JENdA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies

Oyeronke Oyewumi

And oh, what a splendid sight to behold. We are elated; indeed we are in rapture over the award of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize to none other than our very own Wangari Maathai. Since the award was announced on the morning of Friday, October 8, the talking drums have been in full beat, the palm wine is flowing, emails are being dispatched, and phones have not stopped ringing, as African women around the world celebrate the recognition of Mama Wangari for her environmental activism: working to secure the living environment across Africa. She founded the Green Belt movement in 1977. Since then the movement has planted tens of millions of trees, she has opposed the imposition of genetically modified crops on the African environment by the all-powerful Monsanto Corporation, and she constantly organizes women to empower themselves and challenge the powers that be.

Forgive us for taking the award so personally but it is rare, if ever in the global public space that we see the words African woman coupled with such positive messages. Such accolades are rarer still. There is no better person than Wangari Maathai to represent Africans, and indeed humanity in these troubled times. Our Nobel Laureate is a scientist, a public intellectual, an activist, a mother, and an African woman. We salute her, we celebrate her, and are delighted that Mama Wangari finally has the global recognition that we have always known she deserves. We hang on to her boubou folds (as in coat tails), even as we bask in the light of her achievements.

But what does this award mean to us as Africans, as African women, and as African feminists? Despite the fact that humanity was born in Africa with the collaboration of an original African mother, African women arguably are one of the most maligned groups of women in the world. We continue to labor under debilitating stereotypes “weapons of mass deception” that refuse our humanity, and ignore our accomplishments. Wangari Maathai herself draws our attention to the problem in an earlier writing: “African women in general need to know that it's okay for them to be the way they are - to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence. The worst maligned problem for both men and women in Africa today actually is unspinning the cocoon of Western stereotypes, within which people are confined by the internationalization of Western culture's patronizing and exploitative conceptions of Africans.

Ironically, one of the most fertile sources for the inaccurate representation of African women is western feminism, at least in some of its guises. In their quest to globalize their creed, some itinerant feminists whenever they come across cases of African "men behaving badly," immediately blame "African culture." In this stance, they are in a strange bed-fellowship with some African men who insist on committing crimes against women and humanity in the name of "culture." In reality, the culture in question is not some long-standing tradition; rather, what is at issue are the male-dominant cultures of impunity that have taken root in post-colonial African societies, a problem compounded by the development of virulent misogynistic varieties of Christian and Islamic fundamentalisms that thrive on the impoverishment of masses of people on the continent. These cultures of impunity and oppression must be continuously resisted and challenged.  Wangari Maathai's Green Belt movement is a blueprint for what is to be done, and how to do it.

Maathai's feminism is nurturing, holistic, inclusive, and indivisible. It is the everyday feminism of African women that the Green Belt movement showcases so well. It is a feminism that insists on motherhood as central to women’s activism. The focus on motherhood is not a reification of biology or biological motherhood but recognition that mothers in raising children create and sustain the future. Motherhood by definition is visionary. As Maathai puts it, "Women, I think, have a capacity to care for others, to see beyond personal gain. Many women, I believe, are at their happiest and best when they are serving. I myself am at my happiest and my best when I am serving." There is nothing wrong with women serving, for service exemplifies the noble ideal of giving oneself to the community to better the lot of all. However, the problem that has plagued Africans in the last two centuries at least is that resources are not in the hands of those who want to serve, but in the clutches of a rapacious male-dominant elite of kleptocrats. This situation must be transformed, and Maathai's work at every level, and on all fronts, seeks to empower women to take charge and meet the challenge.

As we rejoice with Mama Wangari, her deeds and her words dare African women to look in the mirror and see the God in ourselves. As mothers women already do God's work.

For two reasons, the wine of choice at my celebration of Wangari Maathai's triumph is palm wine: it is the product of that life-affirming tree, the palm, a tree that stands dignified, tall and unbowed like the African women we celebrate. Let us drink to sustainable resistance and development, the values for which the Nobel Prize honors our own Mama Wangari.

Copyright © 2004 Africa Resource Center, Inc.

Citation Format

JENdA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies: Issue 5, 2004