MOTHERING IN AFRICAN CENTERED EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP 

AFRICANA WOMEN STORIES: 

 

By 

 

Tiffany D. Caesar 

 

A DISSERTATION 

Submitted to 

Michigan State University 

in partial fulfilment of the requirements 

for the degree of 

African American and African Studies – Doctor of Philosophy 

2019 

 

ABSTRACT 

 

 

MOTHERING IN AFRICAN CENTERED EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP 

AFRICANA WOMEN STORIES:  

 

By 

 

Tiffany D. Caesar 

 
The current dissertation examines the stories of black women leaders in African centered 

education (ACE) in South Africa and Detroit using “mothering” as a core theoretical framework 

to examine black women’s leadership globally. Pan-africanism, African centeredness, and 

womanism are theories within the study that provide a further understanding of their interwoven 

narratives. By focusing on the context, emergent themes, and aesthetic whole within a portraiture 

methodology – the study hopes to shed light on what it refers to as “Africana” women’s stories. 

Distinctively, the dissertation study expands on the existing narrative of black women educators 

presenting them as leaders and using mothering as praxis by adding two originally researched 

elements - the experiences of black women leaders in African centered education and the current 

racialized and gendered transnational dialogue occurring between women in Detroit, Michigan 

and South Africa. “Mothering” as praxis is mentioned throughout the experiences of black 

women educators (Baylor)(Gumbs)(Msila)(T. Karenga) (Hill-Brisbane) (Johnson L) 

(Johnson)(Collins). The concept essentially “involves valuing and of itself a commitment to the 

survival and thriving of other bodies” (Oka, 52). The role of the mother includes the ability to 

nurture, teach, mold, pass down culture, mentor, and support spiritual regeneration of our 

ancestors (T. Karenga) (Dove, 520) (Godono). With the current dissertation, these activities 

extended to “emancipatory organizations, institutions, and social movements as is reflected in the 

 

history of the mothers of the freedom movements in this country and throughout the pan-African 

world” (Karenga). 

 

 

 

  

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Copyright by 
 
TIFFANY D. CAESAR 
2019 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 
 

 

 
 

This dissertation is a dedication to my mother and grandmother who supported me throughout 
my life and showed me the continued strength of a black woman. They provided me with the 

first example of radical mothering, and I saw the significance of their contribution to the family 
and their community. Also, I am very appreciative of the six black women in South Africa and 
Detroit who took the time to share their stories and spirit with me to inform this necessary black 
woman’s work. The strength of my amadlozis carried me through this academic process, and I 

am forever grateful. 

 

Ashe 

 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

v 

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

 
 

I acknowledge the constant support and encouragement of my committee, Dr. Rita Kiki 

Edozie – chair; Dr. Terah Venzant Chambers, Dr. Glenn Chambers, Dr.Nomalanga Grootboom, 

Dr. Terry Flennaugh, and Dr. Theodore Ransaw. They have pushed me to the finish line with 

rigor and compassion for my journey. The African American and African Studies Department at 

Michigan State University has provided me with so much academic and professional growth, and 

I am so happy that I have been trained in a competitive program. Also, the Michigan State 

University Urban Education program has been a positive addition to my scholarship. The 

University of South Africa in Pretoria Educational Leadership and Management Department has 

continued to assist me with my research needs while in South Africa, and I am genuinely grateful 

for their support and encouragement. There is deep gratitude for all the Africana women of this 

study who allowed me to walk momentarily by their side as they divulged to me their life story 

as leaders in African Centered Education. Last, but not least, I am I acknowledge the Hush 

House Community Museum and Leadership Training Institute in Detroit Michigan that allowed 

me the time and space to finish my dissertation. I am giving a special thanks to Dr. Charles 

Simmons and Reverend Mama Sandra!

vi 

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

 
 
INTRODUCTION: Gendering and Disaporizing African Centered Educational 

 

Leadership................................................................................................................................  1 

 
CHAPTER 1: Resistance, Liberation, and Education: Linking Africana Women Stories to a 

Greater Struggle......................................................................................................................  14 

 
CHAPTER 2: Research Design And Methodology......................................................................  48 
 
CHAPTER 3: Africana Women Leaders: A Biographical Context..............................................  62 
 
CHAPTER 4: Mothering In Nation Building...............................................................................  91 
 
CHAPTER 5: Mothering The Spirit Or Consciousness.............................................................. 117 

 

CHAPTER 6: Mothering In Educational Leadership.................................................................. 136 

 

CONCLUSION: A Portraiture of Africana Women in African Centered Education..................148 
 
APPENDIX.................................................................................................................................. 159 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................................ 161 
 

vii 

 

INTRODUCTION 

 

Gendering and Diasporizing African Centered Educational Leadership 

 

“The survival of each and every society is based upon the strength of the woman…We inherited 
(knowledge) from our mother’s breast and we pass it on by nursing our siblings and our young 

children and we pass it on for the generations to come…”  

 Dr. Ziphora Moichela, South Africa 

 

 

On the phone, Makini Tchameni’s voice resembled my Aunt due to her American accent; 

I had not known what I was going to hear on her call from Cameroon. She was interviewing me 

for a teaching position at her African Centered School in Douala – The African American 

Academy. I had just received my Master's degree in Pan-African Studies from the University of 

Louisville, and I was looking for employment. Another student had encouraged me to apply to 

the African Centered Educational (ACE) Foundation Volunteer Teaching Program, giving me an 

opportunity to teach and go to Africa. I had never been there before, so I moved quickly on the 

lead and applied.  

 

I started working for Makini Tchameni’s educational institutions in her African Centered 

Educational Foundation (ACE) in 2010, and for the last 9 years I have worked in similar spaces 

witnessing black women lead these schools, community centers, and hubs with a mother’s love, 

steadfast passion, and a politicized cadence. Accepting the position to teach at The African 

American Academy in Cameroon was a leap of faith that led to my current research on black 

women leaders in African Centered Education and mothering in leadership. 

 

Mrs. Tchameni an African American educator from Houston, Texas, was politicized by 

black power rhetoric and pan-African solidarity through organizations like the All African 

Revolutionary Party (AARP). She married a politician and revolutionary activist, Djeukam 

Tchameni from Cameroon, whom she met at one of the AARP meetings in Houston, Texas; after 

living in America for a while, they moved to Africa. After witnessing the colonial narrative that 

1 

 

her children were experiencing in the Cameroonian classrooms, she embarked on a life-long 

mission to counter racist and colonial curriculums by creating African Centered schools. The 

ACE Schools she created with her husband uses an African Centered curriculum that uplifts 

African culture through the engagement of lessons culturally rooted in black history, social 

sciences, math, and pedagogical approach. She joined the league of many black women in black 

resistance and liberation.  

 

African Centered Education places the student and community experiences at the center, 

emphasizing black cultural traditions and knowledge. These particular institutions usually pride 

themselves on preserving and teaching cultural heritage traditions whether it is in a school, 

community center, bookstore, or now, a vibrant online community. It is also important to note 

that these African Centered institutions serve as spaces of innovation, where new cultural 

traditions are incubated and hatched and therefore they are not only a symbol of education, but 

the preservation of black cultural heritage.  

 

Research on black women and their leadership roles in African Centered Education is 

scarce. The articles and books about women's leadership roles in these specific educational 

institutions are limited and hidden under a narrative of race, without the acknowledgment of 

gender roles. This phenomenon makes it difficult to find studies that speak directly to the roles of 

black women in leadership positions, specifically, in institutions that practice a form of African 

Centered Education. Specifically, there is a lack of information on black women roles as leaders, 

and the transnational reach of their institutions, not only in the United States – but in Africa as 

well. By expanding on the canon of African Centered Education, this research adds new 

information concerning women’s leadership roles and their capacity to expand in different 

countries, specifically in South Africa.  

2 

 

 

In We Are An African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and The Radical 

Imagination, Russell Rickford historicizes the development of African Centered Schools and or 

Pan-African Schools, tracing the phenomenon back to the 1970s Black Power Movement. In one 

sentence, he addresses that women primarily led and taught at these schools; however, the 

expansive nature of their involvement was missing because the book did not go further into their 

stories (Rickford). Though research has been conducted on African Centered Education, there 

has been little discussion about black women as primary workers and leaders in these institutions 

of change. My dissertation adds to the narrative of black women’s leadership roles, and their 

overall experience as creators, managers, and workers of African Centered Institutions. It also 

depicts them as prime participants and cultivators of African Centered Education in the ongoing 

black resistance towards marginalization and a status of inferiority. The study purposefully 

selected black women leading, managing, or contributing significantly to successful African 

Centered institutions, instead of using a deficit model.  

 

Black women globally have contributed to the development and sustainability of 

educational institutions. My study focuses on their educational leadership roles in African 

Centered Institutions, specifically in South Africa and Detroit, Michigan. This creates a diasporic 

and transnational dialogue amongst these women that illustrates Pan-African solidarity in 

relation to African Centered Education. The gendered approach allows one to understand these 

women's holistic perspective while integrating their multiple roles as mothers, wives, community 

leaders, spiritual beacons, soul encouragers.  

 

I use the concept of “Mothering” as a theoretical platform to capture the way that race 

and gender are seen as central components of Black women’s leadership experiences. 

“Mothering” as praxis is mentioned throughout the experiences of black women educators 

3 

 

(Baylor)(Oka)(Msila)( Karenga) (Hill-Brisbane) (Johnson K) (Johnson)(Collins). The theory of 

Mothering essentially "involves valuing others and of itself a commitment to the survival and 

thriving of other bodies" (Oka, 52). The role of the mother includes the ability to nurture, teach, 

mold, bearer of culture, mentor, and conduit for the spiritual regeneration of the ancestors (T. 

Karenga) (Dove, 520) (Godono). These activities are extended to “emancipatory organizations, 

institutions, and social movements as is reflected in the history of the mothers of the freedom 

movements in this country and throughout the pan-African world” (T. Karenga). 

