“African societies still vigorously enforce values and laws long ditched by those who brought them here. Mwase quips at what she sees as a great irony now in Zimbabwe, which has been independent and free of the oppression of white minority rule for 43 years and yet retains laws like the one that deals with sex toys, which is a carryover from colonial times. For one thing, they wore revealing clothing, Ramale said.īut colonialism and the foreign religion it carried with it “stressed the impurity and inherent sin associated with women’s bodies,” she said.
Prominent Ugandan academic Sylvia Ramale wrote in the introduction to a book she edited titled “African Sexualities” that pre-colonial African women were “relatively unrestrained” when it came to their sexuality.
While untangling the effects colonialism might have had on women’s rights in sub-Saharan Africa today, multiple studies have shown that African women were far more sexually expressive before European laws, culture and religion were imposed.