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- Convenors:
-
Maria Paula Meneses
(Center for Social Studies)
Iolanda Vasile (CES, Universidade de Coimbra)
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- :
- B1 0.08
- Sessions:
- Friday 19 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This panel welcomes interdisciplinary proposals about the public participation of women in a range of political and civil society activities, spanning from the early years of the outburst of the liberation movements in Southern Africa, the multiple roles played by women in the struggles, to their involvement in manifestations for equal rights for women, from a gender and race perspective, and the active support to democracy in the region.
Long Abstract:
From the 1950s, women had a direct involvement in the liberation movements in Southern Africa. From the multiple female roles expected from them inside and outside the struggles, women had the capacity to challenge their place in history, and to give voice to their multiple and heterogeneous experiences and struggles.
References such as Ruth First, Josina Machel, Deolinda Rodrigues and Winnie Mandela are well known. However, the ‘heroinas sem nome’, the anonymous heroines of the Sub-Saharan Africa, carried on the legacy of women's fight for liberation and self-determination beyond independence. They stand proof of women’s constant struggle for improving education, health, democratic participation and civil rights; the life of their families, communities and countries.
This panel welcomes interdisciplinary proposals about the public participation of women in a range of political and civil society activities, spanning from the early years of the outburst of the liberation movements in Southern Africa, the multiple roles played by women in the struggles, to their involvement in manifestations for equal rights for women, from a gender and race perspective, and the active support to democracy in the region.
We also encourage works on auto positionality, regarding the studies developed in collaboration with and about women in Southern Africa. We expect the use of new resources (archival, interviews, memoires), blended with innovative methodologies from a large span of cultural, literary, artistic, historical, and educational backgrounds. What we do with these heritages of the past? Are the diverse voices of women being represented? How can we decolonize and gender the discussions about the national liberation and liberation beyond independence in Southern Africa? These are just few of the questions that our panel hopes to address.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 19 July, 2019, -Paper short abstract:
The debate over gender and women throughout Mozambique's nationalist war highlights the political contradictions about women's roles in liberation historiography; their voices break away from the invisibility of women's central contributions towards independence behind the frontline.
Paper long abstract:
Any history presented as the official narrative fortifying the national project remains largely the history of a particular group and of their political actions and goals; such narratives entails several episodes of silencing and omissions which remain alive in the memory of those who cannot afford to forget. This is the case of the women's participation in struggles for independence. The debate over gender and women throughout Mozambique's nationalist war highlights the political contradictions about women's roles in liberation historiography. On one hand, the armed struggle depended on women transporting arms, gathering information about the enemy, provisioning FRELIMO's forces and ensuring the support of local communities to sustain grassroots health and education campaigns. On the other hand, dominant texts suggest the role of women in the frontline was severely curtailed to provide tradition-bound supportive roles for the cause of liberation. However, oral field research tells us a different story. A more nuanced portrait of women and war emerges, showing both contradictions and consistency between the persistent invisibility of women's participation in public consciousness, and their very unacknowledged but central contributions towards independence behind the frontline.
Paper short abstract:
Niketche is a novel that showcases the struggle towards independence by Mozambican women at the cultural and socioeconomic levels. This was also a war for gender equality.
Paper long abstract:
Women in Mozambique have proven to be fighters and hardworking. Traditionally seen as less important then men, due to some extent to religious beliefs, having been “created after men”, women have been repressed and mistreated by society due as well to cultural conventions. They often suffer in silence, in fear of raising their voices, give opinions or show their worth. Due to this, women keep looking for their space in society, trying to conquer stronger and more respected positions. The female marginalization demonstrates that women’s discrimination and repression, by traditional practices, work as social control instruments. For this reason, many of them keep silent, in fear of being repressed by the African cultural traditions. Nowadays, it is possible to observe that some of them are starting to walk forward, even if stumbling, their voices being heard all over Africa, as they are going after gender affirmation, freedom and independence. Based on this perspective, we will describe how Mozambican women, in the plot of the novel Niketche, lend their voices to the fight towards female independence, in this secular war.
Paper short abstract:
This paper reorients the narrative of Zimbabwe's conflict away from individual heroes toward a collective peasantry using oral histories of peasant collaborators. I argue that violence was rural, and that all peasants participated, including young women and men, elders, parents, and spirit mediums.
Paper long abstract:
The history of Zimbabwe's liberation war has been extensively studied from two vantage points: 1. The Rhodesian (civilians, politicians, workers, farmers, soldiers), and 2. The guerrilla (ZANU, ZAPU, ZIPRA, ZANLA). However, the dominant actors in the war weren't trained fighters, but African peasants, and the war avoided urban neighborhoods in favor of Native Reserves, the populous rural villages which most Africans farmed, herded, and considered home. In the rich historiography on the liberation war, these peasants are never considered subjects. My goal is to tell a parallel history where peasants are both the narrators and actors, and the wooded agricultural landscape where the war was fought is understood through the language of those who called it home rather than by those who temporarily transformed the landscape into a theater of violence.
This study provides a glimpse of the war in a rural community in southern Zimbabwe occupied by soldiers and guerillas from 1977-1980, using their own oral histories. The interviews cover all living participants: elders and youth, women and men, vachimbwido and vanamujiba, workers and peasants, collaborators and askaris. While these stories complicate the heroism of guerrillas and male politicians, my intention is to emphasize the incredible significance of peasant women and men, and their landscape, not as subjects influenced by ZANLA but as the backbone of the rebellion. As I was often told during interviews with female elders, "There was no war without us."
Paper short abstract:
This presentation aims to analyze the (auto)representations of the Angolan women in history and memorialistic publications and in the public space, with the scope of gendering and decolonizing the debates on women participation in the liberation and civil wars in Angola.
Paper long abstract:
'I just did what I had to do' is what I often heard while discussing with Angolan women that had participated in the outburst of the liberation movements in Angola. This positionality does not reflect a lack of political consciousness, rather speaks about women’s roles embodied as such, as long as it serves a greater goal: the liberation beyond independence. But, while fighting both in the trenches of life and battling alongside their fellow male comrades, their various contributions were and are systematically discarded. I argue that women themselves should challenge such representations by publicly acknowledging and affirming their own participation in the fight, no matter how apparently insignificant the contribution. For better understanding the importance of this point and the implicit agency of the Angolan women, I will analyze the (auto)representations of women in history and memorialistic publications and in the public space, through the discussion-interviews conducted. The idea of memory, oral history and national liberation will be approached from a gender perspective. I think of this approach as one of the first possible steps into decolonizing the debates on women’s participation in the liberation and civil wars in Angola, and how they can negotiate more socially equal position nowadays.