On the occasion of International Women’s Day, discover some Tanzanian women who have marked the history of their country.
Do you know Sofia Kawawa (1936-1998)?
Sofia Kawawa, a member of the Tanganyika African National Union (Tanu), is one of the first women to fight for the country’s independence. But her deepest fight will concern the emancipation of Tanzanian women. Throughout her life, she fought for women to hold leadership positions in their community.
She was instrumental in planting the seeds of gender equality even before the country’s independence in 1961. Her contribution to Tanzanian independence, gender equality and the emancipation of Tanzanian women has played a major role in the development of the country.
She founded the Tanzania Women’s Union (UWT) and will be its second president, between 1980 and 1990. Famous for her courage, she is, for the Tanzanians, at the origin of great advances for young and old women in her country (maternity leave, contraception, university scholarships …).
Do you know Fatma Karume?
Born in 1969, the granddaughter of the first revolutionary president of Zanzibar is above all a great lawyer! After studying law in France and then in England, she returned to Tanzania in 1994 to defend the rights of her compatriots. Very involved in labor law, in 2018 she launched a movement on Twitter advocating for freedom of expression.
She does not have her tongue in her pocket and stands up to the most powerful representatives of her country, pleading for women, homosexuals and for all the victims of a patriarchal culture that is eating away at the political system of Tanzania. She was disbarred from her country’s bar in 2020 after challenging a presidential decision. Her activism on social, political and legal issues makes her a much-loved activist icon.
Do you know Maria Sarungi-Tsehai?
A multifaceted Tanzanian activist, journalist and communication expert, she has participated in the production of films and even has her own television channel in Tanzania! She is a committed businesswoman. Very active on social networks, she makes it a point of honor to relay certain articles from the international press and texts of laws to make Tanzanians aware of various societal issues. With her hashtag #ChangeTanzania, she supports positive change in the country, especially on political issues.
She is also passionate about fashion and wants to help young women to emancipate themselves and achieve their dreams in this industry. Director of Miss Universe Tanzania, she is committed to the fight for the education of young girls in her country and against the discrimination they face.
Do you know Princess Sayyida Salme (1844-1924)?
Born when Zanzibar was an Arab slave-producing sultanate and ivory producer, she is the daughter of the sultan and one of his concubines, in reality a slave from the Caucasus. His brother Majid granted him exceptional freedom for the time. Breaking with Muslim and royal traditions, she learned to ride a horse, to read, to write, and to shoot a rifle.
At 22, she fell in love with a German merchant and, risking stoning for having defied a religious and social prohibition, she fled with him, pregnant, to Aden, in Yemen. She then becomes Emily Ruete and converts to Christianity just before their wedding. Together, they reach Hamburg where she lives peacefully – but in the absence of her native land – until the accidental death of her husband. She finds herself a widow with three children, and faces isolation and precariousness, while the German government refuses to recognize her rights to the succession of her husband and her other brother, Bargash, who became sultan on the death of Majid, deprives her of her inheritance. She will return only once to Zanzibar for a diplomatic mission, at the request of the Chancellor of the German Empire.
Rebellious, determined and avant-garde, Sayyida Salme is a model of bravery. his autobiography, Memoirs of an Arabian Princess, is a valuable testimony to the intimacy of the sultan’s palace, slavery, colonialism, and the uprooting she experienced in Europe. She rebels in particular against the dominant European discourse, which tends to consider Africa and the Arab world as primitive societies.
Do you know Bi Kidude (1910-2013), the queen of taarab ?
Bi Kidude is the stage name of Fatuma binti Baraka, singer of taarab (typical music of the East African coast, also known asastarabu). It was in her cousin’s boat, while waiting for the fish and listening to the sailors of the Arab ships anchored in Stone Town, Zanzibar, that she learned taarab. Married by force at 13, she fled to the continent, where she met Siti binti Saad, the mother of the taarab, and begins, under his protection, tours throughout East Africa. Kidude refuses to wear the veil on stage. She is a free woman, who throughout her life smokes and drinks beer, and who marries and divorces twice. Outstanding percussionist and legendary performer, she crosses the centuries with her music and whispers in our ears how precious our freedom is.
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