 

Drawing from “Mothering” gender theories as a dimension of African-centered 

education, the current dissertation study examines six portraits of black women leaders in 

African Centered Education (ACE) in South Africa and Detroit using  Pan-Africanism, 

Womanism, Mothering, and African Centered Educational Theory as scholastic frameworks. The 

theories work together to create an in-depth understanding of these women’s stories. While, 

portraiture methodology creates a seamlessly woven narrative of these women’s stories focusing 

on emergent themes that display commonality, but it does not exclude their differences adding to 

the authenticity of the narrative. 

Research Questions and Thesis Statement 
 
 

My primary research question is, what are the stories of black women leaders in African 

Centered Education to understand their unique contributions to education and black resistance? I 

am interested in learning about their unique experiences as leaders in African Centered 

Education and how they impact their communities in which these institutions are enmeshed. To 

answer these questions, I compiled the stories of several Black women educators of African 

Centered institutions to discern a range of interrelated question to guide the dissertation study. In 

addition, my dissertation explores emergent themes within their stories that unify their leadership 

4 

 

and identities. The study explores the rationale for black women in creating African Centered 

institutions, and their political implications towards black resistance. In addition, the research 

highlights their ability to navigate their roles as educational leaders with that of familial, societal, 

and personal obligations.  

 

Distinctively, the dissertation study expands on the existing narrative of black women 

educators and mothering as praxis by adding two originally researched elements - the 

experiences of black women leaders in African Centered Education and the current racialized 

and gendered transnational dialogue occurring between women in Detroit, Michigan and South 

Africa. My investigation explores mothering as an aspect of womanist theory.  The primary 

element that is analyzed within the women leaders’ stories are their gendered and racialized 

worldviews. In addition, the study highlights their comparative and global political-economic 

entrepreneurship events, and their African-centered pedagogical impact in the decolonization of 

education and learning of African descendant and African children around the world. Critical 

theories co-exist in my study providing a broader lens in understanding their stories. For 

example, African Centered Educational Theory emphasizes the development of the black child 

by reinforcing their cultural history, pride, and collective belonging to a community that uplifts 

them (Lomotey, 29)(Matthew, 2). 

 

Also called a Pan-Africanist education, it has a “commitment to linking black struggles 

worldwide” (Rickford, 2). Pan-Africanism refers to a globalized notion of Blackness forging 

community and identity in African heritage that reinforces black consciousness (Drake&Harris, 

342) (Palmer, 30). It explains how Africanizing the curriculum in South Africa is rooted in 

similar prescriptions of African Centered Education in Detroit - indigenous knowledge, cultural 

pride, and centering the black student’s experience due to racialized oppressions (Msila) (Botha) 

5 

 

(Mswazie, 2013). Due to the Pan-African agenda of African Centered Education, there is an 

emphasis on nation building -the “conscious and focused application of our people’s collective 

resources, energies, and knowledge to the task of liberating and developing the psychic and 

physical space that we identify as ours” (Akoto). Nation-building was called race uplift by early 

black women educators, and motherhood was linked to an ethics of care and praxis of love (Hill-

Brisbane) (Johnson K) (Mcdonald, 773). 

 

Womanism is used to understand further “Mothering,” defined as “Committed to the 

survival and wholeness of the entire people, male and female….” which provides depth to the 

gendered discussion and helps to explain the family-centered approach of these women leaders 

(Walker, xi). Womanism has also been stated to provide a womanist leadership framework (Hill-

Brisbane and Dingus). Relatedly, examples of  mothering and black leadership include activities 

by Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hammer, Wangari Maathai, and Winnie 

Mandela. Nah Dove states, “The love of the mother for her child, of necessity, challenges the 

European construction of her child’s debased humanity. This love is in itself the seed of 

revolution because it is antithetical to the dominant belief in White superiority” (534). 

Motherhood is described as “an act of defiance in the midst of colonization” illustrating the 

overtly political, radical, and lethal stance it takes to mother a black child and community in a 

world that continues to denigrate them simultaneously (Oka, 51). Black motherhood has always 

been literally and figuratively a form of resistance. From Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley, the 

mother Emmett Till, to Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin - it should be emphasized 

the dangers of motherhood that endure in a timeless state. Mothering continues to be a subject of 

importance in education as we continue to understand the role of black women in education and 

6 

 

their leadership styles. These three theories collectively help tell the stories of these women 

leaders in African Centered Education. 

Methodology – Portraiture 
 
 

The current research adds to the narrative of black women roles, black women leadership 

roles, and overall black women’s experience as creators, managers, and workers of African 

Centered Institutions and prime participants and cultivators of African Centered Education. As 

such, I have selected a methodology that allows me to have flexibility in telling women stories 

while permitting me as a researcher to participate in the study in a holistic way. I consider myself 

a black woman, and an African Centered Educator who has served in leadership positions in 

African Centered Institutions. Hence, my own experimental knowledge and relationship with my 

subjects adds to the study. I wanted the women in my study to feel as if I respected them and that 

they were, in fact, human beings and change agents making a difference in this world rather than 

just a subject of my study.  

 

There are many methods within qualitative research, and some do overlap. At times it can 

be difficult choosing due to the variety. However, for my study Portraiture Methodology is 

distinctive, “a method of social science inquiry distinctive in its blending of art and science, 

capturing the complexity, dynamics, and subtlety of human experience and organizational life” 

(Lawrence website). There is also an emphasis on the overall authentic experience of conducting 

the research, that “documents the culture of institutions, the life stories of individuals, stages of 

human development, essential relationships, processes, and concepts” (Lawrence website). Also, 

there is an emphasis on the authentic experience, “portraits are designed to capture the richness, 

complexity, and dimensionality of human experience in social and cultural context, conveying 

the perspectives of the people who are negotiating those experiences” (Lawrence website). 

7 

 

 

Using Portraiture Methodology allows me to focus on the narratives of these women 

leaders by joining the art of storytelling with qualitative rigor. It is a genre of inquiry that seeks 

to join science and art by blending literary principles, artistic resonance, and scientific rigor 

(Lightfoot, xv). Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, a black woman, artist, and sociologist created this 

methodology that allows the paradox of art and intellectual inquiry to be used simultaneously in 

research. Lightfoot recalls how an experience of being sketched by a black woman and 

sociologist at an early age caused her to begin to think about the “evolving relationship” between 

the artist and subject (Lightfoot,2005). She states, 

Her well-worn, strong, and knowing hands moved quickly and confidently across the 
paper. She seemed totally relaxed and unselfconscious; her fingers a smooth 
extension of the charcoal. Her deep calm soothed me and made me feel relaxed. But 
what I remember most clearly was the wonderful, glowing sensation I got from being 
so fully attended to. There were no distractions. I was the only one in her gaze. My 
image filled her eyes, and the sound of the chalk stroking the paper was palpable. The 
audible senses translated to tactile ones. After the warmth of this human encounter,  
the artistic product was almost forgettable. I do not recall whether I liked the portrait 
or not. I do remember feeling that there were no lines, only fuzzy impressions and that 
I was rendered in motion; Sara on the move (Lightfoot, 2005). 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 That experience allowed her to contemplate and begin to internalize  the “essence” of a portrait, 

which later led to her creation of the portraiture methodology that she began to materialize in her 

study The Good High School published in  1983 (Lightfoot, 2005). In describing her physical 

experiences with portraitures, she states, 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I learned, for example, that these portraits did not capture me as I saw myself, that 
they were not like looking in the mirror at my reflection. Instead, they seemed to   capture 
my "essence"; qualities of character and history, some of which I was unaware, some 
of which I resisted mightily, some of which felt deeply familiar. But the translation 
of image was anything but literal. It was probing, layered, and interpretive. In 
addition to portraying my image, the piece expressed the perspective of the artist and was 
shaped by the evolving relationship between the artist and me (Lightfoot, 2005). 

The Art and Science of Portraiture with visual artist Jessica Davis describe how the 

methodology shapes your research using contours, scopes, dimensions, while simultaneously 

8 

 

setting boundaries (Lightfoot, 2005). Lightfoot states it is "about boundary crossing—about a 

methodology that hopes to bridge aesthetics and empiricism and appeal to intellect and emotion, 

and that seeks to inform and inspire" (Lightfoot, 2005). 

 

 It is not a coincidence that Sara Lawrence Lightfoot became a sociologist, just like the 

black woman sociologist who sketched her. At the age of 8, she was inspired by a role model 

who looked like her and dared Sara to investigate two of her passions: research and art. Just like 

the subjects of this study, Sara Lawrence Lightfoot is a black women leader in education making 

a difference with her spirit led research. She was also inspired by a black woman artist-

intellectual when she was younger who drew a portraiture of her. Her methodology is deepened 

by her identity, story, and art. According to Lightfoot, a portraitist "seeks to record and interpret 

the perspectives and experience of the people they are studying, documenting their voices and 

their visions - their authority, knowledge, and wisdom" (Lightfoot, xv).  Researchers who have 

studied Black women educational leaders have used Portraiture Methodology 

(Lightfoot)(Pollard) (Cabral)(Baylor). Lightfoot mentions Dubois’ Souls of Blackness as a 

perfect blend of “story and scholarship”, especially in his description of double-consciousness, 

an ideological theory for understanding people of African descendant in the United States. 

 

The five essential features of Portraiture Methodology are Context, Voice, Relationship, 

Emergent Themes, and the Aesthetic Whole. The goal is to create an aesthetic whole by blending 

the empirical with the narrative, which will, “inform and inspire...document and 

transform...speak to the head and to the heart” (Lightfoot, 243). The aesthetic whole is the gestalt 

described as a quilt with many pieces put together strategically to make a beautiful art ensemble 

(Lightfoot, 244). By analyzing my data, highlighting emergent themes, and weaving my findings 

together I am able to create a piece that is reflective of these women’ collective lives. which 

9 

 

encompasses my positionality as a black female African Centered Educator with experience in 

Detroit and South Africa (Lightfoot, 247). 

