ABSTRACT
The Black Africans have for a long time mystified the lives of their women. The problems of African women have always been hidden by African men, by the men in the African governments, by the intellectual reactionaries, and by the pseudorevolutionaries. It is no longer a question of abstract problems and even less the one that is posed most frequently: that the liberation of the black peoples is much more important than the liberation of women. People must rid ourselves of the myths of the matriarchal Black African society. It is a grave error to believe for one moment that the woman has any power because she does the subsistence farming or housework and decides in part the marriages of her children. The Black African male disposes not only over his life but also that of his wife, especially in the African Moslem societies where a woman can go to paradise only through the intervention of her husband.
