies from these activities, thus, presenting Pelewura’s philosophy as an African feminist narrative towards decolonisation efforts.

Has Feminism Changed Women’s Realities in Africa? An Interrogation of the Poems of Ogundipe and Shire

African feminist movements of the 1960’s marked the starting point of debates from the origin of feminism in Africa to its impact on women and the society at large. Literature has from the go been used as a vehicle to reflect the life and its vicissitude on African women. African women writers have used literature as a platform to challenge and re-imagine gender relations within their societies and the continent as a whole. Yet, the question arises: despite half a century’s worth of literary production, has the reality of women, as reflected in literature, changed? This paper thematically interrogates the collection of poems by Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Sew the Old Days and Other Poems published in 1985, in comparison to Warsan Shire’s Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth of 2011. Both poets are renowned for depicting current issues faced by women and their struggles in patriarchal systems. A thematic analysis allows for the inference of change: do these poets address the same struggles, or has almost thirty-year difference brought about discernible changes?