Paper short abstract:

This paper will present the linguistic, comparative ethnographic, oral tradition, and archeological evidence that Bantu speaking peoples living within the Bantu Matrilineal Zone (BMZ) did not conceptualize gender in binary terms. Over the Longue Durée, there were no words for "woman” or “man.”

Paper long abstract:

This paper will present the linguistic, comparative ethnographic, oral tradition, and archeological evidence that Bantu speaking peoples living within the Bantu Matrilineal Zone (BMZ) did not conceptualize gender in binary terms. The BMZ is a large area of Africa that spans from modern Angola in the West to Mozambique and Tanzania in the East. Over the Longue Durée, humans in the BMZ were not classified by their genitalia, and there were no words for “woman” or “man.” Instead, life stages such as mother, grandfather, child, or ancestor were the important categories for determining status, authority, and responsibility. Gender, when considered important, was relational. For example, Lunda, as did many other Bantu speaking peoples, considered a mother without breasts as an appropriate term for a maternal uncle. Yet today modern African nations create laws and legislation based on binary gender categories. Developmental agencies seek to “aid” those humans classified as women, but only in binary gender terms. The resilience of these complex social relations in the BMZ requires that religious, governmental and aid institutions begin to acknowledge that gender dynamics in this part of Africa is quite different from those in the West. This study will also show how colonial and missionary activities forced patriarchy and binary gender categories onto African people. In the Western world there are raging debates about binary gender and how it may not reflect all the human experience, matrilineal Bantu speaking peoples have understood this for a long time.

Paper short abstract:

Matriliny is regarded as both empowering and disempowering. This paper examines the attitudes of male and female members of selected matrilineal descents in Ghana. The language in which these attitudes are expressed by male and female members is also potentially revealing.

Paper long abstract:

Matriliny is usually regarded as descent from the mother line or female ancestors. In many parts of Ghana, matriliny forms the basis of inheritance, succession and even citizenship (which was why, for example, a J.J. Rawlings with a Scottish father could become head of state in the country by virtue of his mother’s Ghanaian roots and despite a citizenship suit to stop his presidential election bid). Matriliny is therefore seen as empowering for women. However, matriliny has its downsides, including the eruption of tension between male and female members of a specific matriliny. On the one hand, there is the general idea that matrilineal arrangements may not be as economically or politically impactful for the ordinary woman. On the other hand, the arrangement is sometimes perceived as favouring males more than females of the matriliny. This paper employs the instrumentality of questionnaires and interviews to examine attitudes to this apparent discrepancy in expectations and realities of matrimony. The language in which this discontent is expressed is also of interest to the paper. We examine the attitudes of subjects of matriliny and the language of this subject between male and female members of specific matrilineal descents in Ghana.

Paper short abstract:

African feminists criticize fixed dichotomous notions of gender, replacing these with gender defined by social relationships, not by bodies. In this context motherhood emerges as a key relationship. Based on research in matrilineal north Mozambique, these feminist epistemologies will be discussed.

Paper long abstract:

For decades African feminist scholars have raised critique of mainstream Western epistemologies regarding issues of gender (Amadiume 1987, 1997, Oyewumi 1997, Nzegwu 2006). Early critical voices were mainly Nigerian, increasingly however other voices are joining in. Significantly, what these feminist scholars do, is to criticize Western mainstream dichotomous, hierarchical, fixed conceptions of gender in terms of male dominance/female subordination, replacing such notions with ideas of gender as situational, not tied to bodies, but rather as defined by social positions and relationships. In this context motherhood – as a non-gendered relation between children and grown-ups – emerges as a key social relationship. All human beings were born by women and all have to be nurtured for 7-10 years by caring adults. This focus on motherhood gives rise to epistemologies different from and critical to Western modernity thinking, not just in terms of gender but also by its focus on relationships, rather than on singular individuals. Much African cultural knowledge is carried and transmitted by uMakhulu (Grandmother/Elder Mother in IsiXhosa).

In tracing what Amadiume calls “the missing matriarchal structure in African studies”, these African feminists dig out matrilineal relationships, embedded even in explicitly patrilineal societies - relationships which however emerge more clearly in matrilineal contexts. With a point of departure in research in matrilineal northern Mozambique, the paper will discuss some African contributions to decolonial feminist epistemologies.

Paper short abstract:

What difference does matriliny make to individual lives? For Anachisale, a Malawian woman I have worked with since 2009, matriliny’s significance is obvious. It shapes everything from access to land to what it means to be a mother, sister, and wife. What lessons are entailed for feminist theory?

Paper long abstract:

This paper is an early step in a larger project which aims to produce a collaborate biographical study of Anachisale’s life. The project will bring ‘Western’ and ‘African’ feminisms into conversation outside elite forums for the generation of feminist thought, simultaneously enabling analysis of the real time co-creation of ethnographic knowledge, and the ethics thereof. Anachisale is a rural Malawian woman who has been my host, friend and research participant since 2009. She is 47 years- old, a landholder, wife, mother, and member of a chiefly matrilineage. Fiercely critical of men, her life so far and her hopes for the future have nevertheless been shaped by her relationships with kinsmen and intimate partners, as well as local expectations of gendered roles and matrilineal norms of residence and inheritance. For over a decade, her life has also borne the imprint of her status as ‘key informant’ for a visiting anthropologist. Together, we will analyse our mutual entanglement and advance the practice of feminist collaboration.

In this paper, I will focus on the generally unspoken significance of matriliny for Anachisale’s life course and aspirations. I will reflect upon the theory and practice of feminisms, and consider the potential of research on matriliny to contribute to feminist knowledge production by challenging received wisdom about African women’s lives.

Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork this presentation will discuss matrilineal features of societies in Tanzania and Northern Mozambique where matrilineal characteristics appear especially resilient. Remarkably there has been little consideration of certain matrilineal cluster of features

Paper long abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork this presentation will discuss matrilineal features of societies in Tanzania and Northern Mozambique where matrilineal characteristics appear especially resilient. Remarkably there has been little consideration of certain matrilineal cluster of features in East African societies in which matriliny was rather forecasted as fading and doomed to die. By not abiding to this deterministic perspective, I believe that an emic perspectives on matriliny, a view on how people see their own institutions and the extent women exercises power in societies pervaded by matrilineal characteristics is worth exploring. I shall thus discuss some characteristics of matriliny in two different social contexts of east Africa in northern East Tanzania and Northern Mozambique, compare the ways in which changes have been introduced and some reasons why people have been forced to abandon certain features while others have persisted. The role of the apyamwene in the Makhwa society as well as the rituals of wellbeing performed according to matrilineal criteria among the Zigula of Somalia and Tanzania shows that matriliny still is the foundation of several societies organization within specific socio-economic and sometimes juridical contexts.

Paper short abstract:

How current transformative processes in land tenure affects matrilineal land in Mozambique still appears as a ‘non-issue’. This paper explores available scholarly literature on matriliny, aiming to establish a better basis for representing contemporary Makhuwa women’s rights and interests in land.

Paper long abstract:

Future land use in Africa is currently being shaped through far-reaching transformative processes. In Mozambique, ongoing individual and household land titling programmes are accompanied by agricultural intensification and investment initiatives. These will result in diverse local responses of change and continuity in gendered social relations, including women’s relationships to land. Given the historical presence of matrilineal institutions in northern Mozambique, one would expect transformative land processes to bring up questions about the resilience of matrilineal lineages and of matrilineal norms and practices. Still, matriliny is hardly discussed, either in current debates on land in Africa in general or in more localized fora in the region. What one encounters as a researcher on women’s land rights among the rural Makhuwa, is contradictory information both concerning matrilineal institutions and what matrilineal land rights ‘really’ mean. Africa’s colonial history involved both material and ideological interests in land and people/labour on the colonial powers’ part, shaping what is currently available concerning matriliny, particularly in anthropological literature. Recurring themes here are the ‘puzzle’ related to men’s roles, control over children, and the conception of matriliny as disintegrating or ‘doomed’ and, within a developmental framework, without a future. Interlinkages between knowledge construction and policies have historically shaped representations of essential resources such as land. As a backdrop for the current status of matrilineal land as a ‘non-issue’, this interlinkage invites renewed critical revisits of available literature, in order to develop better representations reflecting women’s relationship to land among present-day rural Makhuwa.

Paper short abstract:

I focus on Yaawo oral historical memories of slave raiding to study historical changes in matriliny (looking beyond just the idea of the masculinization of power). I focus my analytical attention on ‘lukosyo’ (matriclan) as a category of belonging, tracing changes in its meaning.

Paper long abstract:

“It was the captured people who populated these lands,” a Yaawo elder explains, pointing to the heritage of slave raiding in the social landscape of Niassa. This period—generally referred to as the time of the “wars of abducting people”—is remembered as the time when the Yaawo chiefs raided the lakeside Nyanja communities; rival Yaawo chiefs attacked each other’s populations; and the Yaawo and the Ngoni fought one another. Many captured people were assimilated into their capturers’ communities; others were sold further. Slave trading became a monopoly of the great Yaawo chiefs who sent huge caravans to the coast. For common people (especially women and children), this was as a time of increased insecurity, and people sought refuge in hilltop strongholds. In this paper, I am interested in exploring more closely how matriliny changed during this specific historical period (beyond just the idea of the masculinization of power). My analysis focuses on a distinction made in the oral historical material between the social categories of ‘acikapoolo’ (unfree people) and ‘vaandu alukosyo’ (people of the matriclan). I will especially zoom in on ‘lukosyo’ and explore its (changing) significance (and gendered construction) as a category of belonging as well as the processes of inclusion and exclusion to which it was tied. I also study these past meanings in relation to the meaning(s) people give ‘lukosyo’ these days and discuss how this might further help us understand the historical processes of change in matriliny.

Paper short abstract:

Through the example of two female leaders from the Mozambican matrilineal belt, I argue for a better understanding of the historical dynamics of women within the traditional ruling structures to make sense of tensions and cleavages between customary or State proposed/imposed gender regimes.

Paper long abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in the Mozambican matrilineal belt, I showcase examples of two female leaders. One, is a daughter of a mwene, in Zambezia, who inherited her father’s title, is recognised by her community and sanctioned by the Mozambican state. The second is a piyamwene, in Cabo Delgado, who is recognised by the community and the larger clan but is not included in the state’s roster of traditional leaders.

Through these cases, I discuss how their legitimacy is negotiated and how their subjects make sense of changes in leadership imposed by both the colonial and postcolonial state regimes. I argue that state-imposed disruptions carry both discontinuity and continuity. The female mwene, represents a gendered discontinuity, legitimised by a historical memory of female leadership. The piyamwene represents a functional continuity because she remains central in customary duties, like the initiation rites, and community disputes.

I further argue that an understanding of the historical and current dynamics of women within the traditional ruling structures is important to make sense of tensions and cleavages between the so-called modern African states and their citizens. This includes their engagements with the existing (customary) or (im)proposed (State) gender regimes. This is particularly important because female rulers in matrilineal settings are not and have not been accidental events, disposable, or symbolic appendages in the traditional ruling structures. They have been important participants in the governing processes, from working towards social cohesion to mobilizing for what they deemed to be the protection of their subjects.