Deepest Palest Africa

I wanted to write about African queens: Africa has a wealth of powerful, uncompromising women through its history. But my research was hampered by the fact that almost all the potential resources I found had a very narrow-minded agenda.

I was born in Africa. My family has lived in Africa for 200 years. I grew up in Africa, and Africa will always have a hold on me – wherever I end up. There’s something about the light, the myriad people, languages, idioms, colours, cultures, scents and sounds that will never leave me. My blood will pulse to those beats all my life.

But the people who run these websites (often themselves American) are determined to call me a foreigner, an interloper, a tourist. For them, African is black.

For me, that is a racist concept. Especially when you consider that in northern Africa, the demographic is strongly Arabic. Africa has been subject to many waves of migration both out and in, in all directions. Cleopatra wasn’t a black African – she was racially Macedonian; Ptolemy was one of Alexander the Great’s generals.

I won’t pretend the injustices committed by new arrivals against indigenous peoples never happened or weren’t serious. But there isn’t a people in history that hasn’t, at some point, been enslaved, conquered, abused. It’s just that the African slave-trade was the most recent and publicised for the Western world. And at a time when the world we know now was being formed – including some of its injustices, and the different economic development rates in Africa, Europe, IndoChina and America.

Those who point to the lack of black commercial power in South Africa as evidence of an interim government “sell-out to the white European agenda” (for European, read Western Powers) forget that for 40 years, a deeply unjust system denied the majority of South Africans education and training. The only way for the country to emerge with its economy intact was to leave its infrastructure and industry intact and attract foreign businesses back in. Without a functioning capitalist economy, South Africa would have been another Zimbabwe – yet another economic (and subsequently humanitarian) disaster on Africa’s already long list of them.

(Oh, and capitalism isn’t a white concept. It’s something that works, probably because it’s in line with human nature. Some of these sites confuse race politics with political ideologies).

In order for South Africa’s legacy of racial imbalance to be properly redressed, the country needs to take the long view, and gradually move toward a more demographically reflective business powerbase. But to force it too soon would create an economic collapse because companies would be forced to hire into powerful positions people who have not been trained (because they weren’t allowed to be). So the company either holds thumbs and hopes for the best or “double hires” – getting in other people who have been trained as well as the “window-dressing” they’ve been told they legally require to “correct the imbalances of Apartheid”. Both cost the company far more than hiring one competent person. To a large extent, “affirmative action policies” required “double hiring”.

Unless South Africa wants anarchy, war and chaos, it will take the long view. So close to Zimbabwe, most South Africans can see the downside to policies of sudden rebalancing: land-grabs, expulsions and general slaughter of productive geese while the people starve and the politicians live like oligarchs.

Girls on Film

I went to see the movie ‘Hanna’ (warning: this blog contains spoilers) and I’ve decided I don’t get it.

Hanna is a young teenage girl trained by her father (ex-CIA) to be a very efficient spy and killer. He does this because another CIA agent wants to kill them both, and will attempt this as soon as she finds out where Hanna and her father are. It’s a good action movie – chase sequences, fight scenes, a fairly minimum amount of actual gore – and I did enjoy it, as a film. Despicable villains, sympathetic supporting characters and heroes. Given all of these ingredients, the whole Galinka sub-plot becomes a bit redundant.

Yes, it gives a reason why the CIA, particularly the villainess, want Hanna dead. But as the villainess is operating outside normal protocal, the reason could have a been a lot more personal and human. All the Galinka sub-plot really does is reinforce the meme that no female could be that good a fighter or killer without being genetically mutant in some way. Dark Angel worked the same meme. Why?

I’m sure the writers weren’t deliberately thinking that way, and will doubtless point to impeccable gender-equality credentials if confronted, but the fact remains that when the hero is a killer boy, he doesn’t need to be a GM experiment. When it’s a girl, there seems to be a need to explain away her skills. This supports the patriarchal status quo in which we live, which is probably why we do it, but why support and perpetuate a lie?

While there is no hard evidence for it (due to lack of reliable records from the period) most Wing Chun practitioners accept the story of it’s founding by the nun Ng Mui and Miss Yim Wing Chun. Most Shaolin kung fu sources accept Ng Mui as one of the Legendary Five Founders. And, as I’ve tried to illustrate on this blog, there are other legendary female fighters with dazzling tactics and incredible skills – so why does the 21^st Century supposedly equal West feel the need to negate the idea that girls can be that good a warrior naturally?

