Mama Africa wins Nobel Peace Prize

There she is: Mama Africa! And oh, what a splendid sight to behold. We are elated; indeed we are in rapture over the award of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize to none other than our very own Wangari Maathai.

Since the award was announced on the morning of Friday, Oct. 8, the talking drums have been in full beat, the palm wine is flowing, emails are being dispatched and phones have not stopped ringing, as African women around the world celebrate the recognition of Mama Wangari for her environmental activism: working to secure the living environment across Africa.

She founded the Green Belt movement in 1977. Since then the movement has planted tens of millions of trees, she has opposed the imposition of genetically modified crops on the African environment by the all-powerful Monsanto Corp., and she constantly organizes women to empower themselves and challenge the powers that be.

Mama Wangari plants a tree to celebrate becoming the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Forgive us for taking the award so personally, but it is rare, if ever in the global public space, that we see the words African woman coupled with such positive messages. Such accolades are rarer still.

There is no better person than Wangari Maathai to represent Africans and indeed humanity in these troubled times. Our Nobel Laureate is a scientist, a public intellectual, an activist, a mother and an African woman. We salute her, we celebrate her and we are delighted that Mama Wangari finally has the global recognition that we have always known she deserves.

We hang on to her boubou folds (as in coat tails), even as we bask in the light of her achievements.

But what does this award mean to us as Africans, as African women and as African feminists? Despite the fact that humanity was born in Africa with the collaboration of an original African mother, African women arguably are one of the most maligned groups of women in the world. We continue to labor under debilitating stereotypes — weapons of mass deception _ that refuse our humanity and ignore our accomplishments.

Wangari Maathai herself draws our attention to the problem in an earlier writing: “African women in general need to know that it’s OK for them to be the way they are - to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence. The worst maligned problem for both men and women in Africa today actually is unspinning the cocoon of Western stereotypes, within which people are confined by the internationalization of Western culture’s patronizing and exploitative conceptions of Africans.”

Ironically, one of the most fertile sources for the inaccurate representation of African women is western feminism, at least in some of its guises. In their quest to globalize their creed, some itinerant feminists whenever they come across cases of African “men behaving badly,” immediately blame “African culture.” In this stance, they are in a strange bed-fellowship with some African men who insist on committing crimes against women and humanity in the name of “culture.”

In reality, the culture in question is not some long-standing tradition; rather, what is at issue are the male-dominant cultures of impunity that have taken root in post-colonial African societies, a problem compounded by the development of virulent misogynistic varieties of Christian and Islamic fundamentalisms that thrive on the impoverishment of masses of people on the continent.

These cultures of impunity and oppression must be continuously resisted and challenged. Wangari Maathai’s Green Belt movement is a blueprint for what is to be done, and how to do it.

Maathai’s feminism is nurturing, holistic, inclusive and indivisible. It is the everyday feminism of African women that the Green Belt movement showcases so well. It is a feminism that insists on motherhood as central to women’s activism. The focus on motherhood is not a reification of biology or biological motherhood but recognition that mothers in raising children create and sustain the future.

As Maathai puts it, “Women, I think, have a capacity to care for others, to see beyond personal gain. Many women, I believe, are at their happiest and best when they are serving. I myself am at my happiest and my best when I am serving.”

There is nothing wrong with women serving, for service exemplifies the noble ideal of giving oneself to the community to better the lot of all. However, the problem that has plagued Africans in the last two centuries at least is that resources are not in the hands of those who want to serve but in the clutches of a rapacious male-dominant elite of kleptocrats. This situation must be transformed, and Maathai’s work at every level, and on all fronts, seeks to empower women to take charge and meet the challenge.

As we rejoice with Mama Wangari, her deeds and her words dare African women to look in the mirror and see the God in ourselves. As mothers, women already do God’s work.

For two reasons, the wine of choice at my celebration of Wangari Maathai’s triumph is palm wine: it is the product of that life-affirming tree, the palm, a tree that stands dignified, tall and unbowed like the African women we celebrate. Let us drink to sustainable resistance and development, the values for which the Nobel Prize honors our own Mama Wangari.

