Benedicta Mukalla Neng, feminist avant la lettre

‘(On women’s day) This year I had so many messages, (…) congratulations for doing such a great job.(…)

I was in bed, so they were missing me in the whole process..’. ‘We started breaking the tradition.’

This is a fragment of an interview we did with Benedicta, born in 1932, in March 2014. We knew that this could be our last meeting with her. She was very sick and on her way out. She did not seem to regret her situation, her life was fulfilled. A life as a counter voice. She is one of these rare African women who have been fighting for women’s rights from early independence in the 1960s, when Feminism was still to be discovered in her country, Cameroon. In this interview she looked back on her life as a fighter for women’s rights. She passed away a month after we interviewed her.

‘In Africa in the past a woman was not even supposed to sit among men to say anything or to discuss… but through my effort, things have balanced… The men were even organizing to shoot me down… This woman is a problem in the society.’

Women in Grassfield societies

Benedicta is from the Grassfields, the North West Province of Cameroon. Most societies here are organized in strict, patriarchal hierarchies, kingdoms, with the semi-divine king at the top performing quasi-religious functions. Most of these societies follow patrilineal styles in which inheritance is through male family lines, and women are subject to male rule, though they are exercising power at the backstage. For instance through relations with the Queen mother, who is the most powerful woman in this system. The king could marry more than 100 wives. Yet some of the kingdoms are based on matrilineal societies, like Benedicta’s kingdom: Kom. The concept suggests women’s rule, but in fact it turns out differently. Instead of liberating women, these societies are very efficient in controlling them. In a matrilineal society, real or fictive kinship is claimed through maternal ties, meant to keep the siblings together. Women then are distributed between husbands and brothers, which is in fact a double control of women’s labour, sexuality and reproductive powers. Until today these kinship relations continue to exert power in the Grassfields.

Fleeing to be free

Indeed, a system that is rather unfriendly to women. The empowerment of women in this kind of situation is rare, until the women themselves emancipate. Benedicta had to fight these cultural and ‘political’ patterns of women’s unfreedom. She found inspiration by some strong ladies: her predecessors who sought refuge in the new forms of religious organization that entered the Grassfields at the beginning of the 19th century during colonial rule.

Already in those days, women decided to get rid of this patriarchal jug. For instance in Baaba I, a small chiefdom, women fled the palace in the 1940s when there was a struggle about the implantation of the church. The women did not want to follow the king’s choice of church, and decided to step out. By doing so they created a new church (the Presbyterian church) that until today wears the liberation mood of these women. A picture of the women decorates a wall of the church in the village Baaba I. The grave of their leader Susana is behind the church, where people regularly visit, memorizing the deeds of their grand-mother. Another example comes from Benedicta’s Kom. Between the 1920s and 1960s many women from the palace at its traditional headquarters, Laikom, fled to Njinikom where a Roman Catholic Church was established in the early 1920s. These women had liberated themselves from the high-handedness of patriarchal controls. For them the mission and/or church was a liberator.

How she became a feminist

These examples paved the way for Benedicta’s development and ideas. Other ingredients for her becoming a feminist were her intelligence and her experiences overseas. She also went to nursery school. ‘To further my education, I migrated to England’, she told us. She left her country at the beginning of the 1960s, independent Cameroon. And at independence, people like Benedicta, the intelligentia of the country, had high hopes for a better future. They were building the nation, integrating modern ideas about freedom for all. These hopes vanished with time, which led to Benedicta’s children to move out of the country to find jobs and a better life in Germany and the USA. The last years of her life, Benedicta lived alone in a big house in her village of origin, seeming not very optimistic about life. Keeping as a treasure a big photo album in which the marks of her life were the death of President Kennedy, the reception of the honorary degree from the Governor ‘that showed the women I did important work’, and the pictures of her travels to Europe, first as a nurse and later to visit her son in Germany. She lost contact with her other son in the States.

Watch the documentary ‘Connecting Dreams. Life histories, crossing borders & new communication technologies in Africa’ (Sjoerd Sijsma & Mirjam de Bruijn)

Despite the sometimes impossible fight, Benedicta kept her promise of being an activist for women liberation until the end of her life. ‘We have come out to be liberated, not to oppress the men… We were still housewives, noble housewives and we still do our noble work, in each speech I included that…’

Gently revolutionary

Benedicta speeched in her function as president of the Njinikom area women development forum (NAWODEF) that was approved on 19 August 2000. This new development in the women’s movement in Cameroon was part of worldwide attention for women’s rights after the Beijing conference in 1995, that declared the Decade for women and women’s day celebrations. Excerpts from her speeches reveal the gentle and very balanced way in which Benedicta brought her fight to the fore, without being harsh to the patriarchal society she was part of.

8 March 2001, the second International Day of the Woman was celebrated in Njinikom. From Benedicta’s speech: ‘ ….With joy, on this occasion of the 3rd millennium celebration I stand here on behalf of the women of Njinikom Valley (…) Thank God Almighty (…). With time, the woman has not only been a bed partner but also a responsible mother sharing in the family burden, especially in the education of the child. All these activities fall under the name of Development which we must intensify without discrimination. ’ Her last speech on 8 March 2003 was thus: ‘….You are all warmly welcome to enjoy with us during this [coming] August celebration. The Theme for this year 2003 runs thus: Gender: Partnership between Men and Women and the Millennium Development Goals. N.B. Our Head of State President Paul Biya was part of this decision taken during the United Nations Congress held in New York from the 6th to 8th September 2000. Isn’t it wonderful? This simply means that we should work hand in hand with our husbands, children and the whole community. Allow us to be part of you in everything we might undertake with the love and peace our society greatly requires. Not even the greatest man on earth can boast of his success without the support of the Woman. In fact, the Woman is all and all, no matter the nature. When we started off in 1998, the men thought we wanted to take their position, now they have discovered for themselves that we need only this Gender approach to materialise. It would be wonderful if we strive to achieve these millennium goals with ease and understanding. NAWODEF; STAND UP, work hard, think positively and be ambassadors of your area both here and elsewhere. I will like to thank you all for coming. Have a marvellous time with us.

Long live NAWODEF,
Long live the Ministry of Womens’ Affairs,
Long live President Paul Biya
Long live Cameroon’

Benedicta closed her last interview with us with these words: ‘It has not come to an end, as there are still so many women ignorant.’ We will forever remember her!