Using history, literature, participant observation, and interviews, Carolyn Martin Shaw surveys Zimbabwean feminisms from the colonial era to today. She examines how actions as clearly disparate as baking scones for self-protection, carrying guns in the liberation, and feeling morally superior to men represent sources of female empowerment. She also presents the ways women across Zimbabwean society--rural and urban, professional and domestic--accommodated or confronted post-independence setbacks. Finally, Shaw offers perspectives on the ways contemporary Zimbabwean women depart from the prevailing view that feminism is a Western imposition having little to do with African women.
The result of thirty years of experience, Women and Power in Zimbabwe addresses the promises of feminism and femininity for generations of African women.
Using history, literature, participant observation, and interviews, Carolyn Martin Shaw surveys Zimbabwean feminisms from the colonial era to today. She examines how actions as clearly disparate as baking scones for self-protection, carrying guns in the liberation, and feeling morally superior to men represent sources of female empowerment. She also presents the ways women across Zimbabwean society--rural and urban, professional and domestic--accommodated or confronted post-independence setbacks. Finally, Shaw offers perspectives on the ways contemporary Zimbabwean women depart from the prevailing view that feminism is a Western imposition having little to do with African women.
The result of thirty years of experience, Women and Power in Zimbabwe addresses the promises of feminism and femininity for generations of African women.
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Using history, literature, participant observation, and interviews, Carolyn Martin Shaw surveys Zimbabwean feminisms from the colonial era to today. She examines how actions as clearly disparate as baking scones for self-protection, carrying guns in the liberation, and feeling morally superior to men represent sources of female empowerment. She also presents the ways women across Zimbabwean society--rural and urban, professional and domestic--accommodated or confronted post-independence setbacks. Finally, Shaw offers perspectives on the ways contemporary Zimbabwean women depart from the prevailing view that feminism is a Western imposition having little to do with African women.
The result of thirty years of experience, Women and Power in Zimbabwe addresses the promises of feminism and femininity for generations of African women.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780252097720 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Illinois Press |
| Publication date: | 10/30/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 216 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Women and Power in Zimbabwe
Promises of Feminism
By Carolyn Martin Shaw
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Copyright © 2015 Board of Trustees of the University of IllinoisAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-09772-0
CHAPTER 1
Sticks and Scones
The Homecraft Movement in Colonial Zimbabwe
Our home would answer well to being cheered up by such lively flowers. Bright and cheery, they had been planted for joy. What a strange idea that was. it was a liberation, the first of many that followed from my transition to the mission.
Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions
Homecraft clubs, where women learned cooking, housekeeping, and childcare skills, may seem an odd place to begin a study of the promises of feminism. I hope to show that rather than the subjects of the classes they took, it was women's ability to leave home to attend classes, the common cause they found with women beyond their place of kin, and the new set of desires instilled by these popular and easily accessible classes that laid the foundation for later feminist consciousness and activism. Feminism is based on women becoming aware of their common interests as women, on their recognition of discrimination against women and girls, and on their taking a stand against sexism. The white women who started Homecraft clubs for black women were not feminists. Their prime interest was in maintaining white rule in this part of central Africa; they knew that women did not have the same rights and privileges as men, but they profited from their gender, race, and class positions in colonial society and were interested not in change for themselves but in maintaining the status quo.
The growth of feminism in Zimbabwe is, in part, a result of the rupture of relations between people and of relations between humans and land that colonialism wrought. Colonialist-subject and master-servant relations were established between blacks and whites as colonialists claimed the land and labor of indigenous Africans. Through settlers displacing black families from their land, colonial officers' codification of tribal law, surveillance and discipline of indigenous populations, elevation and collaboration of chiefs and headmen, conscripted and forced labor, urbanization and proletarianization of portions of the population, and separation of employed and unemployed family members, relations among blacks also changed. Under colonialism African women, educated in schools and attending churches, went beyond their safety zones and came together with non-kin. The very act of traveling from their home base and interacting with non-kin gave them a sense of agency. They gained new desires, not just for the consumer goods that colonialism introduced, but also for freedom of association and of choice. Black women who gathered around radios to hear broadcast classes or attended demonstration classes in township and rural centers challenged the sureties of colonialism and of their domestic lives and began to want a better life. Optimistically, they looked to a brighter future — adopting, rejecting, and reinterpreting colonialists' goals.
Homecraft groups were not the first organized associations of black women in colonial Zimbabwe. But with membership open to married and single women throughout the country, they were the most popular secular group. Groups, such as mothers' unions and women's prayer meeting, were sponsored by missionaries, affiliated with churches, and primarily for married women. On their own, black women living in townships initially formed groups to help newcomers, to maintain high moral standards, and eventually to fight colonial laws and to organize women laborers. Colonialism forced women into new configurations and they used their newfound relationships to build networks and to fight the powers that be.
