Women who live and die for our
world: Wangari Maathai and Kay Ruth Williams
Posted by on 7/9/2005 10:44:54 PM
Most
advocates of women emancipation�especially those of the screaming
feminist mode�often trace the beginning of the
subservience of women to the age-old dominance of men.
The argument, usually of course, and a very plausible one at that, is that women do not suffer from any form of natural depravity or inferiority, except those inflicted on them by men. For instance, Simone de Beauvoir, a French female activist who did a considerable amount of work with Jean Paul Sartre, that renowned French Existentialist philosopher and writer, wrote in her book, Le deuxieme Sexe, translated as The Second Sex, that while men take their identity for granted in society and never begin by presenting themselves as individual of a particular sex, a woman has to define herself as a woman from the start. A woman, she says, is defined against the backdrop of the male-folk, relative to man.
Thus, a basic content and locus of women struggle is the cohesive assertion against this complex of categorization. Thus when women burst out to assume the status of being with liberty, or indeed, go ahead to excel, either in creativity or in high-profile sociality and professionalism, it is humanity, not just womanity, that has triumphed.
The argument, usually of course, and a very plausible one at that, is that women do not suffer from any form of natural depravity or inferiority, except those inflicted on them by men. For instance, Simone de Beauvoir, a French female activist who did a considerable amount of work with Jean Paul Sartre, that renowned French Existentialist philosopher and writer, wrote in her book, Le deuxieme Sexe, translated as The Second Sex, that while men take their identity for granted in society and never begin by presenting themselves as individual of a particular sex, a woman has to define herself as a woman from the start. A woman, she says, is defined against the backdrop of the male-folk, relative to man.
Thus, a basic content and locus of women struggle is the cohesive assertion against this complex of categorization. Thus when women burst out to assume the status of being with liberty, or indeed, go ahead to excel, either in creativity or in high-profile sociality and professionalism, it is humanity, not just womanity, that has triumphed.
This
is why the dynamic and uncommon exploits of women who have made contribution to
society, not simply because they are women, but also because they are among the
best that humanity has thrown up as people of outstanding and distinctive
capacities, there is necessarily a cause for celebration. When such women are
honoured as they deserve, as was the case of Dr. Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan
intellectual and environmental activist, who became the first African woman to
win the Nobel Prize for Peace, we drink from the cup of joy. When on the other
sadder side of the coin such great women who have lived their life for the
survival of a segment of our humanity, in utter selflessness, pass away, as
recently did the British-born, Nigerian naturalized linguist, Professor Kay
Ruth Williamson, we celebrate her life and mourn the deprivation that our
humanity suffers from her demise.
Wangari
Maathai: African female Nobel Peace Laureate.
Dr.
Wangari is a woman of distinctive substance and a blessing to our world. She is
an academic intellectual (there are many academics who may not be
intellectuals, just as there are many intellectuals who are not academics). She
is an environmental activist, mother and politician. She has carried on the
campaign on environment for nearly three decades and had suffered great
distress and hardships in the process. It is imperative to contextualize her
environmental activism and struggle within the penumbra of its accompanying
mortal hazards, especially when we remember that our own ken Saro Wiwa was
killed for his similar implacable commitment to the environment as does
Wangari.
It is therefore fitting, on the occasion of the International Women Day, to celebrate Dr. Wangari Maathai, for blazing the Nobel trail for environmentalist and for the women of Africa. It is also refreshing to note her perception of the Nobel Prize, not as a personal achievement, but as an Award won on behalf of the collective�activists, women, and the entire Africa. This also re-echoes Wole Soyinka�s Acceptance of the Prize for Literature nearly two decades ago, in the context of a shared experience, as a national, even continental honour. Rather than merely considering the award as a palpable counter-fact to the dominant phallic consciousness that prevailed, Wangari took the Nobel Prize for Peace on behalf of, in her own words, " huge constituency" of civil society which comprises environmentalists and people have worked for democratic principles; people who have pushed democratic movements, fighting for peace movements and women movements.
This
activist insight, and penchant, of acting for and on behalf of a larger
humanist, is one of the factors which the Nobel Prize Committee acknowledged as
qualifying her, not just for the Prize, but cognizes her as builder and shaper
of the "next state of the world"�the future destiny of mankind.
