Agrarian Women Resistance in Africa

Agrarian Women's Resistance in Sub-Sahara Africa

Moses Seenarine

April 28th, 1993

(This paper was prepared for a class held at Teachers College, Columbia University, during Spring 1993 semester, entitled, "System, Process, and Change in Black Africa," and taught by Prof. George C. Bond).

Introduction

Who is a peasant and what kind of actions can be considered as acts of protest? Some scholars define peasants as agriculturalists whose surplus are extracted by other classes, directly or through the state (see Isaacman, 1990). However, for the purposes of this paper, this definition needs to be expanded to include the landless, migrant laborers, small traders, and other rural people. Resistance, also, can take several forms: from verbal and non-verbal criticism, silent and hidden actions, to more direct militant actions (see Scott, 1985). These actions can be in the form of individual opposition to oppressive beliefs and practices or more politicized and organized into collective action. The latter can be defined as counter-hegemonic (Weiler, 1988).

How does one view a resistance movement? Most writers of African peasant resistance to colonial rule almost always assumes that men alone were resisting (Brantley, 1986). Accounts of resistance contain "little mention of women's roles', roles which remain 'largely hidden'" (Stroebel, 1982). Some studies on women involved in rural resistance movements in Africa focus on the importance of religion, and women's role as spiritual diviners (Allen, 1991; Brantley, 1986; Newbury, 1984; Berger 1976). Others view women's resistance in an anticolonial or nationalist framework (Cleaver and Wallace, 1990; Feierman, 1990; Johnson, 1982; Danzer, 1976).

This paper takes a different approach in a comparative analysis of the changes and similarities between cultural- ideological and structural constructs of gender and class in three rural Sub-Sahara African societies, over time. It examines women's resistance and discourse against economic oppression and patriarchy, to better understand the causes that turn individual acts of resistance into organized forms of counter-hegemony. This study reveals that not only were agrarian women's protest common, but also different incidents and circumstances have similar feminist codes of meaning.

In writing about an agrarian economy one must consider various factors at the local, regional and international levels, which affect individuals' daily lives. In addition, one must take into consideration that an individual's access to land and water is affected by social, personal and domestic relations. How do gender relations affect the economic aspects of the agrarian economy and the lives of women peasants? Given the limitations of this paper, this issue will be explored by examining some aspects of women's access to land, gender oppression, and female resistance in three examples in Sub-Sahara Africa.

Access to Land

Gender relations to land in Africa have been modified over time by internal conquests and power struggles and by major intrusions from abroad (Hafkin and Bay, 1976). In many parts of precolonial Sub-Sahara Africa, the land was considered sacred, often female. Access to land was largely determined by kinship rights, and as part of marriage, women were usually granted their own plots, through their husbands or male kin. If a woman was divorced, she could rely on rights to land through matrilineal and, or, patrilineal kin. Thus, a woman's role as a daughter, sister or wife provided access to, and control of, land and resources for subsistence farming, and allowed women to fulfill both their productive and reproductive roles. Reproductive and domestic roles - carrying water, gathering firewood, cooking, childcare, etc. - were primarily women's work. However, the value of women's productive labor, in producing and processing food, trading on large and small scale, etc., established and maintained their rights in domestic and other spheres - economic, cultural, religious, social, political, etc. (Sacks, 1982).

However, women's relation to the land and work in Sub-Sahara Africa changed with the introduction of the international forces of Islam and the European capitalist orientation to production and reproduction. In Islamicized communities, African women lost traditional domestic and land rights in sexist laws justified on religious grounds. Their daily lives and movement were affected by gender oppression, defined in cultural and ideological terms and reinforced by social institutions regarding property, marriage, divorce, inheritance, etc. Islamic influences have greatly affected gender relations in certain parts of Sub-Sahara Africa, however, a more detailed analysis of this form of gender oppression and women's resistance strategies are beyond the scope of this paper. Also not examined are the various apartheid policies affecting the southern part of the African continent.

Although gender oppression in the form of domestic and societal patriarchy did exist in precolonial Sub-Sahara Africa, women encountered increased and intensified forms of economic and gender oppression with the introduction of European colonialism. These two processes are related because of the link between women's economic role and their access to power - in both matriarchal and patriarchal societies. As women lost access and control of land they became more economically dependent on men. This led to an intensification of domestic patriarchy, reinforced by colonial social institutions.