 

Due to the location of the women in my study, in South Africa and Detroit, Michigan, a 

brief discussion on Pan-Africanism, the African Diaspora, and Nationalism helps to 

contextualize their story. Pan-Africanism refers to a globalized notion of Blackness forging 

community and identity in African heritage that reinforces black consciousness (Drake&Harris, 

342) (Palmer, 30). The African Diaspora is the numerous locations of the African dispersal of 

people in which Pan-Africanism is used politically to unify them. Black Consciousness, a tenet 

of Pan-Africanism, is displayed in radical movements in both South Africa and the United States. 

Research Design 
 
 

 I have selected 6 black women and educational leaders in South Africa (Johannesburg, 

Pretoria) and the United States to focus on (Detroit, Michigan). Each woman was interviewed, in 

addition, there was extensive time spent at their institution using participatory observation at 

their respective institutions. I have spent almost a year over time in both Detroit, Michigan and 

South Africa (Johannesburg and Pretoria) collecting data. In addition, I have spent time with my 

participants families, worked in their institutions in some type of capacity, while witnessing their 

joy and challenges. I have been welcomed as not only a scholar, but a sister in their endeavors, a 

mother to their children, and holder of their dreams.  

 

Again, emergent themes, were key to my findings section. They were mostly found 

through my interviews and observations and contextualized through published research 

surrounding the topic. Next, there was a thorough analysis of all components, interviews, the 

literature, and multimedia associated with the black women's establishments using triangulation 

10 

 

to create the aesthetic whole. The extent of my research design and methodology is further 

expanded on in Chapter 2 – Research Design and Methodology. 

Sites of Field Research 
 
 

The women in South Africa are located in Midrand, Cosmo City, and Sunnyside - all 

areas within the two major cities, Johannesburg and Pretoria. All the black women educators 

from the United States are from Detroit, Michigan. The women leaders were previously selected 

based on earlier studies. These women leaders are from the following African Centered 

Institutions: Detroit, Michigan - Timbuktu Academy: Cha-Rhonda Edgerson (Mama Cha-

Rhonda) and Zukhanye Nondabula (Mama Zukhanye) and the Hush House Community Museum 

and Leadership Training Institute, Reverend Mama Sandra Simmons.  

The women leaders in South Africa and their respective African Centered Institution are the 

following: South Africa - University of South Africa in Pretoria: Dr. Ziphora Moiechela, African 

Union International School - Makini Tchameni, and Gogo Dineo’s School of Spiritual Healing – 

Gogo Dineo Ndlanzi. 

 

The research design consisted of several semi-structured questions that revealed their 

gendered, racialized, and politicized worldviews, as well as gives me their basic background 

information inclusive of their education and origin. My content analysis consists of a mixture of 

multimedia items, curriculums, propaganda, websites, advertisements, mixed media, and other 

narratives that describe the women’s identities and African Centered Institution that contributes 

to finding emergent themes. Most of the women in my study have multimedia digital data 

assisted me in my description and content analysis. Visiting and participating in activities at all 

their institutions allowed me to carefully view how they embody their African Centered 

11 

 

Philosophy in their daily lives and through the interaction with the people who frequent their 

spaces. 

Emergent Themes 
 
 

 Data analysis revealed three emergent themes shared between the six women in my 

study. The three pervasive themes in the women's stories were Mothering Leadership, Nation-

building, and The Consciousness or Spiritual Call to Educate. Mothering in leadership describes 

how nurturing and other motherly characteristics are used in leadership positions. This 

investigation explores mothering as an aspect of the womanist theory. Womanism is used to 

further understand "Mothering", defined as "Committed to the survival and wholeness of the 

entire people, male and female…." which provides depth to the gendered discussion and helps to 

explain the family-centered approach of these women leaders (Walker, xi). Nation building 

consists of ideas and strategies used to unify a community or group of people due to systems that 

have marginalized them racially, politically, and economically. It is the basis of the Pan-

Africanism that links the global struggles. Lastly, the consciousness or spiritual call to educate 

consists of the rationale for the women in the study to create, manage, and or teach at institutions 

that provide a form of African Centered Education. 

Nomenclature 
 
 

 For the purposes of this study, Africana, African, African descendant, and black are 

terms used to describe the women collectively and their shared African heritage. Women born 

and raised in South Africa are termed South African. Ethnic groups in South Africa, such as 

Zulu, Xhosa, and Tswana also appear. The common term African American is used when 

discussing specifically women in Detroit, Michigan. In addition, an Africana woman, is a woman 

of African descent from Africa or the African Diaspora who identifies overtly with her African 

12 

 

heritage, while participating in black liberation and resistance struggles. Therefore, collectively I 

will call them, Africana Women.  

Chapter Overview 
 
 

The Introduction summarizes my dissertation and provides the rationale behind my 

study. Chapter 1, Resistance, Liberation, and Education: Linking Africana Women Stories to a 

Greater Struggle is a literature review. It locates the efforts of the six black women educators 

and leaders  in my study in the greater struggle of black liberation and resistance.  

In addition, it historicizing black women educators and leaders in Africa and the African 

Diaspora, highlighting the United States and South Africa. Chapter 1 also frames the research 

with theories of Mothering, Womanism, Pan-Africanism, and African Centeredness. Chapter 2, 

Research Design and Methodology describes my research design and portraiture methodology. 

Chapter 3, African Centered Women Leaders: A Biographical Context, provides background 

information for the six women interviewed for this work. Chapter 4, Mothering In Nation 

Building discusses nation-building as an emergent theme. Chapter 5, Mothering The Spirit Or 

Consciousness explores consciousness and spirituality as a rationale for their choice to be 

African Centered Educators. Chapter 6, Mothering In Educational Leadership focuses on the 

emergent theme of mothering and leadership in African Centered Education. The Conclusion, A 

Portraiture of Africana Women in African Centered Education, weaves all these women stories 

and analysis together to create gestalt portraiture or the aesthetic whole of Africana Women 

Leaders in African Centered Education. Lastly, the conclusion provides an overall summary of 

my study and discussion of future research. 

 

 

13 

 

Introduction 

CHAPTER 1 

Resistance, Liberation, and Education:  

Linking Africana Women Stories to a Greater Struggle 

"Africa is a woman…" Gogo Dineo Ndlanzi 

  

 

Chapter 1, a literature review, locates the efforts of the six black women educators and 

leaders in my study in the greater struggle of black liberation and resistance through their 

efforts in African Centered Education and nation building. There is an historical and 

theoretical account of major black assaults, like enslavement and colonialism, that contributed 

to the development of black resistance globally. It displays how these oppressions impacted 

the educational system so severely that an alternative educational pedagogical approach had to 

emerge as a form of black resistance. It was African Centered Education led and sustained 

primarily by black women (Rickford).  In addition, there is an overview of major gendered 

theories like womanism that helps to understand these women lives. The chapter describes 

educational leadership and then connects the study specifically to African Centered 

Educational Leadership and the role of black women. Lastly, there is a background discussion 

of my emergent themes in nation building, mothering, and the spiritual/consciousness to 

educate. For the purpose of this chapter and the following, one should note that an Africana 

woman is committed to cultural the preservation in Africa and the African Diaspora. She 

knows that self-preservation comes first, including physical, mental and spiritual renewal, 

therefore she takes time to restore her energy so that she can continue to change the world - 

resting and retreating when necessary. 

 

 

14 

 

A Systemic Overview: Slavery and Colonialism 

 

Slavery and colonialism are two major genocidal experiences within Africa and the 

African Diaspora that contributed to the development of counter-narratives in education as a 

form of black liberation and resistance. African Centered Education was a response to the 

exclusion of the history and culture of African descendant people globally, a united effort to 

include accurate knowledge to counter the destructive and fabricated narrative of African 

people’s inferiority. A brief historical review of how systems like slavery and colonialism 

disrupted black civilizations is necessary in order to understand the significance of the six black 

women creating African Centered Institutions in South Africa and the United States. 

Education 

 

Education is at the root of every society because it is the transferal and acquisition of 

knowledge, skills, values, beliefs and habits based on the epistemological viewpoint of a culture. 

Whoever is in a position of power, dictates who is superior or inferior – which becomes the basis 

of what education relies on for its validity. In the case of my study, the European invasion of 

Africa, attempting to strip their societies of cultural significance by fabricating a story of 

inferiority on black people, is an example of a crude disruption of a culture due to greed and 

supremacy. This has also been identified as Eurocentricity, an ideological system of knowledge 

that places Europe and its counterparts at the center of intellectual thought. Other ideological 

perspectives emerged and were created by African people to counter that narrative like 

Afrocentricity which centers the African perspective as a display of black resistance towards an 

imaginative subservient role created by white supremacist. However, unlike Eurocentricity, 

15 

 

Afrocentricity does not claim universality or proselytize their epistemological viewpoint through 

violence. Eurocentricity is the fundamental cause of these systematic errors on African people 

like enslavement and colonialism and why a various black resistance effort was created and 

sustained.  

 

Enslavement 

 

The word enslavement will be used to acknowledge that an African went through a 

process of subjugation, but was not born a slave, or in a state of servitude to his or her master. It 

should be noted that the African in America narrative does not start with enslavement or slavery.  

In addition, African people came to the Americas freely, first, before they were enslaved. There 

has been extensive research done on African explorers who traveled to North and South America 

on expeditions, traded with the natives prior to the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and have even 

influenced Native American culture (Sertima, Ivan Van).  

 

Enslavement caused the uprootedness of Africans, dismembering them from their home 

base with an attempt to erase their memory of culture and achievement (N’Gugi). Slaveholders 

forced Africans to learn a new language, customs, and gave them new names (N’Gugi). In 

addition, to giving the African people a new memory of self, enslavement encouraged an inferior 

narrative of African people to plague the world to uphold white supremacy. Just like colonialism, 

enslavement was built on the idea that black people cannot rule themselves, they have to be ruled 

by suppressing black people’s self-reliance to create a culture of dependence (N’Gugi).   

