Rethinking Africa is a forward looking blog dedicated to the exchange of innovative thinking on issues affecting the advancement of African peoples wherever they are. We provide rigorous and insightful analyses on the issues affecting Africans and their vision of the world.
Saturday, 23 April 2016
69th birthday of Ifi Amadiume
(Born 23 April 1947, Kaduna, Nigeria)
Poet and anthropologist, one of the theorists in the early circle of scholars that embarks on the study and transformation of the epistemology of Igbo Women’s Studies inaugurated in the 1960s-1970s by novelist Flora Nwapa and sociologist Kamene Okonjo, author of Male Daughters, Female Husbands (1987), the seminal text that examines the historic dual-gender complementarity and consequential socioeconomic dynamism of pre-(British)conquest Biafra
(Alice Coltrane Quintet, “Blue Nile” [personnel: Coltrane, harp;Joe Henderson, alto flute, Pharoah Sanders, alto flute;Ron Carter, bass;Ben Riley, drums; recorded: Coltrane home studios, Dix Hills, New York, US, 26 January 1970])
Many thanks, Prof, for reminding us of our great sister, mother, and perceptive intellectual--Ify Amadiume--who brilliantly highlighted what many cultural outsiders denigrated without understanding how it sustained the sense of decorum that the Igbo enjoyed long before the advent of the European colonialist into our shores. Prof. Amadiume belongs to the rare breed of women on the planet that continues to show direction to a misguided humanity. I number her in the same eulogistic rhymes that would always feature Catherine Obianuju Acholonu, Flora Nwapa, Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, to mention just these few. Happy birthday, to our own Ify Amadiume.
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is specialist on the state and on genocide & wars in Africa in the post-1966 epoch – beginning with the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-present day, the foundational and most gruesome genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population were murdered by Nigeria and its allies, principally Britain. Africa and the rest of the world largely stood by and watched as the perpetrators enacted this horror most ruthlessly. The world could have stopped this genocide; the world should have stopped this genocide. This genocide inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence. During the period, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocide in Rwanda (1994), Zaïre/DRCongo (variously, since the late 1990s) and Darfur – west of the Sudan – (since 2004) and in other wars in Africa. African peoples have, presently, no other choice but exit/dismantle the extant genocide-state (the bane of their existence & progress) & construct own nation-centred states that serve their interests. He is author of several books & papers on the subject and his new book is entitled The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019).
Many thanks, Prof, for reminding us of our great sister, mother, and perceptive intellectual--Ify Amadiume--who brilliantly highlighted what many cultural outsiders denigrated without understanding how it sustained the sense of decorum that the Igbo enjoyed long before the advent of the European colonialist into our shores. Prof. Amadiume belongs to the rare breed of women on the planet that continues to show direction to a misguided humanity. I number her in the same eulogistic rhymes that would always feature Catherine Obianuju Acholonu, Flora Nwapa, Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, to mention just these few. Happy birthday, to our own Ify Amadiume.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks, Osita, for this excellent comment. Very best of the week, Herbert
ReplyDelete