The importance of women's productive role and economic significance in Sub-Sahara Africa presented a major threat to European capitalism. One study in colonial Tanganyika states, "the thriving peasant agriculture that threatened the profitability of white settler farming was, for the most part, the work of women" (Schmidt, 1987: 53 quoted in Isaacman, 1990). To counter this threat, colonial policies of expropriating lands, forced labor, and taxes, were designed, in part, to dismantle this thriving precolonial economy. European capitalism, and reproduction of a market economy, is dependent on consumerism, expansion, and the creation of a waged labor force. This entailed forcing self-sufficient peasants, women and men, to convert from traditional modes of farming, to one based on a dependency on cash-cropping and the capitalist form of production (Boserup, 1970).

Cash-cropping and taxes forced many men into direct competition with women for land access and the control of women's productive labor. "Women's labor, no longer defined as work, began to subsidize men and capital" (Staudt, 1987, p. 124). Further, the introduction of cash-cropping agriculture in the Sub-Sahara led to devastating environmental consequences which adversely affected women's access to, and control of land and resources. However, ignored in the Marxist literature on African colonialism, are the experiences of women peasants whose reproductive responsibilities of providing food, child and medical care, etc., depended on access to land and sufficiency farming, and who were very active in protecting their mode of simple horticulture.

Male peasants also suffered as a result of colonial policies. However, they found themselves in a favored position, relative to female peasants, in the transition from traditional social institutions - kinship, age-grades, communal ownership, etc. - to colonial laws based on European notions of patriarchy. This transition led to an increase in men's control over smaller amounts of land and resources. Agrarian resistance must therefore include women's recognition of increased forms of gender oppression, alongside forms of class and racial domination.

With independence, women in Sub-Sahara Africa especially lose in patriarchal property rights laws inherited from colonialism. In some areas, women who previously controlled land benefited from land commoditization and cash-cropping (Davidson, 1988). However, the literature is rich with material that links the oppression of women with the introduction of private property and capitalism (Bosrup, 1970; Hafkin and Bay, 1976; O'Barr, 1982; etc.). At the international and regional levels, women continue to be subjected to various IMF, World Bank, and state policies and practices which promote cash-cropping, and are biased towards men. Agricultural resources are planned and allocated for the benefit of male crops and farmers. As a result, at the local level, women find the value of their work and crops lessened, in comparison to those of men.

Gender Oppression and Counter-Hegemonic Discourse

Gramsci notes that in order to create a new level of intellectuals, there is need for a "critical elaboration of the intellectual activity that exists in everyone at a certain degree of development" (Hoare and Smith, 1971). Feierman argues with Gramsci that peasants were capable of creating their own counter- hegemonic discourse (1990). This paper examines the critical elaboration of feminist discourse and actions to make the case for agrarian women intellectuals. Recognizing that there are many different kinds of feminisms, this paper considers organized action in behalf of women's rights and interests in general, as feminist.

The struggle over power and discourse is Sub-Sahara Africa is rooted in the social history of competing intellectuals - clan rulers, chiefs, kinship leaders, healers, elders, etc. In the precolonial era, women held high status and positions of power, due in part, to the importance of their productive and reproductive roles. Moreover, women were able to gain access to power and discourse in their role as healers, through kinship, lineage, age-grades, etc.

In parts of Sub-Sahara Africa, a dual-sex system operated in which women and men formed separate socio-cultural entities, ad made decisions in their own separate spheres. In addition, throughout many periods of the year, and in moments of crisis, women formed themselves into kinship groups, worker collectives, women's associations, etc. These groups were organized around women's interests, including overseeing marital and gender relations in general (Sacks, 1982).

The impact of colonialism was devastating to the economic role of women, as well as to their status and power. Colonial administrations failed to recognized women as legal entities and honor their traditional land rights. Patriarchal laws forced women to obtain political and economic representation through men - with husbands, or brothers and fathers, acting as intermediaries. Under European rule, women in Sub-Sahara Africa became perpetual minors. This loss of power and status adversely affected the lives peasant women, especially the wives and widows of long term migrant men.