 

16 

 

Enslavement, An Historical Account 

In 1444, the Portuguese began the slave trade by capturing Africans near the Senegal 

River, it continued until the end of the 19th century (Falola, 5). Europeans were searching for 

commodities and resources to use for their countries, in which sugar production, first, was a top 

priority (Falola, 5). This became known as the Transatlantic slave trade, “the largest transoceanic 

forced migration in history” from Africa to Europe and the Americas (Eltis, 1). This system has 

affected Africa and the world for over 500 years (Falola). Africa became a major player within 

the global economic system during the transatlantic slave trade, contributing in addition to 

people, palm oil, palm kernel, and cocoa (Falola). Other commodities included gold, silver, 

sugar, rice, coffee, muskets, and gunpowder (Smallwood). In the African diaspora, particularly 

North America, cotton and sugar was a major product produced by African slaves. However, the 

wealth Africa created through its people and commodities did not contribute to their own 

economic growth.  

Slavery and colonialism are also considered global political-economic exchanges that led 

to new initiatives to stop their ongoing assault. In addition, the impact of slavery and colonialism 

led to black resistance initiatives like the Pan-African Congresses that were created by W.E.B. 

Dubois. These initiative garnered leaders from Africa and the African Diaspora to work together 

against ideological themes like Eurocentricity that contributed to the marginalization of African 

people. The women of my study who have created and or manage these African Centered 

17 

 

Institutions are extension of such joint collaborations like the Pan-African Congress. They are 

simultaneously working toward the annihilation of educational branches that continue to label 

black people as inferior, and incapable, due to assaults like enslavement.   

Enslavement and Psyche 

 

Schwartz, a historian who focuses on Brazil and slavery stated, “Whoever wants to profit 

from his Blacks must maintain them, make them work well, and beat them even better; without 

this there will be no service or gain…” (Schwartz). This quote explains the mindset of many 

slave masters and the objectification of the black body to a cash crop. Early American literature 

mentioned, “Negros are more…easily kept as perpetual servants…” (Over Black). Even Thomas 

Jefferson, famous for his penmanship of the Declaration Independence stated, “… the blacks, 

whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the 

whites in the endowments both of body and mind” (Jefferson). In North America, the British 

made race in order to sustain, and legitimize slavery, and whiteness emerged as a category of 

freedom, due to the detriment of the slave’s mind (Smallwood).  

 

Naim Akbar, an afro-centric psychologist wrote, Breaking the Chains of Psychological 

Slavery, which discusses how slavery has affected the mind of black people. He discusses Willie 

Lynch, and how his plan to divide and destroy were said quite clearly in his 1712 speech about 

plantation organization, “My plan is guaranteed, and the good thing is that if used intensely for 

one year, the slaves themselves will remain perpetually distrustful..." (Akbar). Lynch’s strategy 

of divide and conquer on the slave plantation contributes to what Akbar sees now as the 

challenges with black people uniting and working together 500 years after the traumatic assault 

(Akbar). Dr. Akbar also advocates for the accurate information about blacks to spread in order to 

help alleviate the symptoms of unconsciousness that occurs due to mental slavery, this is seen in 

18 

 

the efforts of African Centered Education (Akbar). Even W.E.B. Dubois has contributed his own 

theory to the black mental psyche. Dubois’ theory of double consciousness discusses the 

challenges of being of an African descent in a white world (Dubois, 2003).   

 

African centered psychiatrist, Frances Cress Welsing, discusses the behavioral 

characteristic and impact of white supremacy in her acclaimed book the Isis Papers. She 

considers white supremacy as a genetic means of white survival by any means necessary 

(Welsing). She advocates for black people to understand the nature of white supremacy that 

impact black culture in order to dismantle it (Welsing).  She reverses the notions of people of 

African descent being inhumane and barbaric and exclaims, “the white collective is a mess of 

paranoid melanin deficient humans” (Welsing). Her goal is to show the barbaric inhumane side 

of the twisted white psychology that contributes to the enslavement psyche. 

There are other theories created to further discuss the psychological impact of slavery. 

The Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS) theoretical framework by Leary, and further 

developed by Dr. Joy Degruy, explores the psychological and behavioral adaptations of black 

people’s oppression. PTSS is a “condition that exists when a population has experienced 

multigenerational trauma resulting from centuries of slavery and continues to experience 

oppression and institutionalized racism today” (Leary, 2005) (Degruy, 2005). Leary focuses on 

the institutionalization of PTSS and advocates for the dismantling of the society in order to 

eradicate institutional racism that contribute to ongoing mental illness caused by racism.  

Simultaneously, religion played a huge rule in transmitting the Eurocentric worldview to 

black people. In finding solutions to  how Christianity has handicapped black people, he states, 

“We must remove the racial images of divinity from our minds…” and acknowledge the residue 

it has left on our minds to change, rebuild our culture and to celebrate and unite, and “Stop 

19 

 

participating in religions that were created to keep us down, but instead embrace a religion that 

empowers us” (Akbar).  All these authors have contributed to the impact of slavery on the 

psyche of African descended people in North America and the world.  

As stated earlier there are still remnants of slavery that still exist today.  The New Jim 

Crow by Michelle Alexander discusses the challenges surrounding mass incarceration of black 

males that raises the public’s critical consciousness to action to counter those who believe in a 

post-racial and/or color-blind America. The overarching themes she addresses in contemporary 

times are mass incarceration, second-class citizenship, economic disparity, and the racial caste 

system. There is this permeating idea embedded in the US culture that African descendant people 

should be enslaved. 

Colonialism 
 
 

Colonialism begun at the end of the 19th century after slavery, it continues to bring 

Africa into the global economy in an exploitative serving as the basis to create new cultures and 

colonial modernity (Falola, 40) (Jones).  During colonialism, “Africans were subjects, not 

citizens…” (Falola, 326).  Falola describes colonization as a “global project, the domination of 

Africa by Western forces, technology, and culture” (Falola, 61). Some of the characteristics of 

colonialism includes the African subject having another social system imposed on them, their 

native culture modified or destroyed, control is in the hands of people outside their native land, 

and racism is prevalent (Staples, 1976). When discussing colonialism, we are particularly 

interested in the experience on the African continent and how institutions like the African Union 

International School in South Africa and the Gogo Dineo Institute of Spiritual Healing are a 

response to it. 

20 

 

 

One of the most lethal weapons of colonialism was the cultural bomb, and it was a leech 

on Africa’s and Africans in the Diaspora cultural system. Thiong’o states, “The effect of a 

cultural bomb is to annihilate a people's belief in their names, in their languages, in their 

environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in 

themselves” (Thiong’o). In his book, Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African 

literature, Kenyan theorist of post-colonial literature and novelist, Ngugi Wa Thiongo’o 

illustrates how imperialism and resistance affected African use of their own language 

(Thiong’o).  His collection of non-fiction essays explores national culture, history, and identity 

focusing on linguistically decolonization (Thiong’o). Thiong’o states that colonialism, “has 

economic, political, military, cultural and psychological consequences for the people of the 

world today” (Thiong’o). The cultural bomb is heavily seen in education, and one of the main 

reasons African Centered Education was created.  

 

Colonialism caused African scholars to respond to the negative views of Africa. The 

counter-narrative to colonialism is nationalism that occurred in anticolonial resistance (Falola, 

64). Cesaire states in his anti-colonial literature, Discourse on Colonialism, “Colonialism 

decivilize the colonizer through torture, violence, (and) race hatred…” (Cesaire). This is 

important because much has been written about the colonized, yet he is able to express how the 

colonizer is affected by his own imperialism.  Dubois’ The World and Africa also provides a 

counternarrative to the traditional colonial discourse of colonialism. He is arguing for the 

inclusion of Africa as a critical player within World History due to the overt exclusion by racist 

white hegemonic structures created due to systems like colonialism. Dubois states, “The reason 

of this world mastery by Europe was rationalized as the natural and inborn superiority of white 

people, showing itself not only in the loftiest of religions, but in technical mastery of the forces 

21 

 

of nature-all this in contrast to the low mentality and natural immorality of the darker races…” 

(Dubois, World). He explains the systems of colonialism and the rape of Africa, while 

simultaneously exploring the great contributions African societies (Dubois, World). Dubois 

critiques white scholars who have provided a skewed view of Africa with racist tendencies. 

Colonialism and Psyche 
 
 

When discussing the impact of colonialism, Africans and Africans in the diaspora were 

exploring its effect. Particularly, two profound scholars of colonialism and psyche were not from 

Martinique, Aime Cesaire and Frantz Fanon, displays how Africans and Africans in the Diaspora 

were working together towards black resistance. Aime Cesaire, other than a literary artist and 

major contributor to the Negritude Movement, was a major intellectual who discussed political 

independence and decolonization in Africa, the Caribbean and North America (Gregson,1). 

Fanon was a student of Aime Cesaire who studied psychology. His first-hand experience as a 

psychiatrist in Algeria during its occupation by the French displayed the challenges of 

colonialism.  

The colonization of the African mind occurred first (Falola, 55). The previous statement 

explores how the mind is the first location of the colonial regime, the process of subjugation 

through the means of inferiorization. Cesaire states that colonization is based on a,  

 
 
 
 

psychology, that there are in this world groups of men who, for unknown reasons, 
(who) suffer from what must be called a dependency complex, that these groups are 
psychologically made for dependence, that they crave it, ask for it, demand it; that this 
is the case with most of the colonized peoples and with the Madagascan soul… 
(Cesaire).   
Cesaire explains how colonialism creates dependency amongst its subjects by 

encouraging them to believe that they have no agency within their subjugation. These are the 

same ideas that permeated slavery, which provides rationale for the necessity of black liberation 

22 

 

and the duplication of African Centered institutions in South Africa and the United States 

created by black women. 

