For A Continent Colonized, Africa’s Patriarchy Doesn’t Make Sense
In fact, it is stupid.
I do not get your arrogance, dear Africa.
If you are from the outside world, here are two shameful secrets from the days of Africa’s colonization (you can always believe them with a pinch of salt):
Gossip: Africans have always lived communal lives. We love our kin close and around us. This was for our survival and continuity.
Kins made neighbours and neighbours made communities and made up different villages. [[[]].//////////////
So gossip? Stories have it that :::::}]]]]]ping about the fact that “the white men have taken over that village or the other one.”
With every conquered village, elders in surviving villages would gather to gossip and make a mockery of their demise until, one by one, the colonizers got them all.
Please: Make no mistakes- we have our heroes like King Jaja of Opobo who stood up against the white colonizers and paid dearly for it.
Gossip while African village chiefs and elders, should have been fortifying their lands and territories, turned out to not be a great strategy.
- Sold slaves to colonizers: Many resisting leaders of African villages saved their skin and those of their villages by pillaging other villages for slaves, which they in turn sold to the colonizers.
They even pillaged other villages for the colonizer’s gifts of “mirrors, chalks, slates and even for a change of their name to whatever ‘spoon’, or ‘plate’ the colonizers convinced them were better names than their ancestral ones.
Is this where I must remind you that as much as I write this, I do not write to give you the effrontery to minimize the pain of slavery on my continent? I hope you are smarter than that.
Throuple, Poygamy, Acceptable!
So, if we believe these stories (with a pinch of salt- of course), how did a people who gossiped and sold their members into slavery this much, turn around to become this patriarchal?
- Women MUST submit their identity, dignity, and ambitions to the whims of their husbands.
- Marriage is the most important thing to all women
- All women are nurturers by nature. All women desire motherhood. All women must be mothers
- Men have the right to marry as many women as they can afford to and damn you for having a contrary opinion.
- If your husband does not eat your food, have to kneel down and beg him or else…
- Raped? Definitely a woman’s fault PERIOD. You should have fought him off, not seduced him, AND shut up about it. Also, your dignity as a woman is finished.
- A woman must be a virgin at marriage and a porn star in bed
- For the woman, her life is her marriage.
- A man beater is just a man reacting to the razor-sharp nature of his wife’s tongue. She and only she is to be blamed for provoking her man.
- A man can be anything: obese, ugly, uncouth, or ill-mannered. A woman is NOT PERMITTED to be either of those things.
- A woman must watch her manners to not offend, and be polite, faithful, giving, and broken for her man and society. A man must be brash, showing no weakness, gruff in his communication, and loud in his anger.
- Infertility is the shame of the woman EVEN when it is the man’s fault.
- Every successful woman is a prostitute, husband-snatcher, wicked madam, and very evil. In fact, the consensus on the success of a woman is usually because she wants to show that she does not regard men. She will never be ‘wife material’ because she can never agree to be ‘under a man’.
And so on and so forth- you can add yours.
This arrogance of patriarchy in Africa, where is it from?
Yes, we had great warriors. Yes, our men fought battles. Yes, our men have done wonders but that was then.
This is now. What continues to fuel this arrogance of patriarchy for a continent so underdeveloped and backward?
- There is a lot of poverty in Africa. Why are people struggling to feed still finding means to hold back their women?
- The predominately male African leaders have not done many extraordinary things. Again, why are there few to no chances for African women to be leaders?
- There are many improvements in education, but why is there this huge kick back against the growth of our minds- less of the male ego and more of their sense and humanity?
- Why do women continue to live second-class lives compared with their men?
- In a continent where every manner of technology exists to educate and connect us with the intellect on par with the rest of the world’s, why do women need to remain ‘under men?’
For a people colonized, this poor, this underdeveloped, the patriarchy of Africa is staggeringly irresponsible. Don’t you think so?
Thank you for reading. Buy me coffee?