This change in legal status affected women at all social levels. Gender relations in the domestic and public spheres were reconstructed, with women now expected to be subservient and obedient to men. As patriarchy increased, women became more in conflict at the household and community level. One woman describes her role expectations in the community as follows,

"Unlike a man, a Rundikazi (Rundi woman) in public does not speak, nor does she look you in the eyes. To each question, she answers Ndabizi? How should I know? In public, she lets it be thought that she knows nothing about politics..." (Albert, 1963, quoted in Berger, 1976).

However, European hegemony and patriarchy did not go unchallenged in the Sub-Sahara. Women had a context in which to accumulate heterodox knowledge and develop a critical elaboration of intellectual discourse. This context was, and still is, women's awareness of their own traditional rights, and their common experiences of gender and economic oppression. The following examples of agrarian resistance examine the nature of women's counter-hegemonic discourse and actions.

Agrarian Women Resistance

Agrarian women in Sub-Sahara were very active in acts of individual resistance and organized movements against the impositions of colonial rule. As individuals and as a collective, they resisted colonial social and economic policies, and rallied against the imposition of taxes and integration into the capitalist system. Women also resisted patriarchy at the domestic and local levels. They engaged in countless acts of sabotage and resistance, for example, refusing to work, using inappropriate tools when forced to do agricultural labor, feigning illness, verbal insults and humiliation, singing, etc.

These forms of resistance were based on cultural methods and social institutions that women traditionally used to affect gender relations (Wipper, 1982). For example, when women had complaints against a man they gathered at his compound, sang songs of grievances, banged on his hut's walls, and performed other raucous behavior until the man repented and promised to mend his ways. "Sitting on a man" (or woman), boycotts, and strikes were forms of "women's indigenous political institutions and authority, invisible except in periods of crisis" (Staudt, 1987, p. 200). Resistance to domestic gender relations were elaborated into organized movements to oppose the combination of gender, class and race oppression. Women formed associations based on traditional forms of social interactions, to plan counter-hegemonic discourse and actions. This paper examines three organized protests, during colonial rule - the "Women's War" of Nigeria in 1929, and a protest in Tanzania in 1945, and after independence - a protest in Zaire in 1982.

Ogu Umunwanyi

The Igbo Ogu Umunwanyi, or Women's War, occurred in the Calabar and Owerri provinces in southeastern Nigeria in November 1927 and continued for more than a month with demonstrations, attacks on administrative centers, and damage to property. It began when the Colonial District officer started recounting households and property and thus raised fears among women that they were going to be taxed. Women leaders, Ikonnia, Nwannedie, and Nwugo, called a mikiri, general meeting, at the Orie market, a traditional center of women's discourse and activity, to discuss and plan further actions. The mikiri held by the three Igbo women became a forum for gender and class awareness that already existed in them. Individual fears of economic oppression began to evolve into collective resistance against gender oppression.

On November 23, a scuffle ensued between a married woman, Nwanyeruwa, and a male agent of the Oloko Warrant Chief. Nwanyeruwa told her story to other women, through market and kinship networks, and soon women from all over Owerri Providence assembled at the Warrant Chief's office and demanded assurances that they were not going to be taxed. The movement used traditional forms of protests - singing, raucous behavior, etc. After some success at removing the chief, tens of thousands of women from these provinces converged on the Native Administration centers and, sixteen Native courts were broken or burned in an effort to expel warrant chiefs and administration centers. The women's resistance covered an area of 6,000 square miles, with over two million people. On two occasions police and troops fired on the women, killing 50 and wounding another 50. The Women's War was successful in deferring for a while the taxation of women and in getting rid of the corrupt system of warrant chiefs. However, in the long run it did little to enhance women's political power and authority (Van Allen, 1976).

Before colonial rule, the Igbo women held political power and status in a dual-sex system. The physical conflict between Nwanyeruwa, a woman, and a male official can be seen as serving as a catalyst for feminist discourse and collective actions. The female-male confrontation was clearly, a concrete example of a gender conflict in the political sphere. This concrete example of gender oppression served to elaborate the more subtle forms of patriarchy affecting women's economic and political lives. The issue of taxation provided a rallying point in the construction of feminist counter-hegemonic discourse against a patriarchal system that transformed traditional dual-sex role institutions into a system restricting power and status to male warrant officials and administrators.

