Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies (2001) ISSN: 1530-5686 ISLAM AND ITS BIGOTS: THE CASE OF SAFIYATU HUSEINI TUGUR TUDU

Nkiru Nzegwu

A lot has happened since our inaugural issue. Some of it has been uplifting, and some have been depressing. On the positive front, Afghan women seem to have been freed from the prison of their homes. At the moment, there are hopeful signs that they will be able to play crucial public political, judicial and social roles in administering their country, provided the war lords and patriarchs who have dominated the country for the past twenty years agree. Given the fragility of peace and the lack of security in war torn Afghanistan, few professional women in Kabul, Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif have been able to return to work. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) declared on International Human Rights Day that there is really little in the Bonn agreement for women to be hopeful about (Dec 10, 2001). They graphically reminded us of the infamy of the Northern Alliance during their years in power. The human rights abuses of the Mujahedeens, who make up the alliance, were far worse than the Talibans. Between 1992 to 1996 they engaged in: “widespread raping of girls and women from ages seven to seventy, massacres, looting national assets and archaeological riches, extorting vast amounts of money from defenceless people and other crimes and atrocities” (RAWA 2001). In RAWA’s view, the United Nations must realize that the “mere end of the forced misery and humiliation of the burqa is in no way an indication of attainment of women’s rights and liberties.”

On the negative side, bigotry and sexism continues unabated in a number of regions of the world. The bigotry I am concerned with in this editorial is not with the malcontents of Islam; but of Islamists themselves. It is the bigotry that was unleashed in the Upper Sharia Court 1 Gwadabawa in Sokoto State, Nigeria in November 15, 2001. On that fateful day, Justice Muhammed Bello Sanyinawal condemned a pregnant Safiyatu Huseini Tugur-Tudu to death by stoning. The sentence is to be carried out after she weans her baby. Safiyatu received the death sentence, because she was a divorced woman, and on the strength of a confession to adultery extracted under duress by the police. Her claim to have been raped was ignored. Had she never married, as Bariya Ibrahim Magazu of Zamfara, Nigeria, she would have received 100 lashes and not the capital offense. So what sentence did the 60-year old man accused of impregnating her receive? Justice Sanyinawal acquitted the married Yahaya Abubakar on the ground that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him. There were no four witnesses to the sexual act, and moreover there were only three witnesses to his confession! Mr. Abubakar, the adulterer-rapist, who is also Safiyatu’s cousin, had admitted to her family and three policemen that he had sex with his divorced cousin on three separate occasions. However, the upright and impartial judge could not in good conscience enter into evidence the confession that Abubakar had retracted in court (Isaac, 2001). Finding himself in a quandary, since there were no four witnesses to the act, Sanyinawal decided against violating the four-witness rule of the Sharia. With his hands securely tied by this technicality, he complied with the age-old Nigeria’s tradition of judicial cowardice and did absolutely nothing to untie them.

It is instructive that the acting Governor of Sokoto State, Alhaji Aliyu Wamakko, too, sees nothing repugnant in this miscarriage of justice in the application of differing punishments to the same act committed by two individuals (Wamakko, 2001). It does not matter to him that the perpetrator in this case, Yakubu Abubakar, was already married with two wives, and had called in the morality police when Safiyatu’s father sought to compel him to assume his obligations to the child. In Wamakko strict moral scheme, it does not matter that the adulterer received an acquittal as long as the woman was sentenced to death by stoning. In fact, he is on record as pledging to uphold this principle of selective punishment that effectively legislates differing standards of justice for men and women, for the same adulterous act. Much more discomfiting in Wamakko’s equanimity is that a woman is being sent to her death for an offence that under the penal code of Nigeria carries a punishment of 2 years imprisonment with an option of fine. We need to note that in staking out his position, Wamakko deliberately chose to ignore that at that time he was elected, the national penal code was in force; and that the Northern States of Nigeria, including Sokoto State, of which he is the acting governor, are subject to this code of the Nigerian constitution. The constitutional implication of this Federal/State relationship is that the Federal penal code overrides the State code where conflicts occur, or where the State code is repugnant to justice.

