WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN REPETITION: NATION BUILDING, SOLIDARITY, AND ISLAM IN ZANZIBAR By Jessica Marie Ott A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Anthropology—Doctor of Philosophy 2020 ABSTRACT WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN REPETITION: NATION BUILDING, SOLIDARITY, AND ISLAM IN ZANZIBAR By Jessica Marie Ott Women’s rights are commonly understood as having emerged out of major women’s conferences from the 1970s onward and as aligned with major UN conventions. But contemporary women’s rights in Zanzibar reflect a longer history of women’s movements on the isles and a greater diversity of influences, including socialist state feminism in the 1960s and the increasing engagement of activists with a transnational Islamic feminist network. This dissertation explores historical continuities and discontinuities between three women’s movements in Zanzibar, beginning with a socialist state feminist movement in the 1960s that presented women as embodying umoja [unity] and as at the front lines of building and developing the nation. Second, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, in the wake of a global human rights and democratization movement, a media-based women’s movement emerged on the isles. Women journalists translated transnational women’s rights ideas into a Zanzibari cultural context, in the process imbuing them with language and imagery from the socialist past. Third, in the 2010s, Zanzibari women’s rights activists engaged with a transnational Islamic feminist network as they sought to reform the archipelago’s Islamic kadhi’s courts. Representing a departure from UN understandings of women’s rights, Zanzibari civil society activists relied most heavily on Islamic feminist arguments in their 2017 kadhi’s court reform efforts. In my dissertation, I put forth several arguments related to rights and memory, including an overarching methodological argument that women’s rights are best understood from an ethnohistorical approach. In Chapter 1, I argue that Zanzibari women’s understanding of rights— which are often imbued with language from the socialist 1960s—are informed by their own political alignments and by memory. Using a case study approach, I argue in Chapter 2 that one woman’s appropriation of historical language during a millennial media-based women’s movement did not represent her endorsement of the past but rather her efforts to mediate collective memory. I argue throughout my dissertation that anthropological frameworks for understanding human rights should incorporate historical memory as a central analytic concept. In Chapter 3, I transition from relying on archival evidence and a few oral histories to relying on participant observation, interviews, and media sources. I chronicle the efforts of a coalition of Zanzibari women’s rights activists to reform the archipelago’s Islamic legal system, during which they relied on a transnational Islamic feminist network and to a lesser degree on transnational women’s rights conventions. Activists passed some reforms but were unable to convince lawmakers to allow women to serve as kadhis [Islamic judges], which highlights the limits of transnationalism in a local context. Activists plan to harness an increasingly faith-based umoja in their continuing efforts to ensure the right of women to serve as kadhis. Chapter 4 is similarly ethnographic and explores the grassroots social involvements of a non-elite woman from the Tanzanian mainland in a women’s madrasa [Islamic studies group] and in a women’s vicoba [savings cooperative]. Her negotiations of agency across different social groups are multiple, nonlinear, and often contradictory, which reflects relational understandings of rights and obligations as well as the multiplicity and diversity of Zanzibari communities. It also highlights the continuing resonance of gendered language, ideas, and imagery from the socialist past, even in the midst of a deeply rooted Islamic revival. The future for women in Zanzibar will depend in part on how they negotiate multiple solidarities—that often come with different expectations and obligations—in their daily lives. Copyright by JESSICA MARIE OTT 2020 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My field research for this dissertation would not have been possible without the support of a Fulbright Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship. In the time leading up to my field research, I benefitted from several summer and yearlong federally funded Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships, which allowed me to develop the Kiswahili language skills necessary to conduct field research in Zanzibar. Throughout my graduate program, I benefitted from the generous financial support of Michigan State University’s Graduate School, College of Social Science, and Department of Anthropology. During my write-up phase, I benefitted from dissertation completion fellowships that I received from Michigan State University’s Center for Gender in Global Context and from the Graduate School. I