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Kip Padgett
3/12/15
AFH4253: 0517
Strategic Engagement in Colonial Africa
In Colonial Africa, it often seems as though African women were utterly controlled by
colonists. However, African women often used strategic engagement in order to achieve
their objectives. In Women in African Colonial Histories, Heidi Gengenbach argues that
strategic engagement is a concept that is illustrated by womens interaction with European
colonialism in Colonial African societies. Heidi Gengenbach uses the concept of strategic
engagement in order to show that African womens actions in Colonial Africa challenge the
limiting dichotomies of resistance/collaboration, victim/victimizer, or colonizer/colonized.
She also uses the term strategic engagement in order to challenge the notion of a standardized
encounter with colonization that every African woman underwent. It is not accurate to
assume that the treatment of women in one region was equal to that of women in another
area, just as it is incorrect to accept that European colonization had an identical effect on
every African female. This paper will examine the chapters What My Heart Wanted:
Gendered Stories of Early Colonial Encounters in Southern Mozambique by Heidi
Gengenbach and The Woman in Question: Marriage and Identity in the Colonial Courts of
Northern Ghana, 1907-1954 by Sean Hawkins seen in the edited volume Women in African
Colonial Histories along with the articles Prostitution, Identity, and Class Consciousness in
Nairobi During World War II by Luise White and Rounding up Spinsters: Gender Chaos and

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Unmarried Women in Colonial Asante by Jean Allman. Ultimately this essay will show the
usefulness of strategic engagement in expanding the dichotomies placed on African women
and Colonization into something where women are empowered.
When looking back at the history of Colonial Mozambique, it is easy to label African
women as resisters, victims, and even collaborators. However, if the history of African
women in the Magude District is delved deeper into, the fact that African women were much
more than these dichotomies during the Colonial period will be discovered. Swiss
missionaries during the late 1800s and early 1900s began to interact with Magude women. In
order to woo Europeans and gain converts, these missionaries depended on the African
women. While some women collaborated with the missionaries in this venture, others
confronted the Swiss with open mockery, hardened resistance to schooling, and
stubborn opposition to efforts to eliminate drinking, belief in witchcraft, and so-called
pagan rituals (Allman et al, p. 23). Some women even set themselves up as the
evangelists enemies. Though all of these factors make, it seems as if there were always
dichotomies in Colonial Africa, if historians investigate further, they will discover strategic
engagement. Magude Women were practical in how they dealt with the Swiss missionaries
and their teachings. Women could achieve a high social status through becoming an excellent
healer. As a result of this African women most often sought from the Swiss tended to be
precisely what indigenous female doctors also offered: rituals to call rain, medicines to ward
off supernatural dangers, assistance in childbirth, cures for bodily illness, family and
marriage counselling and perhaps most importantly-- an affective community defined by its
concern with social health, but broadly concerned defined as physical, spiritual and moral
well-being (Allman et al, p. 27). Summarily, some of the Magude District women

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appropriated Christian lessons and medical practices of the missionaries for their purposes,
while simultaneously ignoring the rest, showing a use of strategic engagement with the Swiss
missionaries.
Though often depicted as victims of both the colonial and sometimes even of the
indigenous ideologies of Africa, women were frequently rebelling against these malecontrolled systems through strategic engagement. This rebellion can be seen by looking at
Colonial Asante during the 1920s and 1930s. From 1929 to 1933, chiefs in Colonial Asante
ordered the arrest of all women who were over the age of 15 and not married (Allman, p.
195-196). Once rounded up, these spinsters were put into rooms until they mentioned a
mans name. After this occurred, the man would pay 5s and marry the woman, or he would
have to pay a fine. These roundups occurred because marriage was an essential component
of colonialism. Along with this, these roundups were a weapon used by Asantes chiefs in
the struggle to reassert control over womans productive and reproductive labor (Allman, p.
214). However, these round-ups were a failure from the start. This failure because the
British did not support them, but even more importantly due to the spinsters using strategic
engagement in order to outwit the colonial system. Asantes women did this through paying
men ahead of time. This process of both providing payment and selecting a male counterpart
prior to marriage meant that marriage often closely resembled a business relationship.
Asantes women would even name their brothers and have them pay the fee in order to free
them. All of this shows that through strategic engagement with the roundups of unmarried
women, the spinsters of Asante were not merely victims. These women were smart and
cunning, pulling the concept of a uniform African woman experience into question.