However, choosing to ignore the superiority of the Federal Penal Code, Wamakko announced in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, that the 36-year-old Safiyatu Huseini would die for committing adultery. His main justification is that, “Allah says [so] in his Holy Book and this is without consideration to what people say or think” (Wamakko, 2001). Directly challenging the country’s constitution as well as the powers of the Federal Government of Nigeria, Wamakko proclaimed that his “Government supports whatever Allah says we should do” (Wamakko, 2001). He reminded the public that “As you are aware, Sokoto State is an Islamic State and we are governed by what Allah says and no body can stop us” (Wamakko, 2001). This religious extremist position is backed by the Sokoto Attorney General, Aliyu Abubakar Sanyinna, who also claimed that “By executing anybody that is convicted under Islamic law, we are just complying with the laws of Allah, so we don’t have anything to worry about” (Isaac, 2001).

There are striking similarities between Alhaji Aliyu Wamakko, the acting Governor of Sokoto State, Aliyu Abubakar Sanyinna, the Sokoto Attorney General, and Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader. All see themselves as “morally obligated” to enforce cruel and inhumane punishment against women and the poor. Relishing the publicity that has come his way since this death-by-stoning conviction, Sanyinna regaled the press on how the sentence will be carried out. He states: “They will dig a pit, and then they will put the convict in a way that she will not be able to escape, and then she will be stoned.[with stones as big as his fist]. Another way is that she could be tied up against a tree or pillar” (Isaac, 2001). By taking the religious extremist line, both Wamakko and Sanyinna are expressing their disdain for the constitutionality of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to which as elected officials, they have sworn to uphold. In bad faith, they forsook their pledge to promote equality, justice and unity as declared under the preamble of that Constitution. Rather they used the vast organs of the State to recreate a medieval society and to install a selective principle of punishment that both offends and subverts modern day principles of equality and justice, and that discriminates against women. There is no question that Wamakko and Sanyinna’s sense of “moral obligation” to the Allah comes from their religious beliefs. But their equanimity with the selective principle of punishment and their indifference to a capricious and inhuman punishment comes from deep-seated sexism and the assurance that as socially privileged men, they will never be subjected to cruel medievalist justice as are Safiyatu, other women and the poor.

When we reflect on Wamakko and Sanyinna’s indifference to Safiyatu’s death-by-stoning sentence for being the victim rape, we cannot but speculate that they must have a special telecommunication link to Allah with whom difficult matters of state are routinely discussed and cleared. It could only be from this privileged position that they know Allah is especially desirous for Safiyatu blood, which explains why they must obediently carry out this reprehensible sentence. For Wamakko and Sanyinna to be so convinced, they have to believe that they have found favor in the eyes of Allah, and that carrying out this execution promotes good governance and advances justice as Allah declared it. But we know that, as good Nigerian politicians, they did not rely exclusively on piety and faith to get where they are. Whatever the depth of their faith, their religious conviction is pragmatically underwritten by strategic political assurances that no politician or court official will prosecute them and other members of the political establishment for any offenses they commit. With this assurance, they take comfort in the fact that they will never be prosecuted for an array of moral indiscretions, both sexual and non-sexual, including the clandestine consumption of large quantities of alcohol, using taxes derived from alcohol to enforce Allah’s law, corruption, political abuses, exploitative acts, lying and cheating, forging of credentials, maladministration, and capricious diversion of state funds to private personal use. Nigerians’ are familiar with these pious State officials and their rapacious embezzlement activities. Many can still recall the unconscionable plundering of national and state treasuries during the administrations of late General Sani Abacha and retired General Ibrahim Babangida. Securely lodged in the nation’s memory are the blasé cynical comments of the former Kano State governor Barkin Zuwo toward unauthorized use of state funds: “gor’ment money in gor’ment house, what’s the problem?” Yes, Allah is Good! He is Compassionate and Merciful to socially privileged, powerful men who wrap themselves in the cloak of piety to commit heinous crimes including murder. The sad truth though, is that Allah, in whose name Safiyatu is to be killed, has no choice but to be Merciful for even He cannot convict these men in their own Sharia courts. The unattainable high standard of proof they reserve for themselves and their cynical manipulation of rules of evidence skews the verdict in their favor, as Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem clearly points out.

