Aminata Touré has been appointed as the new Prime Minister of the francophone African republic – Senegal. Macky Sall, the president of the republic (who defeated the 10 year incumbent president, Abdoulaye Wade, in the elections held in March) sacked the former prime minister, Abdoul Mbaye, and appointed Aminata Touré, age 51, to “ensure greater efficiency in the government,” according to the presidential spokesman Abou Abel Thiam[1][2].
She is known in African political circles and beyond as an “Iron Lady” because of her tough stances on issues of governmental corruption and the rule of law as well as her actions and decisions as Minister of Justice (a position she held prior to being appointed Prime Minister). See trial of the former Chadian leader, Hissene Habre[3][4].
Touré is also known for three other attributes: she is a football (soccer) fan and former player, a Marxist and a gender feminist.
While in university, Touré worked with the Communist Workers’ League of Senegal, a Trotskyist (orthodox Marxist[5]) political party formed in mid 1970s[6] which advocates for strict Marxism-Leninism and looks kindly on the Bolshevik revolution.
After graduating, she took the words of Leon Trotsky[7] and tried to put them into practice. She engaged in “gender activism” in her country and the neighboring ones and she ended up at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) where she was chief of the gender, human rights and culture branch[8]. At UNFPA she was credited by other gender ideologues for her work on the concept of “gender mainstreaming”[9] which is essentially the modern term for what Leon Trotsky advocated back in the days of the USSR – namely let’s change everything because (insert Marxist argument here) and let’s conduct that change while viewing everything through the eyes of women[10].
Also, during her work for UNFPA she also worked for further dehumanization and demonization of men in the eyes of the UN and the thousands of NGOs that gravitate around this international body. One of her most remarkable considerations with regards to the humanity of men came in the context of migration with men going in other places to find work and send money home to support the family and it goes like this[11]:
While women at home may need to rely on remittances from males, they may also experience increased autonomy in directing the household. However, women’s burden at home may also increase. For example, as a result of soil erosion in the Tambacounda region of Senegal, 90 per cent of men have migrated at least once, leaving many women and children to rehabilitate the land and produce food with fewer economic and human resources.
So, women staying at home while the men travel hundreds (often times thousands) of kilometers to find work to support them and their homes is a burden. Also, notice that men are “males” while women aren’t “females.” Also, when men aren’t around, women have to pick up some of the physical labor. This situation is, according to the new prime minister of Senegal, as we can see, an issue of “lack of human resources.” So men are “human resources” and when they’re no longer of utility for the gynocracy that she envisions, they are just simply “males.”
But perhaps the most egregious stance of hers, one which she takes pride of, is the one according to which access to health is a human right, and that that human rights are first and foremost women’s rights.[12]
Whether one agrees that access to health care is a human right, it’s a different issue. But the statement that access to health care is first and foremost a women’s right is a bigoted stance and yet another revealing piece of evidence regarding the Senegal Prime Minister’s mentality.
Will Aminata Touré’s Marxist-feminist background reflect in her governance? Only time will tell. But until then, could one really, in all honesty, expect anything else than yet another attempt in yet another country from the State to try to pit women against men for no other reason than “revolutionary” agitation and political goals? Time will tell.
Maybe this time human beings will learn something from history.
Sources:
[2] http://www.politicsinside.fr/actu-politique/02-09-2013/senegal-aminata-toure-nommee-chef-du-gouvernement/international/14976 (in French)
[3] http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/01/us-senegal-government-pm-idUSBRE9800BK20130901
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hissene_Habre#Legal_proceedings
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotskyist
[6] http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligue_communiste_des_travailleurs_%28S%C3%A9n%C3%A9gal%29
[7] Leon Trotsky: “In order to change the conditions of life, we must learn to see them through the eyes of women.” – http://socialistworker.org/2013/01/31/marxism-feminism-and-womens-liberation
[8] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/senegal-prime-minister-aminata-toure
[10] op. cit. Leon Trotsky
[11] http://www.unitar.org/ny/sites/unitar.org.ny/files/Presentation_UNFPA_Aminata_Toure_2March2010%20.pdf – Female Migration and Reproductive Health (p. 6)
[12] Idem 8