Under colonialism, women in Zimbabwe also became aware of practices and customs from ethnic groups in neighboring countries. Women from Zambia and Malawi brought the Kitchen Tea, comparable to a raucous bachelorette party, to the townships of Zimbabwe. Unlike groups that persist over time, the Kitchen Tea is an ephemeral experience that incorporates generative principles of Shona culture, especially the tendency to activate latent social networks as needed, rather than relying on well-established groups for particular purposes, and the simultaneous recognition of hierarchy and communality among women. I turn to the Kitchen Tea to demonstrate the continuity and modernization of women's beliefs about what it means to be a good wife and mother and to set this in contrast to what black women were taught in women's groups organized by white women. The illustrative Kitchen Tea studied here took place about a decade ago, but much of this chapter is focused on an earlier times, from the end of World War II and the disbanding of the British colonial empire, to the period the Central African Federation when whites offered partnership with blacks, to the Zimbabwean liberation struggle and the eclipsing of white power.
Though in this chapter I describe a Kitchen Tea and survey independent black women's groups, at the heart of the chapter is a moment in Zimbabwean history, 1953–63, when black and white women cooperated in the spirit of progress, when the reshaping of selves was a mission undertaken by white women's social groups in the interest of the state. As members of the Federation of Women's Institutes of Southern Rhodesia (FWI), colonial white women turned to political activism with the founding of Homecraft Clubs for black women, and both black and white women were changed by their participation in them. Tens of thousands of black women joined Homecraft clubs, where, in addition to homemaking skills, they learned to organize meetings and to work in concert with other black women across differences of age, kinship, and marital status. Participation in Homecraft clubs declined as the racial partnership of the short-lived Central African Federation ended, was followed by a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) from Britain on the part of the white minority government of Rhodesia, and then by the violent liberation struggle that led to the founding of Zimbabwe. Disobeying wartime emergency orders that outlawed public assembly, women in some Homecraft clubs continued to meet. As two liberation armies struggled to increase nationalist sentiment in rural areas, women were valued for the cooking stick, used to stir large pots of sadza (corn-meal porridge, the staple food) that fueled the freedom fighters, and for baking scones, an iconic and prestigious British dish, similar to baking-powder biscuits in the United States. Homecraft women were not called "sellouts" because of their association with white women, but many found themselves protected because of one of the very skills that they had learned from white women, baking scones.
Through a study of the history of the FWI and the black organizations, Homecraft and its successor, Jekesa Pfungwa/Vilingqondo (JP/V), I argue that as white women taught domesticity and community service to black women, black women formed new attachments to one another, to new ways of being in the world, and to new things — for example, soap, shoes, diapers, lotions, tea, and jam. While learning domesticity, they began to assert themselves in the public sphere.
the Job of Domesticity
The extent to which Shona women were confined to a domestic or private domain before the coming of colonialism is debatable. If we take the view that the vital economic activities of women — farming, trading, cooking, pottery making, beer brewing, and to a lesser extent managing herds and flocks — fundamentally support the society as a whole, then women's activities have a public component and cannot be ascribed to a narrow domestic domain. When we look at the "public" through a strictly political lens, however, few women come into view. Here I would like to give a brief historical summary of the public/political roles and statuses available to Shona women, in order to address historians' contention that Homecraft took women away from community-wide service and concerns. Historically, women occupied few high-level positions and had no concerted public voice as women.
Great Zimbabwe, where kings amassed wealth through international trade and gold mining, represents the height of hierarchal elaboration in Shona society, with clear distinctions in material wealth and standing between royalty and commoners. This UNESCO World Heritage site, a city of unmortared stone edifices in southeastern Zimbabwe (the largest of many such ruins), was occupied between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries of the current era and was home to ancestors of members of the Shona ethnic group. Though myths in the West suggest that this was the home of the biblical Queen of Sheba, a combination of archaeological, historical, and ethnographic evidence indicates that the rulers were kings and that there is no tradition of a female ruler: the king's senior sister had high status, and his senior wife was queen (Beach 1998). After the demise of the great kingdoms, dispersed chiefdoms predominated. Women could become chiefs and subordinate headmen under them, but they rarely achieved these roles. Elizabeth Schmidt's history of Shona peoples makes women visible in fields of knowledge and power, but she starts by admitting, "Although most power and authority in Shona society was concentrated in the hands of older men, women helped perpetuate this male dominated society" (1992a, 16). The summary below is based primarily on Schmidt's study of colonial records from the period 1870–1939 (1992a, 1992b).
Among these mixed horticulturalists and pastoralists, the rainmaker, the spirit medium, and the chief all presided over public rituals believed to ensure the continuity of life. Though it was not unheard of for women to occupy each of these roles, more women became spirit mediums for family or clan ancestors than became chiefs or rainmakers. Rainmakers probably had the widest dominion; ancestral spirits of the district, which joined together several localized kin groups, demarcated a narrower realm for the spirit medium. With few exceptions, women were not active at the highest levels of rainmakers and chiefs. An exception is Ambuya Nehanda, a regional-level spirit medium credited with rallying rebellion in the first war against colonial oppression, the first Chimurenga, in 1896–97, and inspiring fighters during the anticolonial war, the second Chimurenga, 1965–79.