In the wake of September 11, Muslims have rightly complained that Islam has come under intense scrutiny and condemnation for the acts of its fringe groups. But then as Safiyatu’s case shows, bigotry in the name of Islam has become fashionable, and must be vigorously condemned. For, not only is this bigotry employing apparatuses of State to oppress women, it is also murdering them. It used to be the case that Sokoto, the headquarters of the Sokoto Caliphate exemplified the intellectual activities, knowledge acquisition, teaching and scholastic pursuits of the Qadiriyya brotherhood. Now the heirs of this legacy have become the sort of unjust, corrupt, and tyrannical leaders that Uthman Dan Fodio, the founder of the Caliphate, so roundly denounced in Kitab-al-Farg. It used to be that only marginal extremists held negative views on women. Now to our dismay, these extremists are no longer the small marginal fringe group they used to be. They have morphed into elected officials, and are using State power to unleash a reign of terror on women and on the poor. In January 2001, a seventeen-year-old girl, Bariya Ibrahim Magazu of Zamfara, Nigeria was sentenced to 180 lashes for having premarital sex. In August, a 20-year-old Zamfara woman was sentenced to a public flogging of 100 lashes with a cane after admitting to an extramarital affair. Now Safiyatu Huseini is facing a death sentence. In all these cases the rapists and male partners were acquitted on the untenable ground that the court lacked sufficient evidence for prosecution! The message here is that it is unmanly for men, including the 60-year-old adulterer who raped Bariya, to exercise sexual control or to be held accountable for their actions. The message the judges of the Sharia Courts are zealously promoting is that it is all right for men to be sexually irresponsible and morally loose because women are the ones to take the blame. In their view, women ought to live by a higher moral standard and be above reproach. By means of this twisted logic, misogyny is legally justified and the message of women’s inferiority is effectively driven home.

The legal enforcement of women’s inferiority is systematically carried out in numerous ways. It includes making them the object of blame, discounting their statements in court, and trivializing whatever egregious acts may have been done to them at home and in public. For example, when 18 year old Bariya protested to the court that she had been raped, rather than offering her relief, the judge additionally charged her for making false accusations against the men of the village. She was the only one to be convicted, she was the only one to receive 80 lashes even though an appeal was pending, and she was the only one publicly shamed by having to carry an unwanted pregnancy. This systemic travesty of justice must be confronted and rooted out even if some want to charge that Islam is once again being unfairly targeted. The questions that ought to preoccupy these apologists are, How come it is women and the poor who are constantly hounded and who have to bear the brunt of Allah’s wrath? Is Allah not the Merciful and Compassionate Being the Koran says He is? What does Allah say about Qadis who misapply justice? What does the Sharia or the Hadith say about avaricious rulers? Why have we seen no prosecutions of capricious and tyrannical rulers in these Sharia courts? To suggest that androcentric interpretations of Islam represent Allah’s view is both blasphemous and downright heretical. The argument that the lapses should not be condemned because Islam must not be targeted is to illegitimately conflate bigotry with Islam and to collude in religious infamy. It cannot be that it is Allah’s will to oppress women, and be spiteful to the poor. Even Uthman dan Fodio, that early nineteenth century figure, saw through this line of deceit and sophistry of his compeers. He recognized that their unjust and narrow-minded construal of Islam was designed to further selfish ends. For that reason, he advanced a far more progressive interpretation of the Koran, Sunna and Hadith on the position of women than the Nigerian Sharia Courts of today and his intellectual and political heirs are prepared to accept. He exhorted:

Muslim women they deceive you when they stress obedience to your husbands without telling you of obedience to God and to his Messenger (may God show him bounty and grant him salvation) and when they say that woman finds her happiness in submission to her husband. They seek only their own gratification and this is why they impose on you, tasks which the law of Allah and that of his Prophet never especially assigned to you. Such are—the preparation of foodstuffs, the washing of clothes, and other duties which they like to impose on you, while they neglect to teach you what God and the prophet have prescribed for you” (Uthman dan Fodio, cited by Walter Ofonagoro 1984, 31).

Clearly, Dan Fodio did not approve of the oppression and subjugation of woman because he did not accept that Allah disdains women. He ensured that his daughter Nana Asma’u explored her creative potentials and attained intellectual fulfillment. It is probably for this reason that his views on women are infrequently quoted and discussed by male Muslim scholars in Nigeria. On this matter, Dan Fodio was, for them, a heretic, siding with and inciting women to arms! In their views, he was a traitor to his sex! He was not only satisfied with the gender disruptions his invectives could cause, he indicted men for their “abominable crimes.” He publicly excoriated the fact that: “Most of our educated men leave their wives, their daughters, and their captives morally abandoned, like beast.Men treat these beings like household implements which becomes broken after long use and which are then thrown out on the dung-heap. This is an abominable crime” (Uthman dan Fodio, cited by Toyin Falola 1988, 41).