would especially like to thank the chair of my committee, Elizabeth Drexler, for her guidance and encouragement at each stage of the process. The seminars I took with her and our many conversations made graduate school much more worthwhile for me. I am additionally grateful to Mindy Morgan for leading a seminar on knowledge, memory, and archives that was instrumental in helping me to develop this project and to Chantal Tetreault for her thoughtful feedback and support. I would also like to thank Ann Biersteker for her willingness to teach an independent study course in Kiswahili literature, which enriched my dissertation project and improved my language skills and which I enjoyed immensely. From my time as an undergraduate at Kalamazoo College, I would like to thank Amelia Katanski, Gail Griffin, and Di Seuss for all of the care and attention you put into your teaching, the loads of constructive and thoughtful feedback that you offered me for four years, and for helping me realize that I had something to contribute. v I am grateful to so many of my colleagues and peers for their support and friendship both at MSU and at my field site in Zanzibar. At my field site in Zanzibar, I would like to thank the Zanzibar Female Lawyers Association (ZAFELA) for welcoming me and for sharing their deep knowledge about gender, human rights, and the law in Zanzibar. I would also like to thank the Zanzibar National Archives for making me feel at home; the Department of Kiswahili for Foreigners at the State University of Zanzibar—especially Shani Khalfan—for wonderful language instruction; and Fatma Alloo for her support of my research and the many connections that she helped me to forge. I am grateful to everyone who participated in my research and helped shape my thinking. I am especially appreciative of the many people in my life who offered me friendship, love, and emotional support during the difficult process of getting a PhD. Mike Zabek offered his unconditional love and support throughout the process. I am grateful for all of the hikes, trips, meals, and conversations that have enriched my life throughout graduate school. I would like to thank Sarah Jarzembowski for always being there when I needed someone to talk to, for her care and honesty, and for her wonderful sense of humor. It would be impossible to name everyone whose support, love, and care made this possible, but I am grateful to you all. Last but not least, I could not have endured a year and a half of writing in isolation in Washington, DC, without my beloved cat, Meems, who sat in my lap when I was lonely and reminded me that nothing comes before morning treats (see Figure 8 in Appendix for picture of Meems). vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ix KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS x INTRODUCTION 1 Ethnohistory and women’s rights 1 Women’s grassroots organizing in Swahili East Africa before the 1960s 12 Historical and political overview 15 Methodological approach 20 Chapter overviews 25 The theme of umoja 29 CHAPTER 1: “The revolution liberated women, and women built the nation:” exploring 33 the meaning of an Eastern Bloc-influenced state feminist movement in post-revolution Zanzibar, 1964-1972 Introduction 33 The origins of UWASP 37 Representing women and molding gendered citizens: exploring state propaganda 42 from 1964-1970 “I don’t know what it was that came and changed our development:” the story of 54 Bi Naima Mali Madai Conclusion 62 CHAPTER 2: Writing women’s rights and mediating collective memory: a millennial 70 media-based women’s movement in Zanzibar Introduction 70 Life history of Shifaa Said Hassan 75 Promoting women’s rights and mediating collective memory 83 National memory repair 98 Reclaiming umoja: memory, women’s rights, and moving forward 100 CHAPTER 3: Networking nationally and transnationally: women’s rights activism and 103 Islamic legal reform in Zanzibar Introduction 103 Gender and the law in historical context in Zanzibar 105 Critiquing the kadhi’s courts 107 Cultivating national and transnational umoja 111 An overview of women’s rights activism and kadhi’s court reform in Zanzibar: 116 2013-2017 “President, don’t sign:” exploring the strategic texts of Zanzibar’s gender 120 coalition “Let’s continue to build imani:” strategizing for the future 127 vii CHAPTER 4: “If you educate a woman, you educate the whole community:” rethinking 135 women’s agency in post-socialist, Islamic revivalist Zanzibar Introduction 135 Life history of Rehema 138 The vicoba 145 The madrasa 155 What do women have to lose? 165 CONCLUSION: “Let’s all continue to build one house together, because the thing we all 169 want is development" APPENDIX 181 BIBLIOGRAPHY 183 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Cartoon showing how women’s clothing has served as a symbol of 18 cultural preservation and morality in Zanzibar. Zanzibar Leo, December 6, 2002. Zanzibar National Archives. Figure 2: Bi Fatma Karume addressing a large crowd of women at Zanzibar’s Old Fort 33 about the important role of women in nation building.