Give way for the new African woman

I have a womb. I am a creator. I am light and darkness and I am pretty much everything life.

The role of women in Africa is described in many words. It is a complex picture on the ground with women struggling in so many ways. The situation is mostly a clash of culture and modernity.

This modernity is mainly everything the African woman is not, was not and will never be. Most of us are raised by the generation that embraced the colonial system.

We are detached from our rich culture. Fumbling in the darkness and light, trying to adopt every other culture that seems to work, all but ours.

I think about every African woman who went against the system to make way for us; Wangari Maathai is my favourite guide. She went to school alright, yet she knew that the system was structured to silence her.

A woman knows what she has to do. Living in this society has taught us to fear. She went through so much when she faced her fear. She did not stop. Most of us stop.

We do not feel adequate enough and that is the plan. I was young when the Beijing Conference took place. I did not understand much about women empowerment or gender equity then. I remember reading and hearing much about it.

Today, much is accredited to this conference. The girl-child is educated and empowered to stand amongst men.

The African woman has been empowered. Yet not yet empowered.   She can scale the educational wall, she can run a multi-billion-dollar empire, and she can be President. She can also be the refugee with a sack of clothes on her head and famished children.

She is indeed the woman who is facing domestic violence, sexual violence and is smack in the middle of any war zone. This empowerment needs to spill over and through to every woman.

Severally in the past, I have been caught up in the fancy that women’s empowerment was about competition. Today, I know women cannot compete with men on any level.  How do you compete with someone you brought forth? Fruit of your womb will never be superior to you. You will always be more powerful.

In the same breath, you will identify the self-hate programme instilled in you. You will start to heal yourself from the passed down self-hatred.

We will have to acknowledge the patriarchal system we are in and respect its space.

That done, we will delve into our own matriarchies and revive them. We ought to stop competing with patriarchy. It has thrived on our inner and outer conflicts and broken us down so bad we must heal.  This healing will start and sustain the revolution Africa so yearns for.

Matriarchy was power. We have let the self-hate programming water it down. We have become victims; we have become dried out jostling for life and breath in the patriarchy.

Once we start reclaiming our feminine energy and power back, we will heal. We will raise conscious vibrations in our daily activities. We will be the best mothers, healers and nurturers. We will be back to the Africa that had direction.

We have helped manifest this Africa where people tumble over each other in confusion by not playing our roles; by not letting our power shine, by not knowing how to be strong and powerful. By sitting at the corner and raising effete men.

We have disconnected from the femininity, we are lost in the madness of today’s society and we must pause and look for ourselves. We are the creators, we can create and manifest any possibility we want and need.

We must respect ourselves so deeply that we will be respected. We attract who we are. We have repeatedly raised girls to be sexually in tune with the men. That is not even legitimate; women are sexually powerful than men. To tone our sexuality down for men gives them power to trample over us.

Only a well-grounded woman who has her sexuality, sensuality and emotions balanced and healed, will understand the need for a new dawn.

She will sit calmly and see how difficult it has been. She will realise that she always had the power of choice and change. And she will use it.

Her ancestral mothers will lead her down a path of healing and she will take it.  She will tune in to her spirit and she will be grounded by her primordial connection.

She will revive every feminine power in her lineage. She will calm the raging confusion so easily it will surprise her. Then she will radiate, she will be glad she returned to the source.

That woman will be the revolution; Africa, the world will make way for her.