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It gives this writer pride and joy to write against the oppression of women, but it must be understood that this writer still remains a man who sees in every woman a sister, a mother, a grandmother, a daughter or a wife.
A woman’s consciousness of herself must not be limited to the product of her sexuality. There must be a reflection of a woman’s position as determined by the economic structure of society, as it defines the level reached by humankind in technological development and relations between social classes.
Dialectical materialism has shed great light in showing us that the exploitation of women is a systematic arrangement.
On March 8, 1987 the late Thomas Sankara was speaking to women in Ouagadougou during International Women’s Day. He noted that a woman’s fate is “[bound up with that of the oppressed male.”
The oppression and exploitation that both men and women suffer is a misleading solidarity that should not be allowed to overshadow the specific reality of the woman’s dire situation.
The conditions of an African woman’s life are not only determined by economic factors, but also by political and other social factors.
It is an oppression that cannot be explained away by simply setting up an equal sign or declaring affirmative quota systems in political representation.
Politicians often fall into these easy and childish simplifications where they promise to end women exploitation by simply declaring that “man and women are now equal”.
The woman and the male worker share the same fate of being condemned to silence by the systems that oppresses them respectively.
An oppressed male worker condemns his own wife to the same silence he is condemned to at his work place.
So, while both man and wife are condemned to class exploitation, women must confront a particular set of relations that exist between them and men, relations of conflict and violence that often use physical differences as a pretext.
Clearly, the difference between sexes is a feature of human society that cannot be denied. This difference has created unfortunate relations that immediately prevents most men from viewing women simply as female workers or colleagues. We have a dangerous existence of privilege — relations that spell danger for the woman.
The front office lady is seen by many predatory male bosses as an official sex partner whose consent is assumed with chauvinistic arrogance.
Men use the complex nature of relations of privilege as an excuse to confuse women. So, the male boss at work, the male politician, the male church leader, or the male work colleague takes advantage of all the shrewdness provided by class exploitation to maintain his domination over women.
Basically males use the same methods used by men to dominate other men in work places or even in international affairs.
History has records of certain men, by virtue of who gave birth to them and by whom, or even by divine right, considered themselves superior to others.
This was the basis for the feudal system and it is the same “logic” for the so-called royal blood — a sanitised way of describing unilateral and undemocratic dynasties; not that there is one dynasty that is democratic. That would be a contradiction of terms.
This is the system by which other men managed to enslave whole peoples in the past. They used their origins, or arguments based on their colour, as a supposedly scientific justification for dominating those who were unfortunate enough to have a skin of a different colour.
This was what colonialism and apartheid were based on. This is why Libya is burning today. A group of insane white people apparently believes they have a right to kill Libyan leaders and their children simply because the murderers happen to come from Europe and the United States — places believed to have a right to impose their will on all others, regardless of the human cost.
But, we must pay the closest attention to women’s situation because it pushes the most conscious of them into waging a sex war against chauvinistic men when what we really need is a war of classes and a war against imperial domination — waged together — men and women side by side. In all frankness, it is the attitude of intolerant men that makes the confusion associated with feminists possible.
The bold and radical assertions made by some feminists are essentially spawned by men’s arrogant attitude towards women. We live in a world where some men still proclaim that women cannot be counted in a census, cannot vote, cannot drive, cannot join the army or the police, cannot preach in church, or cannot inherit their father’s wealth or even the estate of their own spouse.
The war against oppression of one people by another can easily be won if we come to understand that we as men and women share the same fate and that for Africans; we are all condemned to interdependence.
It is high time our political leaders, our church leaders, husbands and male partners realise that masculine behaviour comprises vanity, irresponsibility, arrogance, brutality, and violence of all kinds towards women.
So we have men who pride themselves in commodifying sex because they happen to have an unfair advantage over others in accessing disposable income. This vanity and irresponsibility is even viewed as fashionable in most of the cases.
We cannot talk of co-ordinated action against the oppression and marginalisation of women when the political leadership in Africa is complicit in the sidelining of the same women.
We must be frank with men whose attitude towards women sinks to the level of stupidity — the woman bashers, the women abusers, the women despisers and the supremacists that believe they have a God-given right to lord it over any woman.
We have men who carry a very negative attitude towards women simply because they use this attitude as a safety valve to escape their own oppression by other men. So some man thinks that brutalising his wife can make him gain some human dignity denied him by the system of exploitation that surrounds him.
This is the masculine foolishness described by feminists as sexism or machismo. It is the lowest of moral and intellectual feebleness –an eloquent expression of cowardice and physical weakness.
Politically conscious women should not be expending their energies waging wars against foolish men priding themselves in misguided masculine strength.
They must be our partners in defeating the exploitative system that treads down on developing countries and looks down upon our people as lesser peoples. There is no need to make these women fight on two fronts.