Just wondering...

Liar Liar

I saw a study recently about just how inherent to our species deception is (conducted by the Psychology Dept of Univeristy of Portsmouth). Even babies lie, apparently. It's a reasonable conclusion - the animal kingdom lies as well. They say it's a sign of intelligence, which is a little bit worrying, when you think about it. But all in all, it seems Sun Tzu was stating the obvious when he said "all warfare is based on deception." According to the conclusions of the study, you can pretty much say everything is based on deception, or at least the ability to deceive.

Survival can be seen as warfare, for any species. We've pretty much removed ourselves - in the developed world at least - from the knife-edge of survival margins. We've used this inborn ability to lie to create fiction and explain the vast mystery of the universe in stories we can understand, and talked ourselves a load of pretty prose and philosophy about peace and generosity, about the value of honour and integrity (rarity value, but we deceive ourselves and gloss over that), but when the chips are down, and the battle is joined, all of that goes out of the window and we revert to natural, combative, deceptive type.
We laugh when we say that All's Fair in Love and War, but we're only half joking. We use it as an excuse for the most underhand and ruthless behaviour, because we want something so much we don't, by comparison, much care about anyone or anything else. We pay the price without hesitation, regardless of how many other people's pain that price involves.
In love, this generates rom-coms and business for therapists and agony aunts. In war, the picture isn't so pretty. It may be overly optimistic, but it would be nice to think that if we recognise the inherent deceiver in all of us, we might then learn how to mitigate her.

Wild women do - ride V-twins

In the West, the idea that women can drive cars is so common it's not an idea so much as a given. But when it comes to two wheels, it's a  different story.
A friend (female) and I went on a 3000 mile round trip across Europe on our motorbikes. We're used to being looked at, talked about. Two women on big, powerful motorcycles is an unusual sight, especially travelling as a pair, not part of a larger group (ie, travelling with men).
As a biker, I know a lot of women who ride their own machines, from scooters and mopeds to big V-twin cruisers and powerful Ducatis, Blackbirds, Ninjas. Within the biker community, there aren't many raised eyebrows at the fact the keys in my hand are to my own Harley, or that it's not just a show of participation in my boyfriend's hobby (hell, women like that ride pillion).
Half of all new motorcycle sales are to women. The stats on used bikes are probably the same but are harder to compute. Most of the big bike manufacturers, like Honda,  are "watching  the market" to see how strong this trend is, while a few other companies, like Harley, are targetting it. Harley's strategy involves redesigned models for the shorter, lighter rider and clothing designed for the riders seat rather than the pillion, with advertising campaigns to match.
But after days of getting the same stares in six countries, in all weather (especially driving rain) i have to wonder just how far we've really come and how far we still have to go, if even in the largely liberal, equal, democratic EU, a woman on her own two wheels is still  looked at askance; because she's something wild, something free.
And it's disheartening that we still find something somehow strange and almost inappropriate in a  woman's personal freedom and power to control her own ride, and choose her own road.

Wild Women Do (whatever they want, really)

I ride a motorcycle. More and more women do. So why is it still so outlandish of me? Not to mention unfeminine. Some reactions are so extreme it’s all I can do to stay on the bike for laughing. Others have lost various motorcycling outlets my custom, because I do not appreciate spotty teenage moped-riders assuming that I must either ride a scooter or be a pillion because I’m a girl. Actually, you zit-ridden little ignoramus, I have been riding a lot longer than you, I am better at it than you and there is no way in hell you would even begin to be able to handle my bike. Clear? Good.

I recently had an older man view the bike I was selling and attempt to patronise me because I’m a girl. Also to bullsh*t me into dropping the price to less than the bike was worth by listing a host of non-existent mechanical problems on the assumption that, as a girl, I’d not know any better than to believe him. Newsflash, idiot: I have a higher IQ than you do, and that’s not hard.

I prefer the other reactions, from the women who cut me up, then realise I’m not a boy-racer and just about stall in sheer shock to the men who are so busy looking at the bike and me at lights and trying to work out if I really am a woman on that big heavy noisy Amercian bike that they forget to go when the lights change, or else veer distractedly into the car on the other side. While, of course, I sail smoothly on.