In contemporary Nigeria, Islam must come under intense scrutiny on the gender front if it is to be rid of bigots. There is need to expose highly placed individuals who, under the cover of Islam, use their political and judicial positions to impose their sexism on women. In this way they facilitate the oppression of women and give Islam a bad name by claiming that Allah intended these abuses for the protection of women. To confront this skilful misrepresentation of Islam, we draw on Dan Fodio’s Wathigat ‘ahl al-Sudan to inform those who seek the subordination of women that “to make war, upon the oppressor is obligatory.” As he admonished in Wasuyeji, we will “never ever sit with an oppressor” as that would be to accommodate his excesses.

Still, much as we are inspired by the ideas of progressive men like Dan Fodio, it would be a mistake to rest the case for women’s dignity and equal treatment before the law on the pronouncements of men whose primary concern about the welfare of women is to broaden their support base. Over the years, we have observed that when men are solicitous for the welfare of women, they use it to claim the moral high ground, and to receive as of right our gratitude and other social goods that accrue from these elevated positions. But relationally, while these men become champions and defenders of women’s rights women loose ground because they are no longer involved in their own definition. Patriarchal relationships are once again reproduced as women entrust their lives to men and rely on their innate goodness and caring nature to do what they as women ought to be doing for ourselves. The trouble is that the basis on which men’s defense of women is launched is one that is minimally sensitive to the complexities of women’s experiences, and that relationally inflates the power and importance of men while diminishing the social significance and worth of women. It should be clear to all that in handing over the power of self-definition to men, not only do women become background props to men, their issues pale in significance to the issues that are of importance to men. While the diminution of women’s worth is occurring, the illusion is created that optimal attention is being given to women’s welfare. It is not that men’s support and assistance are unimportant and unwelcomed. It is more that women must be involved in the process of their own self-definition. They must have the space to grow if they are to attain a comparable level of self-actualization.

Women loose ground the most when they are being taken care of and are unable to freely pursue their goals of empowerment. Consider Safiyatu’s appeal lawyer, Abdulkadar Imam Ibrahim who was retained by women’s group. As a good lawyer, he immediately filed an appeal against the death-by-stoning sentence on the grounds that the court’s decision was unfair and that the court showed partiality when it freed Abubakar (Aribike, Nov 5, 2001). But in an interview with Dan Isaacs, a BBC News reporter, Ibrahim expressed sympathy for the adulterous-rapist. His concern was that the recently acquitted Abubakar should not be made to suffer by being made to appear again in court (Isaacs, 2001). But why does it matter that Abubakar suffers? Is a court appearance the measure of real suffering? What about Safiyatu who has a death sentence hanging over her head? Does her life not count for anything? Is appearing in court on the same level as loosing a life? Why would a defense lawyer be concerned about the discomfort of an adulterous-rapist when his prime focus should be on the injustice that was done to his client? The point is not that Ibrahim is a bad lawyer, or that he is unconcerned about overturning the judgment of the lower court. The point is that he does not fully appreciate the complexities in women’s social position. He does not understand, hence is unappreciative, of the injurious harm the pregnancy did to Safiyatu’s person, and to her reputation in her small community. He does not fully grasp the shame and stigma of having to carry a pregnancy for nine months, bear the child, and care for an infant the father has publicly rejected. In the grand scheme of things, the defense counsel’s instinctive concern about the comfort of an adulterer rather than the dignity of the publicly humiliated, raped woman is one clear instance of how women’s real interests get short shrift given men’s obliviousness to women’s particular situations. Women must realize that it is not in all cases that men are appreciative and sensitive to the full range of women’s aspirations and goals.

