By MARWA SHARAFELDIN 30 November 2012


Part of a series of poems by African feminist writers for 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence.

You talk to me about your austerity measures
The need to copyright my past, present and future
To relieve your financial crisis pressures
I have to tighten my belt and work hard
For somehow, I have to save the banking system
So it can save me and my daily, hard work pleasures

I am told that the financial architecture is designed
So that abundance overflows
from rich to poor,
strong to powerless,
man to woman,
But all I can see in your architecture ... is bad plumbing
Clogged pipes everywhere
Congested with your investments
And my assortment of hard-earned debts

But you better watch it, for you really can’t beat me
I’m used to tying your free trade with my free labour
Your market economy with my care economics
Your fiscal policy with the welfare of my tenderness...
But not for you, for those I love...
And in my love lies my revolution
So don’t get too comfortable
Because I am a revolutionary woman

Did you know of the kind of world that I desire?
My fickle warrior heart, and my eyes that shine like fire?
My dancing step and my strong working hands?
That knead our freedom together without tire
My deep wild laughter
At the colourful dreams to which I aspire?
Don’t let my thunderous silence fool you
For I shall never honour your economic ceasefire
Don’t get too comfortable
I’m a revolutionary woman

I am all too aware that you need me
Can you survive without my loving free labour?
Without the royalty of my generous nature?
Can your empires last one second if I decide to with-hold
The abundance of my one dollar?
What if all of us decide to do so?
What happens to your profits
If my womb decides to hibernate
No more babies for this world
And no more consumers for this market
What if I ... decide again to Occupy?
A new market, a new system, a new justice
Never forget
Your power comes from my acquiescence
To my legion of beloved friends, sisters and mothers
‘The street is ours!’...once said an old ancient mama sage
Its true you know, all it takes nowadays, is one facebook event page
Let us then see you cower ... under the surge of this woman power
So don’t get too comfortable
I’m a revolutionary woman

Untamed minds and boundless dreams
Ablaze with all possibilities
Equality justice and solidarity
Connecting our joint bloodstreams
I pluck the stars and scatter them around us
Its an old protection ritual for the adventurous
Be prepared...
For I know the smell of revolution when it’s a brewin’
Don’t get too comfortable...
‘Cause in front of me lies, a terrifying bunch, of revolutionary women.


This poem was originally published in Development 55, (September 2012).

By MARWA SHARAFELDIN 30 November 2012 Part of a series of poems by African feminist writers for 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violen...

By Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Maya Angelou

By Maya Angelou Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size But when I start ...

Chief Ladipo Solanke was born in the Yoruba town of Abeokuta, Nigeria around 1886. He was the second child and only son of Adeyola Ejiwunmi and her husband, who had adopted the name of Paley from the Scottish missionary who had raised him. He was educated at St Andrew’s Training Institution, Oyo, Nigeria, and at Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in 1922. Later that year he travelled to England, completed his legal studies at University College, London (1923–8), was temporarily employed as a teacher of Yoruba at London University, and subsequently qualified as a barrister.


Solanke’s experiences of poverty and racism inspired him to organize other Nigerian students in Britain, and with the assistance of Amy Ashwood Garvey he formed the Nigerian Progress Union in London in 1924. In 1925 Solanke and Dr Bankole-Bright founded the West African Students’ Union (WASU) in London. Under Solanke’s leadership WASU became the main social, cultural, and political focus for west Africans in Britain for the next twenty-five years. It served as a training ground for many future political leaders, and played an important role agitating for an end to colonial rule in Britain’s west African colonies.

Solanke became one of the main propagandists of WASU, and in 1927 published United West Africa at the Bar of the Family of Nations, a demand for the recognition of equal political rights for Africans. Throughout his life he wrote many letters and articles demanding self-government for the west African colonies, especially Nigeria, and essays on traditional Yoruba institutions and culture. He was the first person to make a radio broadcast in Yoruba in June 1924, and, styling himself Omo Lisabi, made some of the first Yoruba records for Zonophone in 1926. In 1945 in Nigeria he was awarded the Yoruba chieftancy title atobatele of Ijeun.

