By Zainub Bhayet
We must dare to invent the future – Thomas Sankara.
“There shouldn’t be only one definition of development. Our cities and societies don’t all ohave to look one way to be considered developed.” –Afropolitan Central
Along most of the West African coast, the palm trees that studded the shoreline quickly gave way to a dense tropical rain forest. The only place along the coast where open grasslands replaced the rain forest was the ‘Gap of Berlin’ in which the Dahomey Kingdom took shape. It was during the 18th and 19th centuries, until the colonization of the French.
The fon people of Africa established the Dahomey Kingdom. The Dahomey Amazons were women worriers, a military group that once protected the kingdom of Dahomey, of whom resided in Benin. They were called TheN’nonmiton.
Due to slave trade at that time and the wars which became imminent, the Dahomey Kingdom started to lose more and more or their men. This was the beginning of the recruitment of women to fight. These women turned out to be the most fierce and impressive women worriers in history.
The king, Dahomey kingdom and other foreign kingdoms remained under a FEMALE militant group. The kingdom lasted for 300 years before it was abolished by the French who annexed the Dahomey’s Amazon territory into a colonial empire.
The Dahomey Worrier Women were respected and feared by the Dahomey men as well as their enemies. They were superior to their male counterparts; they were given power in public life and mainly in its full time professional army. For instance, they were known to never retreat from battle while male worriers were punished for doing so more than once. It was considered immoral to fire an arrow at women. Women were also known to take risky collective action against what they perceived as political oppression. In 1929, before the colonial conquest, remarkably the women’s political and economic power equaled the power of men which was part of the post-colonial era. Under the Dahomey kingdom, men feared women because women had the power to take action against them. Women had their very own women’s council.
There are five classifications of regiments within the group, named after the weapon or purpose of the women. 1) Huntress: They were the gunners. 2) Riflewomen: They accounted for the largest part of the worriers. 3) Reapers: These women were feared by their enemies. 4) Archers: Most impressive steady-handed young women. 5) Gunners: The sound of their guns were used as an intimidation strategy.
The Dahomey women fiercely would chant: Lionesses are more fearsome than lions, because she has her cubs to defend, And we the Amazons, have you to defend. The king, our king and our God, ki-ni. And other times, the women worriers would show their feminine traits by dressing in elegant silk, velvet, and chintz, their breasts daubed with pale green pomade and would dance for hours.
It was when the European colonial governments interceded that European beliefs imposed African practices. These embedded Eurocentric ideas seem to continue to linger on and haunt us during our post-colonial era. French officials had a common practice for women and for the place of women in public life, and that was the opposite of the Dahomean’ practices. They marginalized women through depicting the perfect women confining them to be mothers and housewives and not to hold high political office, nether to influence the affairs of government.
In the final years of Dahomey’s Kingdom, the Dahomey women suspected a colonial government would inflict economic hardships on them. They banded together to attack chiefs appointed by the colonialist. After long gruesome fights that they put up against with the colonizer, they were abolished.
The memory and legacy of these women need to be lived on in Africa, as they depicted a modern world without the intervention of European ideologies. They were known for their exceptional work, their impressive use of weapons and strength. Post-colonial Africa needs to carry the legacy of these devoted, powerful cutthroat women worriers through abandoning the colonial indoctrination and measurement against western ideologies of what a women should be like. There is a need in nations and groups which have been victims of imperialism to achieve an identity uncontaminated by Universalist or Eurocentric concepts or images.
We can remember these genocides for black and indigenous people through the lens of post-colonialism. Contemporary depictions of blackness should not be affected by history nor should history be used as a weapon against the West. Rather Afrofuturism and people of African descent should be looking at themselves in the future and what their society and their culture will look like years from now.
Technology combined with tradition should be the way of pulling real African culture into media spaces, expressed through a balanced gender. Budgets and production surrounding Africa should be made under the influence of ancient Africa
The Dahomey was dated back to the 11th century being the oldest city in West Africa and the most advanced. African societies were developed alongside nature as opposed to destroying it. The people of Benin had an advanced form of math that Europeans haven’t even comprehended.
They had street lamps powered by palm oil; it was the first city to have electricity. It was a wealthy and complex society. Also it was very safe unlike Europe at that time. There was much more moral maturity as a society. They had complex art made of ivory. Africa is very primitive. Arica has a rich history! The people of Africa do not need fiction to empower them but just the notion of a black secret technology which allows Afrofuturism to reach a point of speculative acceleration.
Dahomey–renamed Benin in 1975–showing its location in West Africa
References
Edgerton RB, Worrior women, The amazons of dahomey and the nature of war, westview press, 2000, pg 1221-157
Francaise, A,Women Worriers: A Dahomey Story, 19 December 2017 http://learnfrenchchicago.com/2017/12/women-warriors-dahomey-story/
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