As gender oppression was linked to class oppression, the women used Nwanyeruwa's individual resistance to elaborate collective critical discourse against both forms of economic and gender domination. For example, as part of their grievances, the women listed their opposition to warrant chiefs helping themselves to their produce and animals, and marrying women without respecting their traditional right to refuse a suitor, etc.

The Igbo Ogu Umunwani, as a resistance movement that outwardly reflected women's opposition to colonial taxation and economic impositions, was more that that. It also reflected opposition to patriarchy, which was equally important in formulating demands for change. Traditional women's rights, to refuse a suitor, for example, were linked to rights to land and resources - against taxation of their produce and animals, for example.

The Pare Uprising

The Pare women's uprising in northwest Shambaai, Tanzania, occurred in early January 1945 and continued with demonstrations into 1946, involving thousands of women. It began in Usangi, one of the chiefdoms, when the district commissioner arrived for discussions with the local chief. A crowd of five hundred women appeared, demanding an explanation of mbiru, a system of graduated taxation. When the commissioner tried to leave without addressing the women, they became enraged and mobbed the assembled officials. Two days later, women surrounded the chief's house singing songs, and ultimately stoned officials and battled police.

Pare women's resistance caused the graduated-tax idea to be dropped the following year, and the king, Kinyashi, appointed four women to the tribal council in 1948 (Feierman, 1990). The success of their resistance, however temporary, is extraordinary in view of the failure of earlier, male resistance. Pare women's mobilization, as with Igbo women, were based on traditional gender institutions of protest and resistance - discussions in the marketplace, etc. Their resistance to graduated taxation was linked to colonial patriarchal laws, and these factors resulted in elaborating the awareness of gender and class solidarity in the minds of Pare women.

The Shambaai region of Tanzania can be characterized as one consisting of a patrilineal social structure. As with the Igbo revolt, the Pare uprising used women's traditional forms of protesting against gender relations - singing, occupying a compound, etc. In organizing as a collective, Pare women were united along common gender interest against taxation on women, and the forced labor demands of an erosion scheme that affected mostly women. Thus, economic or class mobilization had as its basis, gender oppression (for example, the forced labor demands made on women by colonial administrators). In their unity, the women stood in direct opposition to male authorities, thus providing further links between their gender and class oppression.

Organized resistance by the women of Pare is one example of a number of women's protests in the Shambaai region at the time. Women performed, individually and collectively, numerous acts of sabotage against colonial agricultural schemes affecting their lives, for example, using inappropriate tools in performing forced agricultural labor. In 1953, women invaded a number of subchief's meetings, expressing opposition to plans for their removal from mountain lands. They also organized around other gender related interests, which included men's interest as well. For example, in April 1946, the women of Mlalo attacked chief Ali's house in demanding a return of their own rainmaker, chief Kinyashi, a male.

In Tanzania's nationalist movement, peasant women were organized along gender lines to press for independence. Women had a common gender interest - working for race and class liberation, through male political leaders, in the hope of achieving gender liberation. However, as in other nationalist struggles in which women played a major role, independence have brought few improvements in agrarian women's lives. The modern state have, more or less, continued colonial policies of gender oppression - in the sexual division of labor, devaluing women's productive and reproductive work, patriarchal laws, etc.

Pare women played a role in nationalist politics, limited somewhat to their work for the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) party's struggle for national independence. TANU were formed by members of an educated class who sought to gain power at the expense of chiefs. In January 1956, the chief of Bungu, prohibited anyone from attending a TANU meeting. Caught in the middle of this conflict were women who revolted against the chief and their husbands to attend a rally to see the leader of TANU's women's section, Bibi Titi Mohammed. To punish the men's lack of courage in resisting the chief and supporting the nationalist struggle, women refused to cook, fetch water, or farm. The men relented and sent a delegation inviting Nyerere, and TANU women's leader, to speak in Bungu. Bibi Titi, a former singer of a women's dance organization, explained:

The women urged their leaders to bring Mr. Nyerere, and told them they also wanted to meet the strong woman. Theysaid they wanted to see Bibi Titi in Vugiri. "We have heard and read about her but we have never seen her. If you don't want to listen to the strong words of Mr. Nyerere, that is up to you. We want to see Bibi Titi, our colleague (Feierman, 1990).

