INDEX ON CENSORSHIP 9/1990

Women and censorship Ghana

Ama Ata Aidoo

'We were feminists in Africa first'

The Ghanaian writer was interviewed in Harare, in July 1990, by Adewale Maja-Pearce

How do you characterise the situation of need, for instance, for educational
women in Ghanaian society? opportunities for both sexes in order to
This is a very long and complicated have as many people in the society to
question. Certainly West African women, compete within the modern sector. If the
and Ghanaian women especially, have emergence of the modern world worked
enjoyed a certain amount of the society's against women in a country like Ghana, it
regard and respect, at least compared with is precisely the modern world which has
the rest of the continent, with the possible liberated women in other parts of the
exception of Kenyan women. And this is world.
true even among West African women I have to be honest, although I was trying
from the Islamic parts, to the extent that not to bring them in, the colonial regimes
they tend to treat the veil as a fashion • were partly responsible. They came from a
accessory to be thrown stylishly around the patriarchal society, all those Victorian men
neck. who didn't understand their own women
West African Islamic women — at least and definitely did not understand the
the middle-classes — will tend to leave their women of the colonised. They had attitudes
veil in the passenger seat beside them before about women and assumed that these
they drive their Volkswagen or their attitudes would carry into the colonies.
Datsun. Who got the j obs? Certainly not the •
In that respect, we have been luckier African women. Since the present is a
than most women in the world, but daughter of the past, not to mention a son
when you look at us from inside our of the past, then the advantages the colonial
society we are no better off than women Ama Ata Aidoo regimes gave to African men have carried
anywhere else vis a vis the patriarchy or at over into the present. I would like to be
One of the foremost institutions in West
least the male orientation of society. For quite clear that even in a matriarchal
Africa is the Wesley Girls High School,
instance, look at one of the most society, biology was used against women.
established in 1837 —as old as many of the
matriarchal societies in West Africa: the I'm not saying at all that sexism was
oldest girls' schools in the western world.
Akan society. Women were everything; they introduced into Africa by colonial men. But
But the colonialism that created it also
were supposed to hold the power. According it definitely seems that the kind of
thwarted it.
to the sociologists and historians, men systematic exclusion that was practised was
ruled for their women by proxy. My You are suggesting that the move into
the modern sector actually works against born out of a total misunderstanding of
question is, why by proxy? Why didn't they how our societies operated. And, as
let the women rule? Of course, then comes women?
But, of course, isn't it obvious? Look at colonisers, they were not even interested in
the whole issue of biology: women get understanding our societies. They shoved
pregnant, etc. One thing that I found so the educational system. If one creates a
prototype scenario of a school in the village their languages down our throats, we are
interesting is that in a society like the Akan wearing their clothes, driving their cars . . .
women were strong — incredibly strong — or in the town, with 50% boys, 50% girls in
Class 1, the ratio may not have changed by they didn't come to understand us and
as priestesses, as doctors, as psychologists, definitely had very negative results and
as everything to everybody. Yet when a the time they are in Class 6; look at them
again a year or two later: at least a tenth of effects on contemporary African women.
priestess had her period she couldn't Ours has been the double quarrel. Not only
approach her own shrine. They used the girls have dropped out. Even on co-
educational campuses, there are normally as Africans, but also as women. Colonised
biology against us just as they use biology by the coloniser, then by our own men,
against women everywhere. That's how I perhaps four boys' dormitories to one girls'.
So they weed us out. If we're not busy with their new power...
. see it.
getting pregnant and getting thrown out of There is ambiguity in the African man's
Colonialisation seems not to have response to the fact of colonialism. The
the institution (you're talking about „
managed to crush us, because of education. world which invaded Africa was defacto
censorship, because a boy makes a girl
pregnant), there are the sugar daddies. Who the modern world, bringing Africa into a
Ama Ata Aidoo is a Ghanaian novelist, poet gets thrown out? The girl. Nobody's even relationship with Europe. What might have
and playwright currently living in Harare, interested in who made her pregnant, right? happened is that the possibilities for power
Zimbabwe. Her publications include The And at university how many girls are there? within that new world were created only by
Dilemma of a Ghost (Collier-Macmillan, You really have to go looking for women the man situating himself between the
New York, 1971, and Longman, London, with binoculars. European coloniser and the African
1980), No Sweetness Here (Longman, The irony, of course, is that it is the woman.
London, 1979), and Our Sister Killjoy modern world which has led to the I'm not even so sure that African men
(Longman, London, 1981). liberation of women in other countries. The positioned themselves between the African