Specialized ritual knowledge gave women power and authority as midwives, grandmothers, mothers-in-law, and fathers' sisters. Postmenopausal women, whose dry, infertile bodies brought them closer to the ancestors, educated children, helped with birth, assisted in medical diagnosis and treatment, and adjudicated disputes within the family. The gifts of the spirit medium, the person through whom the ancestor spirit speaks, were used for physical and social healing as well as for focusing the energies and attention of the group in particular directions. The n'anga (medicine man, prophet, witch doctor, or traditional healer) determined the causes of misfortune, from physical ailments to failing grades, and supplied remedies. The converse of the healers was witches, people believed to use spiritual or supernatural powers for private rather than the community's benefit. Although people accused of witchcraft, especially in causing the death of another or in bringing about serious misfortune, could be severely punished, some women scared others by letting it be known that they had such powers and thereby were able to assert their will.
On the whole, women's greatest power lay in their informal influence as intimates of their husbands, respected members of their brothers' families, mothers-in-law to their sons' wives, and watchful and judgmental neighbors to their resident kin and affines. A woman's power was based on her moral virtue, her management of household resources, the behavior of those for whom she was responsible (children, sisters, and nieces), and the wealth and prestige of her male relatives. Women's power was extremely individualized: wives negotiated control of labor and resources with husbands. Shona individuals rarely interacted with men or women outside their kin group; women made few long-lasting ties outside particular kin relations, and women's interventions into public discourse were not based on their identity as women.
Given the small degree of public sway that Shona women's positions and knowledge allowed them, it is hard to argue that their public standing decreased due to colonialism. It is easier to make that argument in West and East Africa, where women organized as age mates, market women, wives, sisters, devotees to gods, councils for deciding on disputes regarding women and marriage, and members of cults for the healing of the nation; they lost considerable power under colonialism. Certainly, a significant decline in women's status under colonialism generally occurred in decentralized societies and in those with dual-sex organizations, where women and men had parallel hierarchies, typically joined at the top by a king or overarching men's council (see Hafkin and Bay 1976). As power became centralized in the hands of colonialists and the African kings, chiefs, and headmen through whom they ruled (and thereby removed from diverse men's and women's institutions and positions), women were marginalized, lost visibility, and lacked authority. Something like that did happen among the Shona: although Shona women had little to lose, colonialism tended erode that little. Women's public positions, such as spirit medium and traditional healer, fell outside formal political processes and were undermined as colonialists supported men in positions of chief and headmen. My argument is that, in terms of their public voice and exercise of power in community-wide matters, women had little to lose under colonialism; rather to the contrary, they gained a foothold in public discourse.
In arguing that Homecraft clubs increased women's presence in the public domain, my analysis departs from that of scholars who assert that because of colonial female domesticity programs, such as Homecraft clubs, women withdrew from their public, community-wide activities and turned toward being good housewives (Barnes 1999; Schmidt 1992a, 1992b; West 2002). According to this line of reasoning, women reimagined their roles as "incorporated" wives among the elite and, more generally, as household managers, rather than community members. As Schmidt puts it, "They [women] were educated not to exercise authority in the public sphere, but for obedience and domesticity" (1992a, 148). In fact, women spent more time away from home because of their club activities, and to the extent that they joined with other women, they had broader community influence.
In his work on the black Zimbabwean middle class, Michael West similarly surveys Homecraft courses for African women and concludes that the clubs did not require or expect students to "to perform community service, its sole objective being to 'fit them to be better homemakers'" (2002, 72). My study of the FWI and Homecraft clubs indicates that community service was indeed a contentious issue — white women promoted it, but they found little interest in it among black women: under the yoke of colonial labor exploitation, many black women were more interested in making ends meet in their families than in helping unrelated others.
Yet on their own, black women did indeed form groups to benefit women and the community. Most popular was the Helping Hand club in Harare, which assisted newcomers to the city and looked after children of working women. The Federation of African Women's Clubs (now the AWC) was the most prestigious. In a 1954 Christmas message published in the magazine African Parade, the founder of the AWC pointed to women's role in shaping the nation: "Women of today have a great contribution to make towards the building of a great African race in Central Africa. You can do this by building up happy and ideal homes, help to improve the living conditions of the people around you, in the urban areas, in the mines, compounds and even on the farms, and so bring healthy families, prepared and educated to face the future under the British flag" (Barnes and Win 1992, 159). In addition to women working through the home to change society, women also "involved themselves in organized struggles for justice against the racist Rhodesian system" (154). These are all types of community service — helping women adjust to the city, building happy homes to promote racial uplift, and protesting against colonial injustice. These forms of community service were not about working together with whites. They did not meet the FWI goal of encouraging community service "to make partnership a living thing" (Home and Country 9 [1] [1962]).
White women in the FWI were not partners in welcoming black women's residence in cities and certainly not in political protest against the colonial regime. In fact, white women in the FWI were ambivalent toward black women settling in urban townships — on the one hand, they argued, having their wives in town could mollify male servants, but on the other, more African women in town could lead to more prostitution.
(Continues...)
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