Also, Christianity served as a vehicle to carry the Eurocentric worldview and scholars 

have critiqued it to dismantle its impact. Christianity historically aligned themselves with the 

views of slavery and imperialism (Falola, 57). The condemnation of indigenous worldviews, the 

stereotype of African religions as paganism, primitivization of African culture in lieu of the 

appreciation and exaltation of all things European was due to Christianity, spread by the faithful 

missionaries.  

Educational Impact of Enslavement and Colonialism 
 
 

After impacting the mind and identity of African descendant people, education was used 

to standardized the colonial slave mentality and the inferiority complex of black people. Western 

Education was the tool of colonization and race inferiority (Falola, 56). As stated earlier, it began 

by mind control, erasing Africa’s greatness and replacing it with a mindset of servitude. In the 

20th century, noted black studies scholar, Carter G. Woodson, in response to the American 

educational system, states, “…to handicap a student by teaching him, that his black face is a 

curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless, is the worst sort of lynching” 

(Woodson). He continues, “If you teach the Negro that accomplished as much good as any other 

race, he will aspire to equality and justice without regard to race. Such an effort would upset the 

program of the oppressor in Africa and America” (Woodson). In order to create a class of 

servitude, America’s slave’s culture had to prevent blacks will and ability to learn. This can be 

seen in the laws created against black slaves in America like the one in North Carolina stating 

that a slave should not learn (North Carolina 1830-1831 Act). 

23 

 

Though it was illegal for slaves to have an education, some slaves were still able to write 

their narratives. Slave narratives are written works by former slaves to tell their stories and 

“represent the unrepresentable” (Earnest, 2001).  Slaves learned to read and write through 

“clandestine instruction” (Sterling, 16). Some accounts are written with the assistance of 

someone else who takes dictions. They provide accounts of different eras of slavery from the 

colonial to the post-Civil War (Earnest, 2001). These narratives were a testament to their 

determination to speak their truth during a time period where blacks were punished and or killed 

for exhibiting literary skills. Some of the popular slave narratives were written by Olaudah 

Equiano (1792), Sojourner Truth (1823), and Frederick Douglass (1845). Even before 

Woodson’s the Mis-Education of the Negro, black people understood the danger of the 

traditional educational system cloaked with white supremacy - therefore a collective community 

response was created to provide an inclusive and adequate educational system for black people. 

When blacks were punished for attempting to get an education, black churches and educated 

community representatives would take on the responsibility (Anderson, 1988). Also, African 

Americans created private schools for their children, showing great determination to instill in 

them knowledge. The strenuous efforts of Blacks collaboratively working together in the South 

to provide students with a quality education proceeded and created the American public-school 

system (Anderson). In the North there were even collaborations with White radicals like the 

Quakers  and the American Missionary Association supported the educational advancement of 

Blacks (Douglas) (Cabral).  It should be noted that Black women have always played a critical 

role in educating the black communities (Cabral) (Loder-Jackson, 267) (Baylor) (Johnson K) 

(Lusane).   

24 

 

The dominant narrative that Blacks were inferior to Whites, continued to engulf the 

educational experience of black people. Therefore, people of color were encouraged to take 

subordinate labor manual classes in early American education.  In the South, there was a goal to 

educate African Americans in a domestic or manual labor trade; these school curriculums 

encouraged the development of maids, janitors, and cooks to assist with the economic growth of 

blacks, to prevent competition with whites for jobs (Anderson, 1988). 

Due to the historical position of black slaves as inferior in America, it led to traditional 

curriculums created that sustained the belief of black as subordinates and totally erased their 

history from textbooks. Therefore, blacks retaliated by creating their own form of education that 

was inclusive of their culture, African centered education. It is an alternative educational 

pedagogy against the dominant narrative of white supremacy that infuses culturally relevant 

narratives, morale, academic excellence, and other holistic features to effectively educate and 

raise the African child (The Garvey School). This is one of the counternarrative to an educational 

system in America that assaulted black children for centuries.  

As stated earlier African Centered Schools/Pan-Africanist Schools were urban area 

responses to structural racism in the United States. The Pan-Africanist education “combines 

concepts of black American nationality with commitment to linking black struggles worldwide” 

(Rickford). Beyond providing academic excellence, Pan-African nationalist schools decolonized 

minds, nurtured the next generation of activists, promoted black consciousness, and encouraged 

a global African identity (Rickford). Pan-African Nationalist schools were seen as a “political 

and spiritual extension of the Third World” positioning themselves against a global imperialism 

towards African descended people (Rickford, 3). Some of the first Pan-African schools emerged 

during the 70s and were started as community control schools like the Ocean Hill-Brownsville 

25 

 

School District in New York (Podair). Since then, African Centered Schools created by African 

descendant people living in America have emerged on the continent of Africa. This is illustrated 

through the Kamali Academy in Ghana, The ACE Foundation schools in South Africa, 

Cameroon, and Burkina Faso, and the United African Alliance Community Center in Tanzania.  

Within a colonial discourse, language was used as a tool in education to assimilate 

Africans and annihilate any cultural residue, “The physical violence of the battlefield was 

followed by the psychological violence of the' classroom…” and “The bullet was the means of 

the physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation” (Thiong’o).  In 

discussing the role of imperialism on language, he states, “African countries, as colonies and 

even today as neo-colonies, came to be defined and to define themselves in terms of the 

languages of Europe: English-speaking, French-speaking or Portuguese-speaking African 

countries” (Thiong’o, 1).  He argues for the decolonialization of language and urges African 

authors to use the traditional tongue in literature (Thiong’o). Keto argues for an African-centered 

paradigm to evaluate historical choices when discussing African people endeavors within the 

curriculum (Keto, 100).  There is an ongoing fight against the way traditional history books 

neutralizes slavery, “These history books tend to celebrate a miraculous social transformation of 

Africans in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean” (Keto, 97). These ideas contributed to Africanizing 

the Curriculum. 

 

Therefore, Africanization of the curriculum has emerged in the African context to further 

reestablish the cultural component into the curriculums, like African Centered Education in the 

United States. Africanization is defined as “the process or vehicle for defining, interpreting, 

promoting and transmitting African thought, philosophy, identity, and culture. It encompasses an 

African mindset shift from the European to an African paradigm” (Botha, 2010). This idea has 

26 

 

transferred over into current discussion surrounding education in Africanizing the Curriculum. 

Due to globalization, there has been a push for internationalizing Africa’s educational system. 

However, some scholars believe that internalization solely encourages global needs at the 

expense of local needs, while Africanizing serves an important role for “promoting national 

culture, pride, and symbols” (Sehoole, 2004). 

 

South Africa has been at the forefront of discussing Africanizing the Curriculum. In 

discussing the educational system in South Africa, one has to discuss apartheid,  

 

... the racial institution that was established in 1948 by the National Party that governed 
South Africa until 1994.  The term which means “apartness,” reflected a violently 
repressive policy designed to ensure that whites, who comprised 20% of the nation's 
population, would continue to dominate the country (BLACKPAST).  
 
 Apartheid represents one of the many inhumane systems in Africa. Walker highlights 

 

“the bias of the syllabus, the dominant teaching methods, and teacher’s inability or unwillingness 

to transform history in school classrooms” in South Africa due to Apartheid (Walker, 1990). The 

article highlights political repression, opposition, and resistance that has occurred as educators 

and students fought for the inclusion of the African experience. In the short film, Some Children 

Are More Equal Than Others: Education in South Africa there is a description of the current 

educational system in post-apartheid South Africa (Gottried, 2015). Scholars like Nomalanga 

Mkhize states that “Deracializing the school system did not solve the problem…Deracialization 

is not transformative…What is transformative is changing the structure that set up the system”.  

To put this quote in context, education in South Africa was separated by blacks and whites. 

Some South Africans argued for the desegregation of school systems - but Mkhize states that it 

means nothing if you do not change the infrastructure that created it. There was also a discussion 

of the top/bottom school system and how the poor economic issues caused poor infrastructure. 

27 

 

Similarly, in South Africa, there were people like Steve Biko, a revolutionary scholar-

activist, who promoted black consciousness as a way to combat the oppressive apartheid regime. 

Steve Biko defined Black Consciousness as “the realization by the black man of the need to rally 

together with his brothers around the cause of their operation-the blackness of their skin-and to 

operate as a group in order to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual 

servitude” (Biko, 1978).  He continues and states that it “infuses the black community with a 

new-found pride in themselves, their efforts, their value systems, their culture, their religion and 

their outlook to life”. These are early remnants of Africanizing the curriculum. 

The disparities within the South African educational system can be traced back to 

legislative mandates like the Bantu Educational laws. Former Prime Minister Hendrick 

Verwoerd stated in 1953 “…If the native in South Africa is being taught to expect that he will 

lead his adult life under a policy of equal rights he is making a big mistake…” (Walker, 1990). 

Bantustans were territories set aside for blacks in South Africa that was a part of the apartheid 

policy, known also as homelands. They were created as a result of the 1963 Land Act.   

 Many other events also occurred to attempt to challenge the Afrikaans’s view of absolute 

rule in sectors like education. Yet, none was more boisterous than the Soweto Rebellion of June 

16, 1976. Scholar C.R.D. Halisi stated that it “set South Africa on the path of irreversible 

change” (Halisi, 1999).  The challenge was rather, or not African students would be allowed to 

learn English, an international language vs. Afrikaans and also the consideration that none of 

their African languages were included in the curriculum. A common slogan that was paraded 

was “Afrikaans is not spoken north of the Limpopo River” (Halisi, 1999). African students in 

South Africa gathered together to protest the imposition of the Afrikaans Language. The Soweto 

march consisted of 15,000 students who were going to Orlando Stadium, but they were 

28 

 

intervened by police who opened fired on them (Mafeje,1978). 50,000 rounds of ammunition 

against the students were used, 284 killed, and 2000 students were injured during this event 

according to Mafeje data (Mafeje,1978).   

