The foundation of all violence that affects African women and the whole African nation is colonial capitalism.
African Internationalism has helped us to point out that capitalism was born from slavery and colonialism. Europeans attacked and enslaved Africa, taking the continent’s resources with force both material and human to build their economies which were in a state of feudalism.
Africans were robbed the right to produce and re-create life for themselves; instead they produced life for their colonizers. Capitalism divided Africans through their artificially created colonial entities known as countries or nations today; it turned brothers into enemies.
All these colonies were created for political and economic reasons and never for the better living or the civilization of Africans. They are basins to continue the drainage of African resources.
Colonialism and capitalism were justified by the ideology of racism (belief that a particular race of people ‘whites’ is better than ‘Africans’).
Women and children are affected by all colonial violence.
Women and children suffer from all types of colonial violence, gender based violence being only one of them, a violence that emerges as a result of the system itself as the system promotes patriarchy.
Our brothers need to be won into the politic that rejects the assumptions of men’s inherent dominance and entitlement in this society that says men are the head of a household and that a woman should submit to his orders.
Woman do not only suffer at the hands of her fellow men but primarily at the hands of these colonial entities that are created to maintain and protect a system that robs life from the African community.
This should not be seen as an excuse to the atrocities that African women suffer at the hands of African men. It is rather an appeal to the women of Africa not to pardon our class and national oppressors in the name of gender activism within a system of oppression and exploitation.
We have to make a distinction between primary and secondary contradictions. Inlcuding antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions.
The contradictions between African men and women are only antagonistic as far as we keep seeking for the distraction of each other in defense of colonialism.
Poverty being one of the violence that the government inflicts on women, lacking resources to create life for her family and carrying on to pro-create it.
Poverty leading women to prostitution to make ends meet and ending up with chronical diseases with no proper medical services from the government.
Women losing their children due to the wide spread of Ebola and living in combat zones fighting for their lives.
If anyone is going to speak about violence against women and children and does not mention how the colonial capitalist system caused all these horrible situations for African women then they should keep quiet because they are not fighting for women.
The only solution to fighting violence against women and children is to fight the battle of overturning the system that causes the violence.
We do not need radically sounding activists full of energy talking about women’s rights but being ignorant to the system that produces the fruits of violence.
The safety of women and children will emerge as a result of the overthrown capitalist economy through the organized African revolution led by the African working class.
It is in the interest of African women to join the African revolution to destroy parasitic capitalism and solve African problems.
The colonial entities have failed Africans as a whole, not that they were ever created to make life better for the African nation.
It is time we do away with our petty bourgeois aspirations because it will demand of us the ability to continue the oppression and killing of our nation for our perceived happiness.
The belief in a vision of a liberated Africa is a critical requirement. We need to commit to the African Revolution led by the poor peasantry and the African working class, the highest demonstration of commitment is action by organizing to build the African National Women’s Organization (ANWO) wherever we are located.
We need to take in African Internationalism as our philosophy for carrying out a successful Revolution that will bring back power into the hands of the African nation, resulting in a safe world for African women and children.
Connie Hutchison is the Agitation and Propaganda coordinator and ANWO correspondent for the African People’s Socialist Party – Occupied Azania
