Women of History

LOG · WHAT IT IS AND WHAT IT DOES

Three history articles, each on a woman who broke the limits of her time: Josie Mpama, a South African activist and women's movement leader; Nana Asma'u, a 19th-century scholar and poet of the Sokoto Caliphate; and Njinga, queen of Ndongo and Matamba.

WHY

I wanted to learn more and highlight strong women in history.

WHAT I WORKED ON

I wrote one article on each of them:

1. Josie Mpama

   Josie Mpama's fight for freedom started young, after her parents' divorce left her passed between relatives. In 1928 she led campaigns against the permits black residents of Potchefstroom needed to live in their own homes, and learned there that women were often more ready than men to challenge white power directly. The article follows her to Sophiatown, to her studies in Moscow in the 1930s, to the Transvaal All Women's Union she founded in 1947 and the Federation of South African Women she helped found in 1954, and through her detention after the Sharpeville Massacre, to her death in 1979: a woman who saw herself beyond the limits of a small South African town.

2. Nana Asma’u, breaking the barriers

   Daughter of Shehu Usman dan Fodio, Nana Asma’u was schooled in four languages and in Qur'anic studies, a privilege men had kept for themselves, and lived through exile and her father's jihad as a teenager. The article looks at how she used that privilege: writing poetry for the movement, turning religious teaching into simple verse anyone could learn, and pushing back against women's illiteracy and the idea that serving her husband is a woman's only role. Through a network of women teachers, the jajis, she carried education into women's homes across the Sokoto Caliphate, breaking the stereotypical limits placed on women in Africa.

3. Queen of Blood and Power

   A portrait of Njinga, queen of Ndongo and Matamba, who was willing to bend her kingdom's traditions and her own identity to hold on to power. The article traces her from the brother who killed her son, through her famous negotiation with the Portuguese governor (refusing to sit on the floor, she had a servant kneel as her chair), to her years leading Imbangala warriors, the conquest of Matamba, the alliance with the Dutch against the Portuguese, and the peace she finally won. Brutal and strategic rather than noble, she ruled like the powerful men of her time, and in today's Angola she has paved the way for women to be at the center of power.

Those are the summaries. If you're curious to read the full articles, reach out to me directly at mojtaba@clyte.tech