Molara Ogundipe: Warrior,
Feminist, Marxist, Trudges On.
By Owei
Lakemfa.
Words
went round the University of Ife, now, Obafemi Awolowo University, that a leading literary critic,
Ms. Molara Ogundipe (later, Professor) from the University of Ibadan, was visiting. She
was at Ife to give a Marxist interpretation of Professor Wole Soyinka’s 1965
novel, “The Interpreters.”
This
was 1980/81 when Soyinka was Head
of Ife Drama Department, and, still half
a decade from his Nobel Prize. Many
found ‘The Interpreters’ a turgid and impenetrable novel. The novel’s
very first statement: “Metal on
concrete jars my drink lobes." was
a put off for some. But this leading
feminist writer was coming, not just to dissect it, but give a Marxist
interpretation.
The
presentation went well and the newest professor on campus made a response which
I did not agree with. So in my contribution, I punctured some holes in his response.
The man was furious! This was not just his first outing as a professor, but to
be contradicted by a student, was intolerable. He interjected saying:
“ Much as I do not want to kill a fly
with a canon, I will not tolerate any insult” Mr... Gordini G. Darah (now a professor) came to my defence..
He told the newly minted professor: “ A canon can kill a fly, provided it has
balls” The furious professor walked out. That was the first time I met Ogundipe. She was cerebral, quite
articulate, confident and persuasive.
Some
radical intellectuals including Ogundipe held a Women In Nigeria (WIN) Conference
at the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria from May 27-28, 1982. The
participants then established an organization by that name. The objectives
included defending the rights of women, working for their liberation and fighting for social justice.
Ogundipe and other founders of WIN were quite clear that women cannot be
liberated without the society itself including the working class and the poor,
being liberated.
Ogundipe’s
presentation, which was on the theme of the conference, encapsulated her
position on the various strands of women oppression. On race, she argued: “ The oppression of
women; economic or personal, is not solely a White-Black Race confrontation
although the oppression of Black Women
is deeply tied to the variable of race in the history of imperialism”
She
noted that one of the main challenges of
women emancipation is that: “ The
liberation of women is conceived as the desire of women to reduce men to housekeepers. Since most men despise manual work
for feudal and middle class reasons, women’s liberation is feared as an effort by women to ‘feminize’ men, that
is, degrade them”
Ogundipe argued that women in traditional
African societies were quite active in the economy and that even
where they were driven indoors, they
continue to be productive, adding:
“women work in purdah and sell their products through emissaries” Women, she
argued, tend to be subordinated in
marriage, and blamed for childlessness:
“…as men are never admitted to be
sterile or infertile” She added: “ A childless woman is considered a monstrosity…”
In this
paper she presented 37 years ago, Ogundipe said: “Abortion is not likely
to be legalized soon.” and that
women: “ can only claim equality within marriage if they are willing to share
the financial and other burdens
of marriage.”
WIN was
also open to men, so I joined and helped to establish its Lagos chapter. Ogundipe moved to Lagos
to join the GUARDIAN Editorial Board and we worked together on the WIN project.
She could not immediately secure accommodation in Lagos, and the Lagos-Ibadan
shuttle was quite burdensome. So she
moved in to stay with my family in a flat in Bakinson House, Bakinson Street,
Oregun.
In those
days, we had endless debates, especially about her hypothesis of the seven
layers of oppression she posited the African
woman was subjected to. Ogundipe’s
consciousness as a woman, a female in a male-dominated academic system,
and being a witness to the place of women within a cultural, religious,
capitalist, colonial and neo-colonial patriarchal society, firmed her
postulations on the woman.
She argued that while the woman is universally oppressed, the African
woman is the most oppressed. She however insisted that rather than a blanket
assumption, women needed to be studied
within their specific environment.
Ogundipe condensed her ideas on women in an hypothesis she called, the Social
Transformation in Africa Including Women (STIWA) Explaining
STIWA, she said: “…what we want in
Africa is social transformation. It is not about warring with men, the reversal
of role, or doing to men whatever women think that men have been doing for
centuries, but it is trying to build a harmonious society. The transformation
of African society is the responsibility of both men and women and it is also
in their interest. The new word describes what similarly minded women and
myself would like to see in Africa. The word “feminism” itself, seems to be a
kind of red rag to the bull of African men. Some say the word by its very
nature is hegemonic or implicitly so. Others find the focus on women in
themselves somehow threatening
.....”
As a thinker, she was conscious that
coining such an acronym would be useful for mass mobilization. It gave the
sense of an ideology; Stiwanism, while a person
who identifies with the concept could be
called a Stiwanist.
Professor
Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie as she later became known, produced a lot of intellectual works
including books like ‘Sew
the Old Days and Other Poems’
1985, ‘Re-Creating Ourselves: African Women & Critical Transformations’
(ed.) and ‘Moving Beyond
Boundaries.’
We lost contact when she went abroad. After I returned
to the country in 2015 following a three-year absence, I was unaware she was also
back. Then on March 12, 2016, I got a request from her on Messenger for my cell number and e-mail address; vital information tools that were absent the
last time we were in contact. We were
back in contact discussing various issues. Then on November 13, 2018, she sent me
a message for advise on the media she should write for as she intended resuming
column writing.
Earlier this year, I promised that when next I am in Lagos or Ibadan, I will visit her in the new
university in Ogun State she was teaching. That visit will never happen as on June 18,
2019, the warrior-academic, Marxist-Feminist- Narratologist, departed the earthly
battle field for other fields.
Let me end this tribute with a poem she wrote four
decades ago: “How long shall we speak to them Of the goldness of mother, of
difference without home How long shall we say another world lives Not spinned
on the axis of maleness But founded and
wholed, charting through Its many runnels its justice distributive”
OWEI LAKEMFA