Africana Women Stories: Leadership, Activism, and Resistance 

 

By understanding Eurocentricity and the systematic oppressions like slavery and 

colonialism that led to the necessity of black resistance– one can begin to understand the critical 

role black women have played in these efforts. Prior to discussing the distinctiveness in 

leadership, there is an exploration of black women, activism, and education through gendered 

theories and historical accounts. Within Black Women’s activism, they have also been 

challenged by not only racism, but the patriarchy from both black and white men. These issues 

should be acknowledged, and also provides rationale for separate theories specific to the black 

woman’s experience. An overview of Educational Leadership and African Centered 

Educational Leadership provides more background concerning the women in my study. In 

addition, the section on mothering and leadership specifies the women in my research 

leadership style and significance. 

  

Multiple gendered theories can be used to explore these black women’s experiences; 

however, my research is primarily womanist due to the women in my study lifestyle and their 

leadership positions that are primarily community oriented, garnering them to have a collective 

consciousness.  

 

Black Feminism is a "self-conscious struggle on the behalf of Black women…" (Collins, 

Feminist 15). Black women have been stereotyped based on their intelligence, work habits, and 

sexuality (Collins, Feminist 25). There is a focus on preserving the Black Women's Intellectual 

Tradition as well within black feminism. Black Feminism has also contributed to the idea of 

29 

 

other-mothering, a characteristic of black women educators using parental skills in the 

classroom (Collins). Other black feminism includes Black Internationalist Feminism that 

"challenged heteronormative and masculinist articulations of nationalism while maintaining the 

importance, even centrality, of national liberation movements for achieving Black women's 

social, political, and economic rights…" (Higashida, 2). 

 

Womanism is  theoretical framework that focuses on the black women, however it has a 

more inclusive view the community and their relationship with black men and family. Alice 

Walker, links womanhood with community survival, which is the basis of womanism. She 

defined womanist in a twofold definition, emphasizing that a womanist is "Committed to the 

survival and wholeness of the entire people, male and female…." (Walker, xi). Most womanist 

ideologies have an emphasis on the collective including the family, community, and nation, 

versus just the woman herself (Walker) (Smitherman). Other womanist ideologies have been 

created to further deepen the black woman's role in her community like African, Africana, and 

Kawaida womanism.  

 

Africana Womanism a theory first formulated by Dr. Clenora Hudson-Weems is 

considered to be family-centered and race-based with eighteen characteristics that include self-

definer, family-centered, in concert with the male in the struggle, and spiritual (Weems). 

Kawaida Womanism by Tiamoyo Karenga is similar to Africana womanism, but based on a 

Kawaida philosophy that emphasizes cultural grounding and social change (T. Karenga).  

Kolawole's African womanism for African women states, 

There is feminism where all the problems in society are seen as caused by men. I   don't 
believe in that. I don't believe men are the creators of the problems in society…I do 
believe that men and women have to work together to solve the problems in 
society… (Kolawole). 

 
 
 
 
 

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Rallying for the de-establishment of the binary opposition and the collective consciousness, she 

asserts, “To Africans, womanism is the totality of feminine self-expression, self-retrieval, and 

self-assertion in positive cultural ways…" (Kolawole). South African media guru, culturalist, 

and artist Masechaba Ndoluvu explains how she views her gendered self-concerning society, 

I'm not feminist. I'm an Africanist. I don't relate to the world-based view on gender 
and I don't think anyone should, because then we would be disempowering 
ourselves…I am for people. I am for Africa, I'm for building this continent, loving it 
and moving it  forward for the sake of progress…(Masechaba). 

 
 
 
 
 
Her statement displays the complexity of gender perception in Africa, and to box it under 

feminism or just womanism can be fragile. However, the ideas surrounding womanism still 

align very closely with Masechaba communal message. It helps to sum up the idea of a 

woman's role in nation-building, which is a very womanist agenda.  

Educational Leadership 

 

 

Leaders usually have two functions, provide direction and exercise influence within a 

specific social context (Leithwood & Riehl). Influence versus force is something that is highly 

necessary, especially as we think of a true educational context that is collaborative in nature. 

Traditionally within education, leadership has been identified with one’s ability to progress 

learning and outcome goals, however due to systematic issues especially within a marginalized 

communities – leadership encompass so much more (Leithwood & Riehl) (Khalifa). It is not 

always affiliated with a particular position, it is a function, “persons in many different roles may 

do the work of leadership…” (Leithwood & Riehl). In addition, leadership is contextual and 

contingent based on the social organizations, individuals involved, and  resources - it should be 

noted that “No one formula of effective leadership is applicable in all context” (Leightwood & 

Riehl).  In general, school leadership is “the work of mobilizing and influencing others to 

articulate and achieve the school’s shared intention and goals” (Leightwood & Riehl). The study 

31 

 

of educational leadership includes the school’s leadership, and other components like morale 

distribution in maintaining school’s culture, leadership functions, transformation processes in the 

organization, and instruction (Cambridge). Khalifa’s research emphasized the community 

orientation of a school leader in an urban area, this idea is central to an African Centered 

Educational Leadership approach (Khalifa). Due to the hybridity of African Centered Education, 

and the different manifestations of African Centered institutions of learning that include 

community spaces, cultural heritage centers, and spiritual schools, a working definition of 

African Centered Educational Leadership is the study of styles and mechanism in influencing 

and mobilizing the institutions educational goals that are rooted in the culture and indigenous 

knowledge systems of the locale – in addition its obligation to the community as a whole. 

South Africa’s Educational Leadership and The Role of Black Women 

 

In general, there is a lack of research on women’s leadership role in Africa, however due 

to South Africa’s positionality as a more developed country and leader in education – they have 

been identified as a country that has the highest publications on women’s  leadership (Nkoma).  

The study of women in leadership roles has been identified as a critical initiative to the African 

Renaissance, the total political and cultural renewal of Africa (Nkoma). Most articles discuss 

challenges of African women in leadership which are attributed to early socialization, limited 

educational attainment, multiple roles, gender stereotyping, subtle discrimination, organization 

policies and procedures (Nkoma). On other hand, many of the studies do not explore the 

experiences of the women leaders. Women multiple roles as mothers, wives, daughters, and 

workers contribute to their identities as well as challenges (Nkomoa). Also, women are 

identified as too soft,  and emotional, they are subject to different standards (Nkoma). When 

studying African women and leadership, there has been a call for a meso-level approach that 

32 

 

includes individual, social, and organization. Women’s leadership in African Leadership is 

transitory, not fossilized, and should not be upheld to old perspectives that are not relevant to 

the time (Nkoma). African’s women’s liberation is intrinsically linked with other liberation 

struggles like slavery, hegemonic globalization, and colonialism (Nkoma). In general, an 

African women’s leadership should “deconstruct, dismantle, build, and construct” (Nkoma). 

 

In Nelson Mandela's autobiography A Long Walk To Freedom, he mentions that his 

mother gave him his first educational experience through the Xhosa stories she told him when 

he was young (Mandela, 1995). She is representative of many black women in South Africa 

who teach their children from the womb even before they go to school. Simultaneously, black 

women have been their children biggest advocates for a good education. In Phyllis Ntantala's 

autobiography, A Life's Mosaic, she illustrates mothers speaking passionately against the 

implementation of the Bantu Laws (Ntantala, 2009). Bantu Laws created a marginalized 

educational system for black people in South Africa by prioritizing a curriculum that taught 

servitude similar to earlier schools in America. For example, one parent stated in a political 

meeting, "Whose children must be doomed to no education while other people's get 

education..." (Ntantala, 2009). According to Ntantala, "the fight against Bantu Education was a 

fight for the mothers of the nation", which further demonstrating black women's political 

activism surrounding their children education in South Africa (Ntantala, 2009). 

 

However, in contemporary times, specifically in South Africa, gender has a negative 

impact on women's ability to lead in educational institutions due to the interplays of sexism, 

racism, and cultural traditions despite constitutional initiatives that include affirmative action, 

policies, and governmental departments (Lumby, 2011, Diko 2014, Chisholm, 2001). Black 

African women have struggled to obtain position due to gender issues and male dominations 

33 

 

that plays favoritism to male and white female counterparts (Mabokela, 2003; Mabokela & 

Magubane, 2004). In 1996 policies adopted the South African constitution, the Bill of Rights 

goal was to achieve and advocate gender equity (Diko, 2014). Even in 2003, the Department of 

Education established the Gender Equality in Education Policy to help in the "training of 

education administrators in the implementation of gender equity programmes," and yet due to 

social resistance the progress is minimal (Diko, 2014; Chisolm and September, 2004). Similar, 

as in the United States, black women educational leaders have and continue to experience the 

same challenges as their South African women counterparts when it comes to obtaining 

leadership positions (Mabokela and Yeukai 2016; Johnson and Thomas, 2012). 

 

In the case of women obtaining leadership positions in educational institutions, 

sometimes, if women work in smaller schools in South Africa, she may obtain leadership roles 

easier, for example, a principal position (Lumby, 2011). On the other hand, males are less likely 

to work in these smaller schools due to the minimum pay (Lumby, 2011). There is a continuing 

message that male leaders are more competent than women leaders in South Africa. Therefore, 

women do not deserve higher pay for the same job or the opportunity to be promoted to 

leadership positions within education (Lumby, 2011). 

United States 

 

Black women have always played a critical role in educating black communities. In 

Cabral's work, Letters from Four Antebellum Black Women Educators to the American 

Missionary Association, 1863-1870, she explores their experiences in using self-help and race 

uplift to teach black's in the South (Cabral). Early Black women before and after slavery felt the 

strong urge to uplift their race (Cabral) (Loder-Jackson, 267) (Baylor) (Johnson K) (Lusane). 

