Female Monarchs and Merchant Queens in Africa. Nwando Achebe

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      Figure I.1. The African worldview. Diagram by Nwando Achebe.

      Africans believe that the human and nonhuman worlds are too big to contemplate. They believe that there are spirits all around them. There are too many for one to even know; therefore, they have mediums to help explain the universe. These mediums—diviners, priests, priestesses, and spirit mediums—are special human beings. They are born into the human world but are endowed with spiritual abilities.

      At the zenith of the spiritual world is God. The African God is neither male nor female (see chapter 1). God is a supernatural force that balances both male and female principles. There are as many African names for God as there are peoples—over three thousand. For instance, the Acholi of Uganda call God Jok; the Asante and Fante of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, Nyame; the Azande of Sudan, Mbori or Mboli; and the Lovedu of South Africa, Mwari.

      God is too great to behold. Thus, She/He is assisted by a pantheon of more accessible lesser gods and goddesses. These lesser gods and goddesses are autonomous yet interdependent. They are personifications of natural phenomena. Their jurisdictions are localized. Africans have gods and goddess of land, lightning, thunder, streams, rivers, and so on. Some of these deities are neither totally male nor totally female but embody the duality of male and female forces that African cosmology so commonly elevates. For instance, the rainbow snake ayida-weddo god(dess) of the Fon people of Benin is believed to possess this balance of male (the red part of the rainbow) and female (the blue part of the rainbow) principles.

      Oracles are forces that explain the past and predict the future. Like gods and goddesses, oracles can be either male or female. The word “oracle” derives from the Latin orare (to speak). Oracles, through their priests and priestesses, “speak” their predictions and explanations.

      As alluded to earlier, priests, priestesses, diviners, and spirit mediums are human beings who have been endowed with spiritual abilities to decipher, interpret, and communicate the worlds of the spirits. In general, priests and priestesses are attached to a given deity and serve to articulate the pronouncements of that deity. African cosmology typically calls for a balancing of male and female principles in the relationships between mediums and spiritual forces. Thus, when there is a god, that god is most likely served by a priestess; and when there is a goddess, the goddess is most likely served by a priest. For instance, among the Igbo of Nigeria the goddess, ani, is served by the priest, ezeani; and the Egyptian goddess of fertility, nature, and animals, serket, is served by a priest. It is this same balance that is also witnessed in African constructions of the Great God as both male and female.

      Diviners, unlike priests and priestesses, are not attached to particular deities. They are special human beings who work for society at large, casting beads or cowrie shells (Igbo and Yoruba of Nigeria) or copper lances (Burundi), practicing invocation (Nyole, Uganda), using baskets (BaKongo of Kongo), counting stars (Amhara of Ethiopia), evoking trances (Baule of Côte d’Ivoire), using animals (Zande, Kapsiki, and Higi of Cameroon; Baule), and consulting astrological and numerological texts (Swahili) to form, understand, and explain the present and to predict events in the future. They are inspired by a god or goddess to foresee, to gain insight into a question.

      Spirit mediums are human beings who mediate communication between the spirits of the dead and human beings. They do this through actual possession, in a trance or spirit channeling. The spirit of the deceased speaks through these mediums, relaying important information and messages of support. Taken collectively, these special individuals that inhabit the in-between worlds are the human voices of the unseen world, a world that they explain to human beings.

      The physical visible world is the world of human beings: men, women, and children. This world, like the spiritual world, is hierarchical, and depending on the kind of society—centralized or egalitarian—is led either by kings and queens, or male and female elders, in a dual-sex or complementary fashion. Women in Africa have authority and influence because of their own achievements, not those of their husbands. Thus, a queen or queen mother is powerful in her own right as a ruler, and not because she is married to a king or is his birth mother. In fact, queen mothers in the African system are not necessarily mothers of a sitting king.

      Next in rank to these leaders of their societies are the titled men and women. Like the queens, queen mothers, or female elders, titled women are recognized for their own achievements and not those of their husbands. All African societies have male and female warriors, whose job it is to protect their societies from their enemies. The Amazons of Dahomey, an all-female regiment of warriors, who operated in the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, were particularly powerful and led their kingdom from victory to victory.

      In Africa, all able-bodied individuals regardless of gender are expected to contribute to society by working outside their homes. African women have always worked, and can be seen, even today, carrying their babies on their backs while going back and forth between the farm and marketplace.

      Indigenous “slavery” can be both empowering and disempowering for the enslaved. “Slavery” in Africa is not a permanent condition. Enslaved persons work for their masters, for a given period of time, after which they are able to manumit themselves and either stay in the community of their masters or find their way back to their natal communities. African “slaves” who are attached to the spiritual world either as wives, daughters, or sons of deities find their station in society elevated because of their relationship to the said deity. In many ways, this relationship serves to empower them in relation to mere mortals.

      At the very bottom of the physical world’s hierarchy are useless people. These are able-bodied men and women who refuse to work. They are deemed useless because they are not contributing to society in meaningful ways.

       Chapter Outline

      Female Monarchs and Merchant Queens in Africa highlights the similarities and differences in (fe)male leadership experiences in various geographical spaces, times, and settings in Africa. From centralized to small-scale egalitarian societies, patrilineal to matrilineal systems, North Africa to Africa south of the Sahara, this book provides an overview of a representative group of remarkable African (wo)men and/or female spiritual principles who occupied, and continue to occupy, positions of power, authority, and influence.

      This introduction serves to place the authority, influence, and power of African women and the female principle in proper context. What does it mean to be influential or powerful? Why is it important to frame our conversations about female power, authority, and influence around realities in both the spiritual and the physical worlds? This chapter presents these and other questions, while setting up the trajectory of the rest of the book.

      Chapter 1, “Spiritual Monarchs: God, Rain Queens, Spirit Mediums, and Goddesses,” locates the sources of female spiritual and ritual power within various African communities. I also consider the ritual leadership of female gendered spiritual forces such as goddesses, oracles, and female medicines and their human helpers (e.g., priestesses, diviners, spirit mediums, and prophetesses). Case studies of Lovedu rain queens; Nyamwezi and Shona spirit mediums, including Nehanda; Igbo and Yoruba priestesses of gods, male priestesses of goddesses; and South African sangomas are highlighted.

      Chapter 2, “Queens, Queen Mothers, Princesses, and Daughters,” documents the lives and times of a representative sample of African princesses, queens, and queen mothers from different parts of Africa at different times, including queens Nefertiti of Egypt and Amina of Hausaland; queen mothers Labotsibeni Mdluli СКАЧАТЬ