Women’s Agency: A reflection on the Big Three Transformative Fit Model

Efforts have been made by African women and other gender-based movements to keep alive the spirit of African Unity and to make the women’s agenda truly Pan-African. This thinking motivated the early Pan-Africanists in diaspora, such as George Padmore, Aime Cesaire, CLR James and the post-colonial Africa leaders at the fifth Pan-African Conference held in Manchester, United Kingdom, 15–21 October 1945. The ingenuity of this thinking was to promote the formation of a cadre of transformative leaders, particularly women, who would then contribute to Africa’s socio-economic and political development. However, Marcus Garvey’s vision of a platform for black empowerment lost impetus as post-colonial manipulation and personal gain compromised the dream of independence, the very basis for dignity and empowerment of the African people. In the post-independence Africa, although the core of the Beijing Declaration was to empower women and create space for their participation, the need to pitch this aspiration on solid principles of ‘thought leadership’, ‘thought liberation’ and ‘critical consciousness’, as espoused by Vusi Gumede, is unavoidable.