Before it was legal for black people to read and write, they would secretly learn in churches, 

34 

 

deserted railroad cars, abandoned shacks, and under the moonlight (Lusane, 11)(Baylor). Later, 

religious and activist groups like the American Missionary Association that had an integrated 

membership (AMA) would encourage black women educators to teach in the South. When 

black women received their college degrees, they were not using them for individualistic gains, 

but to make their black communities a better place (Cabral). Early black women leaders in 

education values and work ethics tied to their communities. There strong commitment to the 

community was also attributed to their mothering leadership qualities in which radical care 

extended beyond their families. 

 

There has been little research on the significant roles of black women in African 

Centered Institutions in the United States and Africa. In the recently published book We Are An 

African People: Independent Education, Black Power, And the Radical Imagination, he calls 

African Centered Schools Pan-African Nationalist Schools stating, "many Pan-African 

nationalist schools were founded and operated by women" (Rickford, 18). For example, 

Lonnetta Gaines and Victoria Skaggs created Atlanta's Learning House, Mary McDonald 

created the Pan-African Early Education Center, while Alice Walker created Philadelphia's 

ARD Self-Help Center (Rickford, 18). However, there is no discussion about black women and 

outliers like Makini Tchameni and Cheryl O'Neal who traveled to Africa from the United States 

to create African Centered Institutions. There has been some research created to discuss how 

Black South African and Black American women negotiate similar oppressed positions when in 

educational leadership positions (Johnson and Thomas, 164). To further validate these 

oppressions, "gender-based power dynamics and male-dominant norms have routinely limited 

the upward mobility of Black African women" (Johnson and Thomas, 163). 

35 

 

 

A study in the UK, Black women’s Intersectional Complexities: The Impact on 

Leadership, also noticed similar challenges when it came to Black Women in Leadership, in 

addition to the lack of research concerning the topic. There was a discussion of Black women 

and biculturalism and their abilities to act as bridges for others sharing their cultural 

competencies (Curtis). Women in general share their interconnectivity through their parenting, 

motherhood, and social networks as women (Curtis). Black women’s vitality is used to combat 

the daily challenges they face and is highlighted in the study as they overcome barriers while 

advocating for social change. Overarching themes in the black women leaders they interviewed 

in the article included echoes of their silentious presence (tokenism), the drivers and their 

narrative journeys (aspirations to stay in the field to overcome barriers) and Communal 

Kinship& Collective Identity (The ability to work as social justice advocates and their 

commitment to the community) (Curtis).  These ideas can be found as well in the United States 

and South Africa. Cultural wealth is used skillfully as a competency within their work, and it is 

called culturally competent leadership (Curtis). Black women also use bridge leadership, linking 

people together. On the other hand, research essentializes black women’s diverse experience by 

lumping them all in one category (Curtis). In addition, it should be noted that the devastating 

impact biculturalism on a woman’s psyche amidst the racial and gender bias is an issue (Curtis). 

Black women leaders are also considered value driven leaders, not being guided by monetary 

gains but a commitment towards making a positive contribution to the organization. These 

women value communal kinship and collective identity, a common thread in my own research 

concerning women stories in African Centered Educational Leadership in South Africa and 

Detroit (Curtis).  

 

36 

 

African Centered Educational Leadership 

 

There is limited research on African Centered Educational Leadership and the styles. 

There is research that explores ideological leaders of African Centered education like Asante, 

Marimba Ani, and Lomotey (Ashanti) (Hopson). Most research stresses the importance of 

Afrocentricity and the curriculum being rooted in one’s black identity (Ashanti). African 

Centered Education is described as transformative, non-oppressive, and counterhegemonic. As 

we think of African Centered institutions overall environment, one can assume that these 

characteristics are also transferable to the leaders. The perspective of an African Centered 

Educational Leadership has been explore based on past leaders, but not current ones like my 

research.  

 

However, there is a consistent lack concerning the daily lives and experiences of the 

leaders at African Centered Institutions, in addition to the current gender dynamic of black 

women leading these spaces.  Due to the lack of literature concerning African Centered 

Educational Leadership, an article titled What's Educational Leadership without an African-

Centered Perspective? Explorations and Extrapolations states that we must lean on the 

autobiographical context of former leaders in African Centered institutions like Carter G. 

Woodson who wrote the Mis-Education of the Negro (Hopson). In addition, as it concerns 

African American school’s leadership, there is an acknowledgement to black women being at 

the forefront (Hopson). These women include Fanny Jackson Coppin, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary 

McLeod Bethune, Nannie Helen Burroughs, and Septima Clark, women who have contributed 

to the development of and African-Centered perspective in Educational Leadership (Hopson).  

 

Black political leaders and organizations are also identified as critical, like Marcus 

Garvey, Haki, and Safisha Madhubuti, and the black panthers, an  African Centered education is 

37 

 

highly linked to social justice rather is it’s the Black Power Movement or the Black Lives 

Matter Movement (Hopson). It is also recognized that African Centered schools are shules did 

at one point have a robust leadership organization that emphasized an African Centered 

community and prototype with the creation of the Council of Independent Black Institutions 

(CIBI) in 1972 (Hopson). African Centered institutions were essentially community grassroot 

spaces of learning in spite of the catastrophic assault on the black mind that continues today 

though the Miseducation of the Negro was written in 1933 (Podair). African Centered Schools, 

also known as Pan-Africanist Schools, once started out as community based not wanting to 

affiliate with governmental resources, but now there are African Centered Schools that are 

charter, and this touchy relationship with the state and national government has impeded on the 

mission and vision of these schools with state mandates (Hopson). It has also been discussed 

that due to the challenges of resource attainment of African Centered Institutions, these radical 

spaces did take state money (Fabayo). Yet, organizations like CIBI did not want African 

Centered Charter Schools in their organization due to their original grassroot nature, which 

caused many schools to leave its establishment including one the institutions in my study 

Timbuktu Academy of Science and Technology in Detroit, Michigan. 

Mothering In African Centered Educational Leadership   

 

Mothering is an African Centered Educational Leadership style. It is used in many of the 

African Centered institutions by the black women globally who create, manage, and operate 

these institutions. Mothering has been identified as a leadership style among women leaders in 

education in both South Africa and the United States. In South Africa, it is a tool to provide 

social capital for their feminine roles (Lumby 2011, 2014; Corsun & Costen 2001). In a study 

that discusses women principals in small schools in South Africa, the text stated, 

38 

 

The capacity for multi-skilling and the hard work necessary to run a family seemed 
translated into the attributes necessary to run a small school. Several respondents   noted 
that, in their view, they had been appointed for their capacity for hard work 
(Lumby, 2011). 

 
 
 
 
 
In describing women leadership styles in this small school, the text mentioned, 

 

Similarly, there appeared to be an attempt to transform the low-status role of the 
mother into a kind of social capital that could be used to lend symbolic power to   lead. 
The size of the school and, in some cases, lack of resource led to a mothering 
approach. 

 
 
 
 
 
Mothering as a leadership style can be used as an advantage, however, at the same time, it can 

be used to limit their capacity as leaders due to the common perception as mothers being unable 

to do a job (Lumby, 2011). 

 

 Mothering as a tool in black women educators’ experiences emerged on several 

occasions in the literature of black women educators (Baylor)(Oka)(Msila)(Karenga)(Hill-

Brisbane)(Johnson K)(Johnson)(Collins). Black women educators practiced an ethic of care and 

praxis of love (Hill-Brisbane) (Johnson K). Black feminist thought has called it "other-

mothering," however within womanism, it is described as just mothering (Johnson)(Collins)(T. 

Karenga). In Revolutionary Mothering: Love On The Front Line, Cynthia Dewi Oka, activist, 

and educator, explores the tenets of motherhood inclusive of political space. She quotes Dana 

Erekat, "Motherhood is an act of defiance in the midst of colonization…" (Oka, 51). Also, "The 

ethos of mothering involves valuing and of itself a commitment to the survival and thriving of 

other bodies. It presents a fundamental contradiction to the logic of capitalism, which unmoors 

us from each other" (Oka, 52). Women of color, in particular, have also been, "violently 

punished and stigmatized for mothering…" (Oka). Some of the tenets she suggests as she 

advocates for motherhood as a revolutionary praxis includes, politicizing familial love, 

advances in a justice-centered concept of health, development of radical mobile autonomous 

39 

 

free schools, collective distribution and sharing, and the decolonization of our relationship with 

mother earth (Oka). In Kawaida Womanism, Tiamoyo Karenga discussed the importance of 

motherhood in understanding her theory. Anna Julia Cooper, educator and black liberation 

activist is seen as the prototype of someone who represents Kawaida Womanism.  She states, 

The role of mother is not only one of co-procreation along with the father, but also 
one of assuming the social responsibility to nurture, teach, mold, mentor and bring 
into being spiritually and ethically grounded human beings in the interest of the good in 
the world and to ensure continuity in family and community. These practices are to be 
extended in society to build life-enhancing and emancipatory organizations, 
institutions and social movements as is reflected in the history of the mothers of the 
freedom movements in this country and throughout the pan-African world (T. Karenga). 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
She provides a panoramic view of the all-encompassing role of the mother within the African 

Diaspora, in which teaching is at the center. 

Badejo connects mothering inextricably to African feminism by stating, 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
In this definition, we are presenting with the all-inclusive role of the African woman, "who 

African feminism embraces femininity, beauty, power, serenity, inner harmony, and 
a complex matrix of power. It is always poised and centered in womanness. It 
demonstrates that power and femininity are intertwined rather than antithetical. 
African femininity complements African masculinity and defends both with the 
ferocity of the  lioness while simultaneously seeking male defense of both as critical, 
demonstrable, and mutually obligatory. African feminism is active and essential to 
the social, political, economic, cultural, and evolutionary aspects of human order 
(Badejo, 1). 

defends both with ferocity of the lioness while seeking male defense," the African woman is 

described as the protector of the global family (Badejo, 1). In describing the African woman, 

she continues by asserting, "through the womb of woman all humanity passes" (Badejo,1). 