Yes, women all over the world, but in Africa in particular, have a right to
clutch unto Wangari, exclusively, even selfishly, for what she has done for the
image, stature and standing of women, whom as she herself opined, are usually
trampled upon, set aside and abandoned, without deference to the fact that
"we (women) are the most competent at work".
Yet,
it would diminish this great woman, in terms of the enormity of her
accomplishments and exploits�the battles she has won for
mankind, to perceive and celebrate her from her purely from a Manichean
(they-us; male-female) perspective. Some of the most courageous and most
memorable accomplishments of this Laureate transcend sexual boundaries. Take
for instance her participation in the Aba-women-revolt-like rebellion by
stripping naked of some Kenyan women, about a decade ago in downtown Nairobi.
This self- demeaning sacrificial act was undertaken on behalf of young men put
in a protracted period of incarceration by the military in Kenya for seeking
political power devolution via multi-party democracy. Wangari protested, nude,
in company (indeed ahead of) of barely literate and illiterate women and mothers
for the release of these young men, especially since long after, the Government
had introduced multi-party styled democracy. Stripping naked by women in
public, is a taboo, in the African cosmos. It is in fact a curse by mothers
inflicted on sons (symbolized here by a terrorist government run by visionless
sons) who commit abominable acts against their mothers.
Wangari may have won the Prize for her life-long campaign against environmental degradation and government-supported forest razing. Her Green Belt Movement set up since 1977 was aimed at massive re-forestation. Through her rugged and dogged campaigns to other women, over 30million trees have been planted to stem deforestation. But it is for her campaign for peace through fighting all manners of injustice�perpetrated against youth, women, rights activists�by terrorist and dictatorial governments that additional won her the much-deserved decoration with the Nobel Prize for Peace. It is a combination of all these that put her in a place of honour, alongside, Madiba Nelson Mandela, F.W.de Klerk, Desmond Tutu, Albert Luthuli, Anwar Sadat, and Kofi Annan, previous winners of the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Wangari may have won the Prize for her life-long campaign against environmental degradation and government-supported forest razing. Her Green Belt Movement set up since 1977 was aimed at massive re-forestation. Through her rugged and dogged campaigns to other women, over 30million trees have been planted to stem deforestation. But it is for her campaign for peace through fighting all manners of injustice�perpetrated against youth, women, rights activists�by terrorist and dictatorial governments that additional won her the much-deserved decoration with the Nobel Prize for Peace. It is a combination of all these that put her in a place of honour, alongside, Madiba Nelson Mandela, F.W.de Klerk, Desmond Tutu, Albert Luthuli, Anwar Sadat, and Kofi Annan, previous winners of the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Kay Williamson: Died for another tongue.
Professor
Kay Ruth Williamson is a rarity. Like all great people, she treads uncommon
turfs, smashing borders across such times and spaces where angels fear to walk.
Here was a Briton, from the British Aristocracy, who gave up wealth and
comfort, to build a new home, a new life and a new nation for herself and her
new people and nation. Rather than choose the urban, fast and pulsating life of
Lagos and Port-Harcourt, she squeezed a humble homestead in the heart of Kaiama
in the Kolokuma/ Opokuma LGA of Bayelsa State. Rather than continuing on the
beaten path of research into the linguistics of English language, she chose the
tedious and unfamiliar challenge of bringing to the limelight the little( or
unknown) Ijaw language.
Kay
Williamson donated her intellect and scholarly energy to the study of the Ijaw
language and the fulfillment of the Ijaw dream. She reminds me of Adunni
Olorisa, Suzanne Wanger, and the Osun Priestess�the
German-born artist who gave up her home, her profession, her matrimony and her
nation in order to re-cultivate a Yoruba female pantheon in Osogbo.
A
genial mind, Kay Williamson took a First Class Honour degree in English from
Britain�s most prestigious University,
Oxford. With a materially comfortable background and a brilliant mind, she
could have made a successful career for herself at home. Yet, at the tender age
of Twenty-two, she left all the opportunities and came to Nigeria, and to
Ijaw-land, home of the slain Environmental activist and writer, Ken Saro Wiwa.
It
is pertinent to observe that, as a linguist, Kay knew that the best way understand
a people, and to help a people to understand themselves, is to know and
understand their language�and the people to appreciate the
value of their own language. Hers was a life lived on behalf of others�whom
she has no business, except that of a heroic commitment to immortality, to love
or live, even die for.
Good night, profound intellectual, scholar, culture activist and humanist, Kay Ruth Williamson.
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