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Similar to the spinsters seen in Colonial Asante, when looking at women in Colonial
Ghana courts, it would be easy to label them as victims of colonization. Colonialism gave
the idea of men being able to claim women as property a life in Ghana courts primarily
between 1907 and 1957. Though they were often treated as chattels in the judicial system,
outside of it African women were independent and had more control over choosing
husbands than husbands had over wives (Allman et al., pg. 134).

Colonial courts

attempted to shape the identity of LoDagga women, through portraying them as having too
much freedom and being morally loose. Women always appeared in court as witnesses or
bystanders without rights to speak, regardless of whether the trial influenced their lives or
not. However, despite having the appearance of powerless property in court, these women
often had the hidden ability in the colonial period to define their own identities in the world
beyond the courts (Allman et al, pg. 117). This ability stemmed from the capacity these
women had to take advantage of colonizers. Lodagga womens advantage was being able to
choose their husbands. Woman began to use their independence to leave their husbands,
convert to Christianity and go to mission stations. Christianity is one of the key parts of
Colonialism. If women left a pagan marriage for a Christian one, then they could receive
annulment of forced marriages from colonists through the formation of another successful
union. Ultimately this ability to engage strategically with the Ghana courts in the choice of
whom they would marry provided the female victims of colonization with a source of power.
Through looking at 1920s Malaya prostitutes, it is clear that instead of being resisters,
collaborators or victims, they instead were strategic engagers. In 1922, British colonial
officials set up a community, called Pumwani. In this community, the Malaya form of
prostitution arose. This form of prostitution put sexual intercourse on an equal footing with

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other domestic tasks (White, p. 260). The system of Nairobi prostitutes perfectly served
the needs of the colonial administration (White, p. 256). However these African women
were not victims, collaborators or resisters of colonialization. On the contrary, they were
thriving and using it to their advantage. Moralistic bylaws were passed which set curfews for
non-residents and residents, banned prostitution, and isolated Africans in an ever-increasing
privacy of their rooms (White, p. 259). These bylaws surprisingly proved to be
advantageous for Malaya prostitutes. This advantage existed because Malaya prostitutes used
strategic engagement with colonialism by transforming the exterior of their occupations into
something similar to marriage. A gradual buildup of wealth was formed by Pumwani
prostitutes owing to the collaboration of the two dominant features of the malaya form: the
sale of domestic labor and the notion that malaya prostitution was conducted "in secret, so
that no one, not even neighbors, could tell who was a prostitute and who was not (White, p.
260). Nairobi prostitutes ultimately ended up earning substantially more than male wage
laborers in the colonial era (White, p. 272.) Their strategic engagement with the colonial
system allowed the Malaya prostitutes to thrive, despite the fact that prostitution was illegal
during this era. This interaction with the colonial system and the ensuing results shows that
there was not a homogeneous experience for African women during the colonial period.
After examination, it becomes clear that when looking at the history of colonial Africa,
the concept of strategic engagement is useful in showing that there was more than only one
homogeneous experience for African women. Dominant groups almost always write history.
The Western society has been the dominating culture throughout the colonial period and
after, making the writing of the history of Colonial Africa their jobs. It is this dominance that
allowed them to place African women into the boxes they have always existed and to label

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them as victims, collaborators or resisters of colonization. Colonial African Women were
much more than these labels, however. This diversity is evident when looking at the use of
strategic engagement by African women when dealing with colonial ideals, institutions, and
personnel. Through strategic engagement, African woman used Colonialism to their
advantage, often outwitting the system.