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INDEX ON CENSORSHIP 9/1990

Ghana/Namibia Women and censorship

woman and the coloniser consciously. They Africa is that we've also mastered putting grounds for divorce. So when you tell me
must have taken the line of least resistance. down ideas that threaten us by calling them that wife-beating is African you need to
It happens with any regional organisation. western. When we don't want to deal with have your head examined. Men beat their
The assumption is that it is a men's club. issues, then they are western. When we wives in London, in New York. You have
I'm not trying to be contentious, I'm just want to deal with issues, then they are to look at it across the whole spectrum of
trying to be clear. Over the last 500 years African. It is part of the bankruptcy. I find human experience. The same about the
we've had African men in leadership this whole charge that African women have kitchen. Any little chore in the house is
positions, certainly since Africa's collusion only borrowed feminist ideas from the African culture. It's a joke.
with the western world. Isn't it clear that West particularly painful. Those women I genuinely feel that one way to reclaim
the African man alone isn't able to cope who rioted against the colonial regime at ourselves is to find out what exactly
with our relationship with the West and the Aba, in Eastern Nigeria, in the 1920s did not happened. Find out what is healthy and
rest of the world? Why do they persist in seek permission from Virginia Woolf. If through that we can see the garbage and
this? Do you know what I think? I think anything, western women have borrowed move on. My suspicion is that because of
that one way African men in positions of notions of women in struggle from us. our inability to produce clear analytical
power could show understanding of what Who started civil rights? The feminist work on post-colonial Africa, and on what
we are and what we have been, is to insist movement was a kind of hijacking of the we had that was healthy in our society, we
that there are women in government. Not civil rights movement. Our people gave to swallow all the junk from our contact with
tokenism — not a female version of the entire society the notion that you can the West.
showcase niggers — I mean women! get up and say, enough is enough. So, we've Is the worsening economic climate of the
I do not see a strict division between got feminism, gay rights, old people's continent further threatening the position
being a feminist, being an African rights, animal rights, anti-child abuse, anti of women?
Nationalist, and being a Socialist. I don't wife-bashing. Not particularly. It is not so much the
even see how you can claim to be an People make it simply to challenge the position of women, but our future. It's not
African Nationalist and not be a feminist, self-serving notion of what it means to be only women who are deprived but also •
whether you are a man or a woman. I am African. children. Health, education, definitely. But
very humbly calling on the men of Africa There are African women who are we are the first to be dispensed with. Look
— the so-called African leadership today, struggling, who have maintained some at African women: they are having babies,
to look around them and admit that after notion of African identity. It seems to me dumping babies, being put into prisons,
500 years they haven't been able to make that we could simplify all these issues. being given some funny sentences . . . We
changes by themselves, and it is high time There's no doubt that, as of now, the liberal are dying from the AIDS we are catching
they took a hard look and included women. West's notion of us is not healthy, their ... We are already the ones who are taking
The fact that a woman hasn't been to plans for us are not healthy. Nothing good the worst hell, because with no incentives
school doesn't mean she can't think, doesn't has come out of the West in relation to what must women follow? And what do
mean she can't see what's happening Africa. We've had an article in the papers women do?.They get pregnant. As if being
around her. recently about how wife-beating is African. pregnant solves everything. But it only
I've often heard the argument that Now, is wife-beating African? Of course it compounds the problem. •
certain feminist ideas are western ideas. isn't. In some African societies, again, for
Part of the malaise of contemporary example, the Akan, physical abuse was

Namibian blank
Namibian women present a contradiction. Ndeufi Namalambo, national secretary right to do what men are doing. They are
They have been through harrowing of the Namibian National Teachers Union coming home late but we as men have to
experiences during the 23-year guerrilla says, 'The women themselves don't believe be quiet because they have been re-born.'
war between SWAPO and South Africa. they can stand up for their rights. What Sue Montgomery, Gemini News Service
Throughout, they held the social fabric of they need is someone to tell them — Listen
the country together, raising children on here, you don't need to feel inferior to
their own, feeding and sheltering freedom your male comrades. You are worth just as
fighters and burying the dead. Some much as they are. Most of the men in the
trained and fought in the People's forefront of the liberation struggle don't
Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN), the care about women. They've got their wives
armed wing of SWAPO. Yet when it came who are also exploited.'
to discussing equality between the sexes, In its 1989 annual World Report on
their faces drew a blank. Human Rights, the US state department
Progressive on paper, in reality the noted that discrimination against women
picture is grim. Married women in was almost as deeply entrenched in the
Namibia still pay higher taxes than their liberation movement as it was in the
husbands, apparently to discourage them government.
from working outside the home. They A letter to the editor of a Namibian
cannot buy a home without their newspaper summed up the prevailing
husbands' signatures and continue to find view, saying he could not imagine
themselves in low-paid jobs. In the changing the baby's nappy or cooking a
northern part of Namibia, Ovamboland, meal just because his wife felt tired or ill.
80% of the farming is done by women. 'Men must not do the work of the wife.
Most are illiterate and cannot speak Women have started doing as they like
English, Namibia's official language. simply because they have been given the

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