Woman and Non-Violent Action in Africa: Two stories of success!

Liberia, 2003: Ordinary women end extraordinary violence.

Women Protest In Liberia

The West-African nation of Liberia has a history of fighting for people rights and freedoms. It was founded by freed American slaves and the country’s coat of arms declares, “The love of liberty brought me here.”

Despite this fantastic start for the nation recent decades have been far less hopeful with corrupt government and drug-fueled militias run by warlords raping and killing where ever they pleased without repercussions. This comes after years of imperialist struggle to grab diamonds and other raw materials which has left Liberia 176^th out 179 countries on the United Nation Human Development Index. Hundreds of thousands fled. Others were trapped by the unending violence, unable to flee. As one Liberian woman later remembered, “My children had been hungry and afraid for their entire lives.”

In the first few months of 2003, a group of women decided to try to end the conflict once and for all. Dressed all in white, hundreds of them sat by the roadside, on the route taken daily by President Charles Taylor, rebel leader-turned-president. The president’s motorcade swept past, slowing down only briefly. But the women returned, day after day. In pouring rain and blazing sunshine alike, they danced and prayed. The protests gained momentum; Religious leaders spoke out in support of the women’s demands. Radio stations began reporting sympathetically on the roadside protests. A protest leader, declared in front of the cameras, “We are tired of our children being raped. We are taking this stand because we believe tomorrow our children will ask us: ‘Mama, what was your role during the crisis?’”

Pressed on all sides, Taylor agreed to talk. He met with the women’s leaders in the presidential palace. Peace talks began but it soon became clear that the talks were going nowhere. Even as the warlords basked in the comfort of their luxury hotel, they worked the phones, directing a renewed orgy of violence at home in the Liberian capital, Monrovia. The women decided that enough was enough. Determined to focus on the human cost of the war, they barricaded delegates into the room where the talks were taking place. One of the negotiators, Nigerian General Abdulsalami Abubakar, remembered later: “They said that nobody will come out till that peace agreement was signed.” One warlord tried unsuccessfully to kick his way out of the room. Others tried (and failed) to escape through the windows.

The men with guns agreed to talk seriously at last. A peace deal was struck and Charles Taylor went into exile. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf became Liberia’s first peacefully elected president, Africa’s first woman leader. It was ordinary Liberians who reclaimed the country and demanded peace. Even though this movement was never aimed at creating a socialist society, it is a great example of what can be achieved using non-violent action. Non-Violent organizations are needed to work as leaders in these movements, link all struggles around the to build a mass movement which will lead to equality and democracy.

Kenya, 2009: No sex without peace: Women unite in a nationwide bedroom strike.

The Prime Minister's wife even participated in the sex strike.

This is a more recent example of Non-violent action. I am sure that Aristophanes never intended his Lysistrata story to be taken literally. His play was a satire, a way of pressing for an end to the death and destruction of the long-running Peloponnesian War in Greece in the 5th century BCE. The story played with an obviously unthinkable idea: that women, by withholding their consent to sex, could do something to end a brutal conflict. Two thousand years later, Lysistrata has achieved a real-life momentum of its own.

In Kenya in 2009, many feared a renewal of the post-election violence that had brought the country to the brink of catastrophe a year earlier. The relationship between the two main political rivals, Prime Minister Raile Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki, remained dangerously tense. Women’s groups, fearing another descent into violence, urged men to settle their differences and, as they put it, “begin to serve the nation they represent.” To emphasize the point, they announced a sex strike. They were perhaps inspired by a similar action taken in Sudan in 2002, when thousands of women in the South took up the practice of “sexual abandoning” to compel men to end the twenty-year civil war in which an estimated two million people had died.

Rukia Subow, chair of one of the groups in Kenya, argued, “We have seen that sex is the answer. It does not know tribe, it does not have a party, and it happens in the lowest households.” The strike gained widespread support, even the prime minister’s wife, Ida Odinga, declared that she supported it “body and soul.” Women’s groups welcomed the success of the action as Kenyans began talking about issues that are affecting them. And it got the politicians talking.” The women even persuaded some sex workers to join the strike. It ended with a joint prayer session. The prime minister and the president finally agreed to talk.
As with the example of Liberia this movement was never intended to create socialism. It does however serve as a great example to show how unity and creative strike action are effective ways to change society in the interests of the vast majority.

J.Llewellyn
Thanks to Steve Crawshaw and John Jackson and their book , Small Acts of Resistance: How Courage, Tenacity, and Ingenuity Can Change the World © 2010 by Steve Crawshaw and John Jackson, Union Square Press, a division of Sterling Publishing Co,. Inc.