Dr. Oyeronke Oyewumi is associate professor of sociology and chair of Women’s Studies, State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Known as the “Tree Woman” for her Green Belt Movement that planted 30 million trees, Wangari Maathai celebrated the news that she had won the Nobel Peace Prize by planting a Nandi flame tree in her home town of Nyeri, in the shadow of Mount Kenya.

In choosing her, the Nobel committee stretched the traditional bounds of the prize to include environmental advocacy. Dr. Maathai was not surprised.

“People are fighting over water, over food and over other natural resources,” she explained in a TV interview. “When our resources become scarce, we fight over them. In managing our resources and in sustainable development, we plant the seeds of peace.”

A university professor criticized by the U.S. in the past for claiming that AIDS is a biological weapon developed in the West to kill Black people, Dr. Maathai was severely persecuted, beaten and jailed by the previous Kenyan administration for her activism.

Kenya’s current president, Mwai Kibaki, however, is delighted at news of the prize. Dr. Maathai was elected to Kenya’s parliament in 2002, and last year President Kibaki appointed her deputy minister for Environment and Natural Resources.

While she is the first African woman ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize since it was created in 1901, she is the 12th woman and the sixth African winner.

Motherhood by definition is visionary.

Yes, she is the one. But I was more interested in her views on feminism. In particular:

"Ironically, one of the most fertile sources for the inaccurate representation of African women is western feminism, at least in some of its guises.

Motherhood by definition is visionary.

This seems to me a swipe at those who want to internationalize abortion. So I applaud her for standing up against that.

And the article provides the answer (it pays to actually read):

"A university professor criticized by the U.S. in the past for claiming that AIDS is a biological weapon developed in the West to kill Black people, Dr. Maathai was severely persecuted, beaten and jailed by the previous Kenyan administration for her activism."

She founded the Green Belt movement in 1977. Since then the movement has planted tens of millions of trees,

Georgia-Pacific plants that many in a month.

I belong to the Right-wing Kabal that has perpetrated many things on minorities...

1. We introduced drugs into the ghettos of inter-cities so that we could fund the RNC.
2. We invented Aids and introduced it into African Society to destroy it.
3. We have entered into an alliance with the Gray Aliens whose spaceship orbits secretly above our south pole, to beam African Americans up to the ship, unfortunately, Louis Farrakhan has eluded capture.
4. There are more, but remain highly classified, including our attacks to destroy the Hillary Queenship.

"[S]he has opposed the imposition of genetically modified crops on the African environment by the all-powerful Monsanto Corp."

Just another Watermelon (green on the outside, red on the inside)who wants to keep her people poor, starving, disease-ridden, and ignorant.

4. There are more, but remain highly classified, including our attacks to destroy the Hillary Queenship.

How we used remote viewing to control Mugabe and use him as a tool to convert Rhodesia into Hell is unclassified.

Wangari Maathai herself draws our attention to the problem in an earlier writing: “....The worst maligned problem for both men and women in Africa today actually is unspinning the cocoon of Western stereotypes, within which people are confined by the internationalization of Western culture’s patronizing and exploitative conceptions of Africans.”

I figured maybe the worst problem might be staving off the cancer of Islam that's binding women in the shackles of Arab culture and Marxism, but I see that I am mistaken. Apparently it is Western sterotyping that has led to millions of deaths, the destruction of entire agriculture infrastructures by roving gangs and tribes, and the rapid decay of heretofore self-sufficient cities and nations. Witness the power of the Western mind! Just by thinking bad thoughts all this has happened!

I think she acknowledges that here:

In reality, the culture in question is not some long-standing tradition; rather, what is at issue are the male-dominant cultures of impunity that have taken root in post-colonial African societies, a problem compounded by the development of virulent misogynistic varieties of Christian and Islamic fundamentalisms that thrive on the impoverishment of masses of people on the continent.

.... though she does equate Christian and Muslim fundementalism (which I don't agree with), she at least acknowledges Muslim fundementalism as a problem.

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