La Révolte des Femmes: Economic Upheaval and the Gender of Political Authority in Lomé, Togo, 1931-33

Abstract:

In 1932 the governor of French Togoland announced an increase in taxes on Lomé market women because of the economic downturn caused by the Depression. Both the indigenous city council and a clandestine resistance movement opposed this fiscal plan, warning of social unrest. The strain triggered a protest by market women that spread beyond the colonial capital. This article offers a new explanation of the explosive tension by arguing that an organized male political campaign conjoined with a socioeconomic protest led by market women. It explores women's resistance as a performance of vodou ritual as a vehicle of shame and protest. Ultimately the violent, culturally marked protests marked the gendered perimeters of political authority for both Ewe women and men and further defined Ewe market women's conception of an Ewe self and the emergence of conflicting and contested notions of "Eweness" as a prelude to the independence struggle.

Résumé: En 1932 le gouverneur du Togo français annonça une hausse des impôts sur les femmes du marché de Lomé à la suite de la récession économique provoquée par la Dépression. Ce plan fiscal fut contesté à la fois par le conseil indigène de la ville et par un mouvement de résistance clandestin, qui menacèrent les autorités de conflits sociaux. Cette tension entraîna chez les femmes du marché une manifestation qui s'étendit au delà de la capitale coloniale. Cet article propose une nouvelle explication à cette tension explosive en soutenant qu'une campagne politique organisée et composée d'hommes s'unit à la manifestation socio-économique menée par les femmes du marché. Cet article examine la résistance des femmes en tant que performance de rituel vaudou comme véhicule de honte et de protestation. En fin de compte, ces manifestations violentes et marquées culturellement définirent les périmètres sexués de l'autorité politique, à la fois pour les femmes et pour les hommes Ewe, et contribuèrent à définir plus précisément la conception par les femmes du marché Ewe d'une identité Ewe, ainsi que l'émergence de notions conflictuelles et contestées d'« Ew-esse » en tant que prélude à la lutte pour l'indépendance.

Editors' noie: This essay won the prize for the best paper by a graduate student presented at the 2001 annual meeting of the African Studies Association.

They followed me. One of the men had red wings on his feet and a girl had fish-gills 'round her neck. I could hear their nasal whisperings. They stayed close to me to find out if I really could sec them. And when I refused to see them, when I concentrated on the piles of red peppers wrinkled by the sun, they crowded me and blocked my way. I went: right through them as if they weren't there. I stared hard at the crabs clawing the edges of flower-patterned basins. After a while they left me alone. That was the first time I realised it wasn't just humans who came to the marketplaces of the world. Spirits and other beings come there too. They buy and sell, browse and investigate. They wander amongst the fruits of the earth and sea.

- Ben Okri, The Famished Road

Introduction

In 1932 the governor of French Togoland, Robert de Guise, announced an increase in taxes and the levying of new fees for Lomé market women in order to "rescue" the League of Nations mandated territory from economic malaise caused by the worldwide Depression. Although both the Conseil des Notables (the city council) and a clandestine resistance movement called Duawo (an Ewe word meaning "the people") presented petitions and voiced widespread opposition to this broad fiscal plan, warning of social unrest, de Guise continued undeterred. Instead of heeding their demands, he arrested two leaders of Duawo. This triggered a protest by market women from Lomé and its surrounding villages that quickly spread beyond the colonial capital. This pirotest was joined by others and rapidly moved beyond a market-women core to a much broader urban base and then deeper into the Ewe rural heartland.1

My purpose in this article is severalfold. On an empirical level I offer a new explanation of the explosive tension by arguing that not one but two simultaneous revolts came to fruition as a consequence of the arrests made on January 24, 1933. An organized male political campaign conjoined with a socioeconomic protest led by market women. I further depart from the economic focus of the existing historiography by exploring the women's movement as a performance of vodou ritual. This focus on vodou as a vehicle of shame and protest underscores my primary conceptual contribution, that the violent, culturally marked protests served to mark the gendered perimeters of political authority for both Ewe women and men in Lomé and its hinterland. This in turn alludes to the relationship between Ewe market women's conception of an Ewe self and the emergence of conflicting and contested notions of "Eweness" as a prelude to the independence struggle.