I am an African woman who fights for the freedom of African people, with a special focus on ending the specific oppression of African women. And I was taught to do so by an African man.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela taught me.
That may surprise some people, especially those who still cling to the idea that African women can only be liberated by distancing ourselves from African men. But my political development did not come from feminist theory or bourgeois academia or from nationalism that tends to treat women as an afterthought.
It came from African Internationalism, from the Chairman and from the African People’s Socialist Party–a Party he built, a Party in which African women become leaders, theorists, organizers and the forward motion of the revolution.
Joe Waller and the “girls”
This is what some forces of the AAPRP (All-African People’s Revolutionary Party) didn’t understand when they tried to dismiss the early Party by calling it “Joe Waller and the girls,” because the Chairman led a central committee of African women. They thought that meant weak. They thought women at the center made the movement soft.
But the Chairman was not leading a social club. He was leading a revolutionary organization rooted in the African working class and it was African women who took up that line and built with him.
“[Chairman Omali] is the one who held the line, not just that women should be in the movement, but that women must be leaders in the struggle to overturn colonial domination.”
We, the African women in the Party and ANWO, are them girls. Not in the way that the insult intended, but in the way the Chairman proved possible.
What they meant to mock has become a statement of political clarity, showing that the Party created the conditions for African women to lead in theory and in practice. Not as tokens. Not as exceptions. Not as representatives of gender. But as revolutionaries whose political development is shaped by a man who treats African women as indispensable forces of African liberation.
Chairman Omali didn’t “allow” women to lead; he forged us
When the Chairman built the Party, he didn’t recruit women for balance or optics. He struggled with us, trained us, sharpened us and expected from us the same discipline and commitment as every African man in the revolution. That is what made the Party different then, and it’s what makes it different now.
It’s been 53 years since those first women stood alongside him. What stands in their place are the African women leaders of the Party today and ANWO itself. We are the living proof that the Chairman didn’t just develop individual women. He developed a political line that ensures African women will always be organizers, theorists and leaders of the African Revolution.
We are products of a political worldview that did not “allow” African women to join, it requires African women to lead.
ANWO exists because the Chairman built the basis for it
My own leadership is a direct result of what I was taught by Chairman Omali Yeshitela.
He is the one who made it clear that African women required our own mass organization not because we needed a safe space, but because African women have a special contribution to make to the revolution.
Because the colonial mode of production requires our oppression economically and politically. It also requires our resistance to overturn it.
ANWO is a strategy of the African People’s Socialist Party. A revolutionary organization born from the science of African Internationalism and carried forward by African women shaped through struggle.
If I am able to lead African women in struggle, it is because I was led. If I am able to challenge the colonial state as it attacks African mothers, it is because I was challenged. If I am able to build an organization that does not collapse under pressure, it is because I was built in struggle.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela is the one who provided the theory that exposed the colonial state’s attack on African women as part of the same system that exploits African labor, steals African resources and dominates African land.
He is the one who held the line, not just that women should be in the movement, but that women must be leaders in the struggle to overturn colonial domination.
We’re not exceptional; we are proof of the line
That is the significance of “We Them Girls.”
We are the women who are shaped through the Chairman’s leadership, who take African Internationalism into every front of struggle—from economic organizing, to dual power, to the fight against the colonial police, to the defense of African families. We are women in the revolution because revolution demands it.
And we are proud to uphold the leadership of Chairman Omali Yeshitela, an African man who developed the political worldview that made our leadership possible, through fierce consistent and relentless struggle.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela built a movement where African women are not the background. We are the front line.
And so yes—We Them Girls.
We are the women who are leading African women’s resistance grounded in the political theory of an African man whose leadership has never wavered, never apologized and never backed down.
We Them Girls—because Chairman Omali Yeshitela made it possible.
And we are still building.
Build the African National Women’s Organization!
Until the Revolution is won!
