WOMEN’s LIBERATION AND THE AFRICAN FREEDOM STRUGGLE

Thomas Sankara who was the leader of the 1983-1987 revolution in Burkina Faso explained that there is no true social revolution without the liberation and emancipation of women. Moreover, he placed more emphasis on the women’s role in the democratic and popular revolution. The purpose of this is to show that the creation of the future in Africa should involve African women liberation. It asserts that the weakest drive for African future is gender transformation, as a result, Africa finds itself in the unchanging global power structure which is marked by class, gender, race and region. His observation that the revolution and women’s liberation go together is interesting in light of contemporary consequences which are oppression, exploitation and inequality.

“The condition of women is therefore at the heart of the question of humanity itself, here, there and everywhere”.His words display a profound understanding of and active solidarity with, women’s struggle, of which he points out as a struggle belonging to all humanity. He recommended an effective strategy in order to work out a line of action that will lead to women’s total emancipation which is to try and understand how the system functions. However, he does not give critical insights on how the system functions exactly and what objectives can be reached after understanding the system exactly and how it affects total women’s liberation instead he places more emphasis on how men oppression to women hinder women liberation and force women to see the system as appropriate and just.

More importantly, he criticised the oppressive gendered nature of the capitalist system, where women make an ideal labour force because they need to support their families renders controllable and obedient to exploitative labour practice. This critic gives a good explanation of the causation of women’s oppression. He recommended good remedies to reduce gender oppression between women and men by encouraging women to get educated and to be placed in high positions where they are involved in important decision making. However, I wish Sankara could have suggested measures that can be implemented to educate men of gender quality that way with genuine support from men to empower women, women liberation would have been a success.

He characterised the system as a [cycle of violence] and emphasised that inequality can be done away with only by establishing a new society, where women and men enjoy equal rights. However, he does point out how will the new society be established with women and men already used to their way of living and carry out beliefs and cultures which does not allow women and men enjoy equal rights. On the other hand, he suggested an effective establishment of the revolution concerning women’s emancipation by the establishment of the Women’s Union of Burkina(UFB). This was the solid mechanism in for the mobilization of all politically active women to realise the common objectives and interests and allowed women to empower each other and strive to achieve their objectives by freeing themselves from the chains of oppression both by men and the capitalist state. Sankara gave an adequate understanding, that capitalism is dependent upon the unequal deployment of and distribution of power particularly state power. For this reason, it will be difficult to achieve equality at the bottom level (which is between women, men and children) while at the top level (core states and elites) there is great inequality taking place because while men are subjugated to the capitalist system, women subjugation to men comes automatically as a result of depending on them

Furthermore, he made a good comparison by comparing subjugation of bourgeoisie women and proletariat women both women are oppressed and unhappy in most cases due to societal norms that regard men as superior to women the only differences between the two women is the different classes they belong to. As a result, Thomas Sankara proved how human relationships in a state are the course of inequality, oppression and exploitation. In conclusion, this book revealed many causations of Africa and women oppression and exploitation it went far to suggest useful ways of how Africa can safe and better itself by including women’s role in their future plans.