ROAPE
In her new book African Feminisms – a decolonial history, the Senegalese scholar-activist Rama Salla Dieng interviews feminist activists about their work, struggles and lives. Interviewed by Coumba Kane, Dieng speaks about what it means to be a feminist in Africa today.
Coumba Kane: Your essay sketches a mosaic of feminisms across Africa and its diasporas. What do they have in common?
Rama Salla Dieng: The fight against patriarchy is obviously at the heart of their struggles, but many interviewees also attack state powers accused of perpetuating political violence inherited from colonialism. This struggle is embodied, for example, in the figure of Stella Nyanzi, a Ugandan anthropologist and feminist, imprisoned for several months in 2017 for having published a poem lambasting President Museveni in power for thirty-five years.
My interviewees not only seek to stand up against those in power, but rather to find forms of creativity to embody their struggles and realize their feminist aspirations. They are no longer trying to convince us of their humanity. Hence the importance they attach to art, solidarity, revolutionary love and the right to pleasure.
I have also been particularly struck by the emphasis on mental health. It is a central notion for these activists. Unlike the former generation, they politicize the question of ‘rest’, like the Egyptian Yara Sallam.
We should also be aware of the divisions that exist within African feminist movements. Where are they located, for example?
First of all, we must note the strong pan-African dimension of feminist organizations on the continent. In 2006, a hundred activists gathered in Accra, Ghana, drew up a Charter of Feminist Principles for African Feminists with the aim of converging their struggle against patriarchy. There are also transnational alliances that bring together different organizations, such as the African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET) and the African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) based in Ghana.
But it is clear that today various feminist currents are not at the same point and, sometimes, controversies erupt between them. A few years ago, a Kenyan feminist in an online post taunted activists in Francophone Africa on the grounds that they would limit their fights only to the domestic sphere and to male-female relations. This had sparked a lively controversy.
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