The same disregard for women’s real interest also defines the concern of Bola Ige, the Federal Attorney General and Minister of Justice to Safiyatu’s conviction. Although it seems that the Federal government through Ige was championing Safiyatu’s appeal, the main worry is not so much the violation of Safiyatu’s human and sexual worth, of the selective principle of punishment applied by Gwadabawa Upper Sharia Court, or Sokoto State’s override of the Federal penal code. The main concern is the bad international publicity the “harsh and crude (Isaacs, 2001)” death-by-stoning conviction has attracted for Nigeria. Presumably, if a less “harsh and crude” method of execution had been chosen, we shudder to think that Ige may probably not have objected to the sentence. As it is, his support of Safiyatu’s appeal against the Sokoto State judiciary should not be a source of comfort to anyone, most especially to those who know the power game occurring behind the scene. Women’s interests suffer because of the hands-off policy of the Federal Government toward the thirteen Sharia States. Back in January 2000, the Federal Government totally abdicated its responsibility when it refused to take action the first time a northern state declared itself an Islamic State. Since then, twelve states have opted to become Islamic States. Thus, the Federal Minister of Justice was not being exactly truthful when he hinted that his office could compel Sokoto States to comply with the Federal Constitution and provide judicial relief to Safiyatu. The Federal Minister’s impotence was rudely brought home to him when the Sokoto State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice dismissively informed the press that the Federal Government lacks jurisdiction to interfere in convictions that have not contradicted the Sharia laws in Sokoto State (Musa and Maru, 2001).

That women cannot really expect men sympathizers to wholeheartedly fight for women’s worth, rights and dignity means that we have to be more astute and vigilant in protecting our interests. We cannot afford to let our guard down. This advice is especially pertinent when we examine Buba Iman’s detailed explication of why Sayifatu’s conviction is untenable under Sharia and must be set aside. Presented as a bold, powerful, Islamic critique of Safiyatu’s sentence, we are seduced by Iman’s putative gender-sensitive response to the death-by-stoning sentence. However, we are stunned when we read subsection four of the section on “The Appeal:” “Safiyatu Huseini should be discharged and acquitted of committing Zina, but should be sentenced to 80 (eighty) stroke of lashes for making false and injurious allegation against Yakubu of committing Zina. (Suratun-Nur Verse 4).” The problem that faces us here is not just the simple one that Iman is unable to comprehend that to discharge and acquit an accused means you cannot go ahead to punish the individual. That he is aware of this fact is obvious since he did not make a similar demand of punishment for the acquitted Yakubu Abubakar. Thus, we should read Iman’s refusal to grasp this fact for Safiyatu as a clue of his sexism. The misogynist attempt to punish women for the lapses of men drives him to see the unmarried Safiyatu as guilty of a crime and deserving of punishment. Having set forth an outrageously high moral standard for women, he readily ignores the sexual peccadilloes of an adulterous-rapist. That his ultimate objective is the cultural control of women’s sexuality becomes obvious when we consider the basis of his belief that Safiyatu’s identification of Yakubu Abubakar as the man who impregnated her is a “false and injurious allegation against Yakubu.” This belief makes sense on a conceptual scheme in which women are untrustworthy and liars, and their pregnancies are hoaxes, which they themselves created to punish innocent men. And so, the woman must be punished while judicial relief is provided for the bruised and battered ego of Abubakar, whose dignity must be assuaged! In Iman’s conceptual scheme, it is irrelevant that Abubakar acted like an old goat, as they say, and that he abdicated responsibility to a child he fathered! Once again, the point here is not just that Iman holds an abysmally low moral standard for men that there is none to speak of. But that since men tend to set up ridiculously high moral standards for women, women need to constantly watch out for, and protect themselves and their own interests.

It is heartening to see Nigerian women and women’s organizations up in arms on this issue (Okereocha, 2001). It is reassuring to read the condemnation of the death sentence by Halima Abdullahi, director of the non-governmental Help Eliminate Loneliness and Poverty (HELP). Her statement that the sentence was an embarrassment to the majority of Muslims especially women is most welcome. Additionally, the statements by Abiola Akinyode Afolabi, coordinator of a coalition of women NGOs and Linda Ewaen Osarenren, Inter-African Committee (IAC), Nigeria are also welcome. It is especially incumbent on African women to publicly speak out on cases such as Safiyatutu’s since we do not necessarily have total support from men on matters of women’s rights. History has shown that women never received full and complete representation from political fathers, husbands, lovers and nationalist (male) champions. Not only were we shortchanged, each time we always managed to come in dead last, even in matters that concern our health and welfare. It is despairing that in the space of ninety years, we have witnessed the fairly rapid erosion of women-affirming institutions in numerous African societies. In their place, we have been left with rigid androcentric structures that treat women as dispensable objects.