It is a terrible fact that women find themselves at a lower level of the oppressed layers and classes of society, such as the peasants and the workers. So, the oppressed peasant man or the exploited male worker believes that he has another human being to oppress: his wife.
It is easy for us to talk about the vile system of imperialism and the devilishness of the imperial masters. Our thoughts and emotions become so volatile when we see the insanity of imperialists through the brutalisation of Libyans and Palestinians.
But do we ever spare a thought for the black woman who has to endure her brutal, insensitive and irresponsible husband — this typical African man, who, armed with his self provided passbook, unilaterally allows himself all kinds of reprehensible detours before returning home to the woman who has waited for him so worthily, in such privation and destitution.
The detours themselves are yet another arrogant expression of his will and desire to treat women as changeable sex tools at his disposal.
Even the white wives of world oppressors are not spared. Those ruthless imperialists destroying the world today may be providing every possible comfort for their countries and families back home; but their wives are often treated as mere tools for the pleasure of the lecherous world destroyers.
Often, these brutal aggressors try to kill their conscience by engaging in drunken brawls and perverse, bestial sexual behaviour. Then, we have numberless examples of men, otherwise brilliant and highly progressive, who live cheerfully in chronic adultery, but are prepared to murder their wives on the merest suspicion of infidelity.
Heaven knows best the number of Zimbabwean men so keen to be embraced in the arms of the so-called “small houses”, the mistresses — in the arms of prostitutes of all kinds and shapes.
And our modern day world has to put up with these sick little men who get together in sleazy places to brag about the women they claim to have taken advantage of, including other people’s wives!
These worthless creatures believe bragging about abusing women will make them measure up to other more successful men, or even humiliate some of them, especially if they happen to have seduced their wives.
There are other worthless men out there who stand in the way of their wives and prevent them from developing themselves academically or progressing upward the corporate ladder because they allege that such developments come with promiscuity and infidelity. What narrow-mindedness!
So a male politician can stride the length and breadth of Zimbabwe like a rhino in a game reserve and, that must be acceptable?
But his wife cannot join politics and do likewise because the politician himself is sceptical of female politicians’ moral worthiness, having slept with many of them on his own numerous political errands.
If the assertion is true, then it must be also true for the male politician. But would a woman who is disenchanted and determined be stopped from deceiving her husband simply by being banned from studying or joining a certain career?
How easy it is for men to make derogatory remarks about women. Go to drinking places and you never stop hearing that “women are despicably materialistic,” “manipulators,” “schemers,” “gold diggers,” “gossipers,” “liars,” and many such other descriptions.
If true for women, is this not equally true of men?
Our society today suffers deficiencies in its political structures, its corporate structures and in its religious structures.
This is mainly because we have a system that burdens women down, tries to keep them away from anything that is supposed to be serious and of consequence, excludes them from anything other than the bed, the most petty of duties and other minor activities.
This is what Thomas Sankara had to say about the condition of the African woman:
“When you are condemned, as women are, to wait for your lord and master at home in order to feed him and receive his permission to speak or just to be alive, what else do you have to keep you occupied and to give you at least the illusion of being useful, but meaningful glances, gossip, chatter, furtive envious glances at others, and the bad-mouthing of their flirtations and private lives? The same attitudes are found among men put in the same situation”.
An average African woman’s whole life is dominated and tormented by a fickle, unfaithful and irresponsible husband and by mischief-loaded children sired by the same husband through her. She is then blamed for being short-tempered or for screaming. What banality!
How comfortably we deride prostitutes! But as Sankara rightly put it, prostitution “is nothing but the microcosm of a society where exploitation is a general rule.”
It is a symbol of the contempt men have for women. The prostitute is the painful figure of the mother, sister, or wife of other men, thus of every one of us men. The man who perpetuates prostitution is the frequent client — normally the husband who commits his wife to chastity, while he relieves his depravity and debauchery upon the prostitute.
We must move away from a tradition that ranks women as either prostitute or wife — the only difference being that the legal wife, though still oppressed, at least has the benefit of the stamp of respectability that the marriage certificate offers; and the prostitute only has exchange value for her body, a value that depreciates with age, and is often determined by the contents of the male chauvinist’s wallet.
A prostitute is governed by the laws of demand and supply, and her value is measured by the intensity of her charms. Prostitution is such a despicable, tragic, and extremely painful form of female slavery.
And, when we pretend to have a desire to stop it what do we do? We send male police officers to round up the prostitutes, bundle them in open trucks, rough them up a lot, humiliate them, scorn at them, make them pay a fine, and even publicise their names in newspapers?
So we persecute the victim of society’s oppression of women in order to stop the very effect of society’s own injustice. Is persecuting the prostitute the best way of saving our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, or our wives from this social leprosy?
Africa we are one and together we must overcome. It is homeland or death!
Reason Wafawarova is a political writer and can be contacted on [email protected] or [email protected] or visit www.rwafawarova.com
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