The Pare women were not only active in resisting economic and racial oppression in their support for TANU, but also resisting gender oppression in their support for Bibi Titi. She represented women's hopes for gender liberation from colonial oppression. To show support for their leader and their cause, the women of Pare successfully used traditional methods of resistance - in this case, methods used to affect domestic relations, in refusing to cook, etc. As with other revolts, women's individual resistance were elaborated into collective activity to affect relations in the political sphere - in this case, as an act of feminism in support of Bibi Titi. The Buloho Revolt

In Buloho in Eastern Zaire, women revolted against forced taxation on their produce. The revolt began on day in early April 1982 when a woman refused to pay a cassava tool at a bridge. A scuffle ensued between her and the male tax collector. When the woman informed colleagues in a Catholic support group, this gender conflict served to elaborate awareness of gender and economic oppression, and to press for change. On April 25, women from three areas, over one hundred, met with the local chief and registered a complaint. It was the first time in the history of the area that women took independent action in the political sphere.

The women persisted in a follow up to their complaint and sent a delegation of six to the offices of the Collectivity. On May 5, when the chief finally met with the women's delegation, he grew scornful and wanted to know who gave them the idea to petition him about the tolls. A delegation member answered:

Where we found the idea, we didn't have to go far, and we haven't been advised by anyone other than the fatigue from cassava, because we get very tired. How do we get tired? When we arrive where a barrier is located they seize cassava from us, or money; we arrive there where there's another barrier, and they take more cassava. Now despite that we don't know what that money is used for, yet we're exhausting ourselves carrying cassava.

When the women's petitions proved unresponsive, the women wrote to the chief's administrative superiors. In the June elections, women voted for candidates who were sympathetic to their grievances, and who subsequently abolished the taxes and tolls after they were elected (Newbury, 1984).

As in the case with the Igbo women, the individual resistance of a woman against economic oppression, in a physical confrontation with a male tax collector, served as a catalyst for collective, feminist actions. In the critical discourse created by the women of Buloho in their resistance movement, gender and economic oppression were strongly linked. The taxes were collected by male, white-collar administrators, and applied mainly to agrarian women. Women, then, had a basis on which to make a critical elaboration of patriarchy, as exercised by male authorities and laws (for example, only women's cassava were seized), and economic oppression, in the form of taxation. In linking gender and class oppression, a powerful resistance movement was born.

The women of Buloho used the help of their church to press for change through legal channels. Although, the methods of resistance was not based entirely on traditional forms of protests, occupying a compound, airing grievances, etc., the organizing principle of solidarity among gender and class lines, remained the same, as in the Igbo and Pare women's resistance.

Conclusion

This paper points out that contrary to the majority of studies on African rural resistance movements, that men alone were resisting, women were very active in protests. Not only were agrarian women's protest common, but one point suggested by this paper is that individual acts of agrarian women's resistance against economic oppression in transformed into collective activity when class oppression is linked with gender oppression. An examination of women's resistance in colonial Nigeria and Tanzania, and in independent Zaire, are used in support of this latter argument. An attempt was made to understand the elaboration of agrarian women's critical discourse in this regard.

Increasingly, agrarian women in Sub-Sahara Africa find themselves marginalized under the triple forms of class, gender, and race oppression - brought about largely by colonial impositions on farming and land access, and continued under national and international policies. However, time and again, women have demonstrated their ability to mobilize in the thousands, rapidly, and over wide areas. This is due in part to the nature of their resistance, incorporating both gender and class, and utilizing traditional support networks and forms of protests.

As traditional kinship and other affiliations are replaced by the modern institutions of the independent state, the ability of peasants to form traditional networks of resistance is diminished. However, the common experience of gender oppression in productive and reproductive roles serves to unite women across traditional boundaries. This common gender and class awareness presents the possibility of organized counter-hegemonic discourse and feminist actions.

Although, this paper points out some similarities between the nature of gender-class resistance, this issue needs to be examined more closely. How does this dynamic work, and what are its limitations? The double burden of women's productive and reproductive roles limit their sustained participation in acts of protests. For example, women are responsible for daily cooking, childcare, farming, etc. How did the women of Igbo and Pare able to handle these roles in their resistance? Another issue that warrants further study is, how are gender-class resistance different from class and ethnic alliances incorporating both men and women? Studies of agrarian women's resistance need to address these and other issues in order to better understand their forces of oppression and the individual and collective actions of peasant women in resistance.

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