Whether it is the Taliban or their Nigerian compeers, bigotry against women has gone on unchecked for too long. It can no longer be condoned. Feyi Koya, Women’s Right Project Coordinator raises an important point about Safiyatu that was lost in the shuffle. Even if the relationship between her and Abubakar was one that went sour, and even if she were still married and willingly had sexual intercourse with Abubakar, that is no reason to kill her. As Koya pointed out, even if Safiyatu chose to have the baby outside marriage, she “is an adult, whose rights the Constitution guarantees, [and] her decision to have a child should not be punished under any guise, as it would seem that in cases such as this, the woman always bears the blame while the man is absolved of all wrong doing and freed.” Being a mother is not something that men, including Sharia Court judges, can decide and rule for women. While it may be desirable to be married to be a mother, it is not necessary, and so it is unacceptable to punish or take anyone’s life because of it. But if the larger political goal of this treatment of Safiyatu is to control women’s sexuality, it should be clear that women’s sexuality cannot be controlled this way. Men can go a long way towards controlling procreation and heterosexual intercourse by disciplining themselves either by zipping up or pulling up their pants, and neatly tucking away their dicks. Should that prove too difficult an accomplishment, they can, perhaps, try castration. But we must not condone the devaluation of Safiyatu’s life, personhood and human dignity to satisfy the misogynist agenda of sexist men. In turning a blind eye to this case, we allow our own value scheme to be degraded by medievalist, misogynist laws, and then tricked into accepting such treatment of women as normal. If we allow ourselves to get used to women’s subordination, we will find ourselves rationalizing this debasement of Safiyatu on the untenable ground that: “It is their/our culture; it is their/our religion; and it is their/our beliefs.” But debasement is not anyone’s culture, religion, or beliefs. The negation/repression of human sexuality cannot be a culture even if it is mandated as the proper behaviour for women by some religion or cultural practices. Debasement of women even at the hands of fathers, husbands, grandfathers or uncles does not enhance women’s dignity. Regardless of how it may have been normativized, or the political and judicial structures that promote it, these ideas are pathologies that must be eradicated.

This Issue

It is with pride that we publish the articles in this issue. They go a long way toward achieving one of our founding objectives, which is to present the views of African women and other scholars on dimensions of African culture and life. We begin this issue with two nineteenth century essays that throw greater light on the activities of women in that historical period. The first article by Audrey Gadzepko, “Gender Discourses and Representational Practices in Gold Coast Newspapers,” examines the writings and philosophies of women journalists in Gold Coast, now Ghana, specifically the role they played with male publishers and editors, and female readers in constructing and negotiating gender during the colonial era. The constructed gender mirrors the aspirations of the elite of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and reflects the influence of the broader elite group in the second quarter of the twentieth century. The true value of the various discourses found in the Gold Coast press lies not in the contents of individual papers, but in the ways they interrelated, and in the tensions that were generated between them.

The second piece by African American historian Lynda R. Day revisits the history of the Ashanti queenmother, Yaa Asantewaa in the context of her centenary celebrations in 2000. In “Long Live the Queen!: The Yaa Asantewaa Centenary and the Politics of History,” she re-examined the War of 1900, and the cultural and historical context of Yaa Asantewaa’s resistance struggle. She notes that the centenary celebration used historical re-creation to reclaim history’s potential for empowering today’s community. Policy-makers in the region attempted to self-consciously define “Asanteness” and make it relevant to universal grand narratives of nation-building, pan-Africanism, and women’s empowerment. The Yaa Asantewaa’s centenary celebrations offered an opportunity to construct a history and culture that is meaningful both to the people of the Ashanti region and the many visitors that came.

The war theme is carried over to the next article that makes the important point that “War is evil!” In the last 50 years, Africa has gone through numerous wars without devoting adequate studies to psychological impact of wars on people, to people’s personal experiences of wars, and to the psychological traumas that follow from them. In this piece “may the bullet not find me: Writing Memories, Writing Identities,” Nzegwu uses a poetic structure to reflect on the Biafran Civil War of 1967-1970. She attempts to heal a psyche that has been badly traumatized by the horrors of war. She focuses on processes of remembrances, of the elliptical cycle of remembering, of re-membering facets, and of gathering together experiences of former lives. The weaving process of remembering unravels and re- fashions an identity of which the act of remembering re-members the splits and tears in the fabric of consciousness.

