The Cock And The Gun: Liberia's Continuing Legacy Of Violence And Male Domination


By Stephanie C. Horton

The Perspective
Atlanta, Georgia

This is your cock, this is your gun. One is to kill, one is for fun. - US military chant

While addressing the nation a few months ago commemorating National Unification Day, President Taylor seized the opportunity to advance his vision of what he considers as remedies of Liberia's longstanding and systemic division that has eroded national stability and contributed to constant tension in the society. President Taylor pronounced that all the ethnic groups in Liberia must intermarry with one another, and he would set the example by marrying a Mandingo woman.

But, any person seriously concerned with the position and condition of African women - social, economic and psychological - and Liberia's societal development, must take a hard second look at Charles Taylor's statement on polygamy (polygyny).

This is clearly the very first time in Liberian history that an African custom has been glorified in this way from the high office of the presidency. By proposing to legitimize polygamous marriage, Mr. Taylor has not only caused a stir, but has also created the condition for potentially explosive conflict between the Christian church and traditional custodian of this age-old African custom.

But also lurking behind this call is a subterranean message of conquest. This conquest mentality characterized by brute force and violence through which Mr. Taylor emerged unscathed from a blood-thirsty war, which caused the death of more 200,000 innocent people, is now being extended directly to women.

No doubt as was with Idi Amin, there are women eager to comply and be chosen and elevated to social and economic status, despite the unethical, contradictory, false and misleading nature of it all. Without reference to the real motive, many Taylor's loyalists will claim that here at last is a president of Liberia who wants to promote African culture, and yet he is being condemned by the traditionalists.

With little or no understanding of the historical dimensions of polygamy and the pragmatic social structure of the traditional way of life, President Taylor is attempting to pervert this African institution and embrace it for purely political, sexual and egotistical ends. How the end justifies the means does not seem to matter in this ongoing conquest.

Meanwhile, Liberia has always had a violent, male-centered patriarchal culture, regardless of one's class, ethnicity or regional origin, and in this way differs little cross-culturally from the rest of Africa. The three major reasons for polygamy, as offered by African feminist Awa Thiam are (1) the exploitation of women for free labor, women as food producers (2) sexual license for men, and (3) "commercial" use of women.

Thiam sees all these as linked to the practices of female genital mutilation (sexual and reproductive control by torture), forced marriages and child brides (of financial and social benefit to the family and not necessarily the woman). Nevertheless, the higher divorce rate among illiterate, rural and low income African women provides an often overlooked understanding of traditional women's response to their plight, and refutes the current interpretation and sociological falsification of the African women as helpless, powerless victim, always compliant in their own oppression.

In her book, The Stillborn, Nigerian writer Zaynab Akali describes the rage, wisdom and rebellion of uneducated women through the words and mouth of a strong village grandmother of northern Nigerian: "Men of this village . . . listen to my words. I was married fourteen times in the eastern part of this land. I left for this part because I could find no lion among them. The village was filled with red monkeys, black monkeys, jungle pigs, wild cats, toothless dogs and lame cocks. Did I know, gods of my father, that I was coming to meet a worse pack? This village is full of lizards, snakes, worms and by the gods of my ancestors, cold slippery fish. And the women? A pack of domestic donkeys with no shame. When they are not under the whip of their wizard husbands, they are busy plotting witchcraft."

Such a woman as the one described above, however, is almost sure to be judged as an exception of what is considered true African womanhood. To the contrary, Charles Taylor is hailed as Chief, "Greatest of Warriors," because of his success in organizing violent acts associated with notions of masculinity and power, which resulted in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Liberia's

peoples. It is also the exaltation of the destructive force of violence to gain power which is linked to arming and training children to be killers behind the masquerade of the term warrior; a socialization process which equates soul destroying acts of violence with manhood, power and the African way of life.

Of his army of child soldiers, Hitler wrote, "a young generation will grow up before which the world will tremble. I want the young to be violent, domineering, undismayed, cruel . . . There must be nothing weak or gentle about them. The free splendid beast of prey must again flash from their eyes." It was also Hitler who decreed that women must go back to "Kinder, Kiche, Kirche": Children, Kitchen, Church, while he followed the way of the warrior and got about the business of exterminating the "Other," justified by a false sense of innate superiority, and upheld and supported by the German people. There are parallels here to be learned. We now know that Hitler suffered from a deeply rooted inferiority complex.

There is a direct relation with the romanticized rhetoric of Taylor as the great warrior and the socialization processes which institutionalize respect for violence and contempt for women. Pseudo-historians writing revisionist history do not tell us of the military fascism of the Liberian state from the days of the Liberian Frontier Force as an army of occupation. Nor do they tell us of the inequities, physical torture and degradation suffered by Liberian women of all classes and ethnicities.

Outrage against the horrors of rape and life threatening, lifelong debilitating consequences of female genital mutilations suffered by young girls and a legally sanctioned history of discrimination and injustice against Liberian women is muted against strident cries about Liberian prostitutes, fantasies about the sexual lives of outspoken female activists and the "feminine weaknesses" of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf for losing the election without resorting to the "strong, masculine" tactics, i.e., violent, criminal and heartless, employed by Charles Taylor.

The issue is not whether we participate in or engage in polygamous arrangements. The issue is our reaction to the unequal and skewed power relations in which women, who constitute an important social strata of the Liberian society, are disproportionately affected. A society whose political culture is characterized by violence and conquest, and lacking any tradition of democracy. A political system which derides it authority by control and disrespect for human rights - a terminal pathology that impedes genuine change in the social and economic development for each child, woman and man toward the fulfilment of our promise as a glorious land of liberty.