*Imam (left) with Madunagu (right, in the feminist t-shirt) at the 2008 Nigerian Feminist Forum
An event was held recently to commemorate the life of late feminist Professor Bene Madunagu (in the feminist t-shirt – 2008 Nigerian Feminist Forum), who died in November. Dr Ayesha Imam, first national coordinator of the Women In Nigeria and first Executive Director of BAOBAB for Women Human Rights spoke glowingly about the late Madunagu at the panel on recognising her work and worth. Excerpts:
Can you share a personal memory or moment that summarizes who Prof. Bene is to you?
Bene and I met in 1982 at the first Women in Nigeria (WIN) conference at ABU, which I coordinated. We were together in the executive committee of WIN.
Bene was warm-hearted and generous. But she did not suffer fools gladly and was often earthy in her responses. Told cooking is for women, she retorted “And is it her vagina she will use to cook soup?” Informed that analysis and policymaking are for men, she responded that he must have made that analysis with his penis. Her laughter, like her political analyses, was rich and deep.
WIN had no money. Meeting around Nigeria we often shared a single hotel room, sleeping on mats, mattrasses, box springs – once Bene bedded down in the bathtub. “Never again!” she said, next morning.
How has Prof. Bene influenced your own feminist journey or activism? And what is her transformative contribution to feminism?
Bene and I influenced each other and grew together – working together in Women in Nigeria since it started in 1982, in the WIN Executive Committee and she took over from me as National Coordinating Secretary in 1987. We were also together in the African Feminist Forum (AFF), in the Nigerian Feminist Forum (NFF), as colleagues in the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), in the Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD), in the Development of African Women for a New Era (DAWN) and other platforms.
She was also kind enough to sit on the board of Baobab for Women’s Human Rights whilst I was the Executive Director – during the time of the politicisation of the so-called Sharia Penal Code and the threats of stoning (with attacks on BAOBAB staff, as well as women accused of adultery). In each organisation, association, network we helped to develop and build our understandings of feminism, socialism, pan-Africanism, political activism.
We (and others) organically grew a feminism that was African, materialist and radical – that challenges gender oppression, class exploitation, racism, imperialism and other discriminatory and oppressive systems, without subsuming one for another.
Well before the discourse of intersectionality became popular in the USA, we in WIN were doing it. In NFF, AFF, AAWORD etc we are still doing it. Recognising that an individual is not just a woman, but also a rural worker, a mother, a citizen… and all of them at the same time with the social relations of each category combining in different ways. This recognition also has necessary implications for the way in which gender relations are analysed. Gender does not manifest as an absolute in pristine splendour. It is present always in conjunction with other systems of social and economic relationship. A woman is not ‘just a woman’, she is also, at the same time, peasant, Hausa, Muslim, hetero-sexual (or not), living in neo-colonial Nigeria etc. Hence gender relations need to be analysed in terms of their inter-relations with other systems of stratification – and vice versa!
A frequent metaphor is to see gender relations, class relations, ethnic relations and so on as different coloured threads, which are woven together to make the cloth of society. The individual threads can be traced, but to understand the design of the cloth one must also appreciate how each thread relates to the others. That is to say that, for instance, politics and state power relations need also to be analysed in terms of their relationship with gender relations and their implications for different gender groups.
Grace mentioned she would focus on Bene’s contribution as a feminist. We also remember that she was at the same time a trades’ unionist – so she brought to her feminism a recognition of workers’ struggles and rights, as a botanist – so she brought to the feminist struggle an acknowledgement of the use and pleasure of plants and the circle of life… and so on…
What advice or guidance do you have to offer to today’s young feminists or social justice advocates?
Just do it. Do not wait for permission. We did not. Don’t beg others to give you space – make your own! There is no need to bad mouth or despise those who have gone before you for not being perfect. Nor to follow them slavishly, because it seems they have done so well and you admire them. Study what they have done, in their time (no need to reinvent the wheel) then take what works for this context, and this struggle, and develop it further. Don’t ignore the past, but don’t fetishise it either.
Remember to consider the impact of what you do and say on other struggles and social relations. We may not be able to work on all issues at the same time. But we can be careful that the way we are pushing issue A forward does not push issue B back. And that means forming alliances with others in the social justice struggles, so we are all aware of how to be in solidarity and struggle together.
Be careful not to be self-indulgent – but also be kind to yourself. The struggle is long. It took centuries of oppression to get here. We won’t get it fixed in a day. We don’t need you to burn out, but to be together for the long haul.
Life is serious – but don’t allow oppressors to leach the colour out of life. Give and take joy along the way. I can just hear Bene saying that and laughing as she does!