Solanke was at the forefront of WASU’s attempts to establish a hostel for west African students in London. Between 1929 and 1932 he embarked on a fund-raising tour of west Africa, and became the warden of the WASU hostel that was opened in Camden Town in 1933. He returned to Britain with his future wife, whom he married in 1932, Opeolu, née Obisanya (b. 1910), the first matron of the hostel and mother of his three children. As a result of this tour, WASU branches were formed throughout the region, and Solanke and WASU were able to establish significant political contacts with anti-colonial forces in west Africa, and provide the link between them and the anti-colonial movement in Britain. Solanke also completed a further fund-raising tour of west Africa during 1944–8, prior to the opening of WASU’s third London hostel at Chelsea Embankment in 1949.

Solanke’s activities on behalf of WASU periodically brought him into conflict with the Colonial Office and sometimes with other black leaders in Britain. However, as WASU secretary-general, he was also able to establish the union as a significant anti-colonial and anti-racist organization in Britain. During the Second World War Solanke established closer relations between WASU and several leading members of the Labour Party’s Fabian Colonial Bureau, including Reginald Sorensen, who subsequently became godfather to one of his children. As a result of these links a west African parliamentary committee was established, with Labour MPs as members, that enabled WASU to act as a more effective parliamentary pressure group.

During the 1950s, due to political differences within WASU, Solanke was gradually marginalized from the central role he had once enjoyed. He continued to run a student hostel in London and formed his own breakaway organization, WASU Un-incorporated, which he led until his death from lung cancer at the National Temperance Hospital, St Pancras, London, on 2 September 1958. His funeral and burial took place on 6 September at Great Northern London cemetery, Southgate.


Biography Retrieved at http://wasuproject.org.uk/2012/01/29/key-figures-ladipo-solanke/

Chief Ladipo Solanke was born in the Yoruba town of Abeokuta, Nigeria around 1886. He was the second child and only son of Adeyola Ejiwunm...

On March 8, 2013, the Steve Biko Centre, an initiative of the Steve Biko Foundation, will facilitate legacy classes exploring the role played by Bantu Stephen Biko & Black Consciousness in the South African liberation struggle.

Facilitator: Mr. Jongi Hoza

Visiting Schools:

Imingcangathelo (Alice )

Thubalethu (Fort Beaufort)

A.M.S. Sityana (KWT)

St Thomas (KWT)

The visiting schools will also take a tour of the Biko Heritage Trail and explore the life and lessons from the South African freedom fighter, Bantu Stephen Biko.

For bookings you may contact Mr. Jongi Hoza on 043 605 6700 or jongi@sbf.org.za during office hours.

On March 8, 2013, the Steve Biko Centre, an initiative of the Steve Biko Foundation, will facilitate legacy classes exploring the role playe...

Poem for South African Women

By: June Jordan
Presented at The United Nations, August 9, 1978.

Our own shadows disappear as the feet of thousands
by the tens of thousands pound the fallow land
into new dust that
rising like a marvelous pollen will be
fertile
even as the first woman whispering
imagination to the trees around her made
for righteous fruit
from such deliberate defense of life
as no other still
will claim inferior to any other safety
in the world

The whispers too they
intimate to the inmost ear of every spirit
now aroused they
carousing in ferocious affirmation
of all peaceable and loving amplitude
sound a certainly unbounded heat
from a baptismal smoke where yes
there will be fire

And the babies cease alarm as mothers
raising arms
and heart high as the stars so far unseen
nevertheless hurl into the universe
a moving force
irreversible as light years
traveling to the open
eye

And who will join this standing up
and the ones who stood without sweet company
will sing and sing
back into the mountains and
if necessary
even under the sea

we are the ones we have been waiting for

from Passion (1980)

Poem for South African Women By: June Jordan Presented at The United Nations, August 9, 1978. Our own shadows disappear as the feet of ...