Women and Governance in Bakundu Pre-Colonial and Colonial Society: An Implication for Women Leadership in Post-Colonial Bakundu Society in Cameroon

Governance in pre-colonial African societies was not left in the hands of the male patriarchy alone. Women actively took social, administrative, and economic roles in which they also performed very well. The hypothetical contention of this paper is that Bakundu women have been relegated to take roles that are insignificant and are completely removed from the governance roles in their traditional societies in recent times. Due to this relegation by men, women emancipation entered into the academic discourse to re-awaken the African women on the need to engage and partake in governance. This aroused these researchers to compare the roles the Bakundu woman took during the pre-colonial period as opposed to the roles they were given during the colonial and post-colonial period. Some studies show that women in Africa were engaged in governance during the pre-colonial and colonial eras. Other studies have shown that Bakundu women navigated the governance structures during the pre-colonial period in those Bakundu societies over the centuries were endowed with powerful women leaders in their various villages. This paper argues that the nyanga-mboka, the maoni, and the mokua nwana titles were valuable roles in governance structures in Bakundu societies in the pre-colonial and part of the colonial periods. These roles which have been ignored in the present dispensation have greatly affected women’s quest for political and economic empowerment today.