Motorcycles are cheaper and more economical to run than cars. They get through city traffic more easily too, and they’re a damn sight easier to park. This isn’t why I ride, if it was I probably would be on a scooter, but when you look at it that way, the idea that women don’t or shouldn’t ride becomes somewhat ridiculous.

I ride because it’s exhilirating. I’m planning a major biking trip soon and when I talk to people about it they’re incredulous, because I’m going with a friend – 2 girls, 2 bikes, a couple of thousand miles of asphalt calling. Where, they want to know, is the support vehicle, the protective company of men? Sorry, what? Where should they be? It’s not an off-road inter-continental trip that would require spare parts and DIY-mechanics. It’s just a holiday.

WAGS to witches - women in power 2

The recent referendumm got me thinking about government. Women in the UK lost the vote in 1832, and only some got it back in 1918. Universal suffrage didn’t come in until 1928. That’s frighteningly recent, but perhaps not as firghtening as the misogyny of Britain under Queen Victoria. Still, before they could elect MPs, women could stand for election to Parliament, in one of the less logical moments of British government.

Nancy Astor is perhaps the most famous of these pioneering lady MPs, because of her wit (some of her one-liners can still be devasting, if used well). She first campaigned for her husband’s Commons seat in 1919 after he inherited a title and therefore had to move to the House of Lords. In the beginning of her career, she was a formidable force, and taken seriosuly by her peers (possibly partly because of her husband and social connections, but nonetheless). Unfortunately, as time went on, some of her views went out of fashion, and her heavy involvement in Appeasement branded her a Nazi-sympathiser. It probably had more to with the horror of the Great War, during which she had worked in a hospital for Canadian soldiers, but despite her subsequent patriotism, she never escaped the taint.

She was the first woman to take up her seat in Westminster, but not the first to be elected. Contance Markiewicz was elected in 1918, but didn’t take it up because of her Irish Republican politics. She went on to become a Minister in the Irish government in 1919.

“Battling Bessie” Braddock may have been elected after women’s enfranchisement, but at least she had no fear of taking on the old boys at their own game – like Astor before her, she had a reputation for using wit to get her way with the likes of Churchill.

They paved the way for Thatcher to gain the PM position a few decades later. One thing all these women have in common, despite wildly different politics, is that they are strong. Iron-willed, determined, bordering on ruthless. But when you get right down to it, so are the men that history remembers equally.

WAGS to witches - women in power

There is a perception of women in power as being hard, ruthless and heartless. Yes, a lot of them are. They had to be to get the power. And oddly enough, a lot of the names we all know come from East – not the officially liberal and equal West (apart from Thatcher, and lately Merckel). Benazir Bhutto, Western-educated and twice Prime Minister of Pakistan, springs to mind. She may or may not have run a corrupt government and it may or may not have been a sham democracy – depending on your political views, but there is no denying that she proved it possible for a woman to rise to the highest political office in a Muslim state. Between her terms in power, she was Leader of the Opposition – also not a post for the shrinking violet the West generally assumes Muslim women to be.

In Burma, we have Aung San Suu Kyi  - possibly the most famous opposition figure in modern politics. Her many years of intermittent house arrest have ensured the kind of global attention to Burma the ruling military junta was probably trying to avoid. She has been influenced by Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence and Buddhism, and went into politics to promote a democratic model of government. When she was first placed under house arrest, she was offered the alternative of exile. She turned it down.

She has no qualms about making bold statements about the nature of power, fear, corruption (as in the famous “Freedom From Fear” speech) and governmental myopia.

As an Opposition figure, she has not held the reins of power, so it’s difficult to know what kind of leader she would be. But an idea can be formed by the fact that after so many years of struggle, she’s still not discouraged. Finally free (for now), she is still working for democracy and human rights in Burma.

Indira Gandhi remains the longest serving female prime minister, thanks to her 4 terms totalling 15 years in power, during which India went from relying on food aid to exporting food.

But these ladies are just the latest in a long tradition of local queens. After all, when the Roman Empire collapsed, it was Queen Zenobia seized control of the Eastern half.

The Prophet Muhammed’s wife Aisha had enough political clout to lead an army into battle againt someone she thought was trying to usurp Muhammed’s place in Islam. Razia  ruled in 13^th Century India, Amina in 16^th century Zaria (Nigeria). In the 17^th century Ottoman empire there was a group of such powerful women they were known as the “sultanate of women.”

All of which just goes to show that if you want it enough, there’s nothing stopping you.