The step from poetry to fiction is a short one. Over the years, female writers, including those from the Diaspora, have used fiction as a powerful instrument to characterize African women. In “Alice in Motherland: Reading Alice Walker on Africa and Screening the Colour ‘Black,’” Oyeronke Oyewumi deconstructs African American feminist writer Alice Walker’s assault on Africans in the guise of an evangelizing mission to eradicate female circumcision in “Africa.” She teases out the evangelizing character of this mission and the intricate threads of imperialist thinking in Walker’s scheme. She shows that Walker follows the traditional Western cultural imperialist patterns of objectifying, demonizing, and homogenizing Africa. In an ironic way, Walker remains indebted to the racism of nineteenth-century French “anthropologie.” Calling to question Walker’s assumptions Oyewumi reveals how the latter uniquely combines racism with the imperialist varieties of Western feminism and African American solipsism.

Still on the subject of Walker, Nontsasa Nako takes up one of the issues plaguing Western feminist politics, that of speaking about, for, or to, the Other. In “Possessing The Voice Of The Other: African Women And The ‘Crisis Of Representation’ in Alice Walker’s Possessing The Secret Of Joy,” she argues we cannot really come to total conclusions about the common experiences of Black women as Walker seeks to do. She views Walker’s incessant wailing over the blameless vulva as a distraction that takes us away from the work we need to do. Nako’s point is that if African women’s political concerns about life continue to be prescribed for us, then we will hardly get anything done. Indeed, the fact that she cannot get on with the urgent task of defining for herself who she is and what her purpose is work, but remains preoccupied with Walker’s text, her omissions and misreadings, is a testament to the unequal power relations between Africa and the United States.

Moving to get away from the misreadings and distractions replete in imperialist texts, we come to women miners in Mukibira mines. In “Gender and Mining in Kenya: The Case of Mukibira Mines in Vihiga District,” Maurice Amutabi and Mary Lutta-Mukhebi examine and compare the role of women in mining in Kenya to that of men. Drawing from varied practices in the Mukibira mines, they demonstrate that women are at the center of mining activities and that their role is more significant than has been portrayed in the past. According to their data, women perform 90% of the production and other related tasks at Mukibira and in the other mines in Kenya. They interrogate these mining activities vis-a-vis women and evaluate their impact on their life and society around them.

We end with two essays on the current AIDS pandemic in Africa. A generalist focused essay and country specific case study. In “Resensitizing African Health Care and Policy Practitioners: The Gendered Nature of AIDS Epidemics in Africa,” Ifeyinwa Umerah-Udezulu discusses general cultural issues surrounding the spread of HIV/AIDS among African women. She evaluates the geographical distribution of the infection among women in Africa, and analyzes the causes and sociological consequences of AIDS. Next, she reviews the roles played by diverse groups to combat the problems of this deadly disease and argues that health care deliverers and governments can play better and crucial roles to manage the spread of this disease.

Lastly, in “Women and AIDS in Southern Africa: The case of Zimbabwe and its Policy Implications,” Gladys Bindura Mutangadura tackles another aspect of the HIV/AIDS problem in southern Africa: orphans. The care of orphans will become one of the greatest challenges facing Africa as the HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to claim the lives of young adults. Using Zimbabwe as a case study she examines the major household impact of the long illness and premature death of mothers on surviving children. In the past, the burden of mothering was often assumed by the extended family but this has become impossible as more people experience severe pressures from a poor economy and the number of people needing help increases. She identifies and evaluates the coping mechanisms and the recent formal and informal social support mechanisms in the community. She notes the way macroeconomic policies have aggravated the conditions resulting in the weakening of informal sources of support. In concluding, she suggests policy response options that can be used to strengthen the coping capacity of surviving households resulting from the mortality of adult females.

References

Abubakar, Aminu. “Safiya’s Death Sentence Tests Sharia’s Soul.” This Day (Lagos) December 13, 2001 (http://allafrica.com/stories/200112130156.html).

Aribike, Segun. “Nigerian Government Moves to Save Pregnant Woman On Death Row.” African Eye News Service (Nelspruit), November 5, 2001.

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Copyright 2001 Africa Resource Center, Inc.

Citation Format

Nzegwu, Nkiru (2001). ISLAM AND ITS BIGOTS: THE CASE OF SAFIYATU HUSEINI TUGUR TUDU. Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies: 1, 2.