Badejo mentions African and European feminism are culturally different and cannot be used to 

exchange of each other due to Western patriarchy (2). She reiterates, 

 
 
 

The twin monsters of enslavement and colonialism marginalized African womanhood 
by denying the African male the power to protect women's custodial rights. In the  West, 
without African male protection from external threats, the agency of African 

40 

 

womanhood was placed in direct conflict with Western male sexism. That Western 
sexism had denied its own womanhood legitimacy through its mythicoreligious systems 
first by demoting European womanhood from adult status to legal minors, and then 
denying them access to the priestesshood, a phenomenon that never occurred in 
traditional African societies (7). 

 
 
 
 
 
 
In discussing mythico-religious foundations, she provides examples in Nigerian culture of 

motherhood and African feminism through the narratives of Osun, the goddess of wealth, 

feminity, power, and fecundity (2). Osun is also the only woman who was there at the creation 

of earth (2) She states, " As an African woman, Osun plays many, roles that emanate from her 

central role as woman and mother" (3). In addition, when we think of the Akan tradition, there 

is a woman central figure called the Queen-Mother (5). The Akan believe "through the womb of 

woman all humanity passes" women hold an extraordinary position in leadership and the 

political sphere (5). The main tasks of the Queen-mother, 

the only person allowed to correct the Ohene, the ruler, in public; and second, she is 
the voice for women's issues in the political forum. The chief priestess in the Akan 
structure also provides some examples of mythico-religious foundations of power  and 
femininity in African social order (6). 

 
 
 
 
 
These are just a few examples of how women in African culture and tradition display different 

tenets of the mothering figure. 

 

In discussing women's educational leadership in Africa, concerning African Feminist 

Theory, Msila states, "mothering becomes a crucial factor in defining feminism" (Msila). He 

continues, "The values associated with motherhood have proven to be critical in organisations 

where women lead" (Msila). The leadership qualities of mothering include caring, loving, 

protecting, providing, and serving (Msila). Simultaneously, mothers are also targeted 

stereotypically for not being good leaders, 

 
 
 

Therefore women as actual putative mothers, maybe perceived as less of a match to 
the prototype of an ideal employee and particularly to that of a leader: women who 
wish to achieve and enact leadership roles must therefore contend with stepping 

41 

 

outside the acceptable notion of what it is to be a woman in order to match the 
leadership prototype.  In doing so, they draw down disapproval for transgressing 
boundaries of being women (Msila 90). 

 
 
 
 
There is also the challenge of being too motherly that includes the following signs, 1. Start to 

believe that the organization cannot do without her, 2. Cannot stand the thought that her 

followers might fail, so she tries to be overprotective 3. Tires herself and forgets her own needs, 

wants, and boundaries (Msila). 

 

In the sincerest form of mothering, there is a stress of being a good mother within 

marginalized groups that contribute to illnesses like post-partum depression (Keefe, 2018). In 

most societies, it is considered to be an honor to be a mother; however, motherhood requires a 

lot of work inclusive of providing financial stability, emotional support, and physically attention 

manifested in time or going to events on behalf of your child (Mesman, 2016). In addition to the 

assumed task of being a mother, women of color have to deal with the intersection of race, 

class, and gender that adds to that difficulty especially when you are black or Latina (Keefe, 3) 

(Collins, 2000). There is this idealized perception of being a strong mother placed on women of 

color, which causes them to take on more than they can bear, ignoring self in order to fit a 

prototype of motherhood (Hamilton-Mason, 2009). All these things contribute to post-partum 

depression to mothers of color. Post-partum depression, similarly to other forms of depression 

includes "disrupted sleep, poor concentration and appetite, decreased self-esteem, feelings of 

failure, and lack of energy" (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Mothers are prone to 

these type of illnesses. 

 

It is said that black women mother the nation. Nation-building is one of the core themes 

of black women educational leadership in African Centered Institutions, it is the "conscious and 

focused application of our people's collective resources, energies, and knowledge to the task of 

42 

 

liberating and developing the psychic and physical space that we identify as ours" (Akoto). 

Akoto is an African Centered Educator and scholar who provided a definition of nation-building 

that is Pan-African in essence. Pan-Africanism emphasizes black people globally working 

together through black cultural sustainability and their preservation despite white hegemonic 

structures that have tried to annihilate black culture. Also, it should be noted that African 

Centered schools that emerged rapidly in the 1970s were created and operated by mostly 

women, and it emphasized nation building (Walker) (Rickford). Also called Pan-African 

Nationalist schools, they were “political and spiritual extension of the Third World" positioning 

themselves against global imperialism towards African descended people (Rickford, 3). For 

example, Makini Tchameni, a black woman educational leader embodies nation-building in my 

study. She states, 

 
 
 
 
 

As Africans commit themselves to the African Renaissance, which means a strong 
desire to rebuild, revitalize and develop the continent and its people worldwide, 
education must become a strategic tool for nation-building (Tchameni). 

The co-creator of three schools in Africa, though she is a black woman from Houston, 

Texas. However, due to Tchameni's global idea of Nation-building and Pan-Africanism, her 

connectivity to the global black community has led to an expansion of educational institutions. 

 

Cheryl O'Neal is another example of a black woman from America who develops 

African Centered Educational institutions in Africa based on nation building. She fled with her 

husband Pete O'Neal to Tanzania due to their involvement in the Black Panther Party. Cheryl 

contributed to the development of the United African Alliance Community Center (UAACC) in 

their hometown of Arusha. On the UAACC website, it states, "From the beginning, it was a 

family effort…", the family is also a word that includes nation and the collective community. 

The community center offers programs and courses in education, arts & crafts, computer 

43 

 

science, sports, and health. Pollard also has done a study on black women from the US creating 

or contributing to nation-building in Africa (Pollard). 

 

Tchameni and O'Neal are black women leaders in education from the US with ACIs in 

Africa, and they are a part of the African Diaspora. The African Diaspora is a "triadic 

relationship linking a dispersal group of people to the homeland of Africa and to their host or 

adopted country" (Harris, 3). Hamilton furthers this definition and states it "connotes people 

whose social relationships have been largely inscribed by their geographical displacement at 

historically significant moments…" (Hamilton, 4). Tchameni and O'Neal are also participating 

in Black globalism also called Black Internationalism, the manner in which transnational 

relationships have encouraged cultural exchanges (Sterling, 1998). Transnational relations are 

"contacts, coalitions, and interactions across state boundaries that are not controlled by the 

central foreign policy of governments..." (Keohane and Nye, 1970). Their cultural exchanges 

displayed in the ACIs are examples of nation-building. Black women have globally preserved 

and archived black culture as a form of nation-building (Pollard) (Tchameni) (O'Neal). 

 

Race-uplift is also a part of nation-building. The literature discussed how black women 

educators in early American history contributed to race uplift (Cabral) (Johnson K)(Loder-

Jackson). Cabral states, "For the majority of African Americans, race uplift simply meant 

having all the rights reserved for all members of the American society, White and Black" 

(Cabral). It started as "grassroots effort among the slave community, growing from a constant 

murmur to a shout within the slave and Freedmen communities" (Cabral) (Baylor). She 

mentions, "These women internalized the importance of the uplift movement and sacrificed 

personal pleasures to educate and elevate" (Cabral) (Baylor). Cabral discusses intricately how 

race uplift and self-awareness are some of the key reasons black women went into education. 

44 

 

She continues by stating, "The notion of race uplift and elevation is interconnected with the 

concepts of race obligation, duty, and equality" (Cabral). 

 

In addition, black women’s spirituality and consciousness have sustained them in their 

leadership activities. Previous, research states, "Every community of resistance needs a 

collective of healers…", and the six black women that I study embody a power to heal through 

education (Oka).  Through the Africana woman's healing role, a black woman’s spirituality is 

linked to their nation-building efforts. This leads to an Afrocentric cosmology, connecting her 

spirit and consciousness to educate. The way black women educational leaders approach and 

sustain African Centered Educational institutions is "supernatural, intergenerational, and 

cosmological visions that fulfill their desire to lead the race into wholeness and prosperity, often 

knowing that the success of their activism would be a reward for the next or future generations" 

(Temple, 23). Afrocentric cosmology is "a category and tool for understanding African women's 

organic, or indigenous knowledge" (Temple, 24). It also regards to how "Africana women 

conceptually anticipated freedom and wholeness for African people and how they suspended 

and deprioritized the value of their present existence in order to predict, prophecy, and 

cognitively secure cosmological favor for the race" (Temple, 23). 

 

While reading the literature concerning black women educators, ideas surrounding an 

Africana Woman Afrocentric cosmology emerged. In discussing early black women educational 

leaders and their commitment to the race uplift and their community, Cabral states, "These 

women internalized the importance of the uplift movement and sacrificed personal pleasures to 

educate and elevate" (Cabral). There was also an intuitive knowing and holistic vision amongst 

these black women educators "carry on the mission of its predecessors, serving as 

intergenerational bridge-builders" (Loder-Jackson, 287) (Baylor). Black women educators 

45 

 

"made a conscious and deliberate decision to put the basic needs of the Black community before 

their personal needs and professional aspirations" (Cabral). The emphasis on the internalization 

on the import of race upliftment shows an essence embedded into their work, an Afrocentric 

cosmology. The Afro-centric cosmology of black women educators in leadership in the past has 

been one of self-sacrifice, intuitive knowing, and community responsibility. These women 

display an optimal consciousness, and an embedded sense of responsibility to their culture. 

Conclusion 

 

Chapter 1, a literature review, locates the efforts of the six black women educators and 

leaders  in my study in the greater struggle of black liberation and resistance through their 

efforts in African Centered Education and nation building. An overview of enslavement and 

colonialism helps to understand the emergence of black resistance. The various forms of black 

resistance combat a violent colonial and slave psyche that still affect African descendant people 

today especially in education. Though the literature concerning black women leaders in an 

African centered institution is scarce, we can see some trends in the scholarship about black 

women educators and their role in the greater struggle for black resistance.  They have a clear 

commitment to their task to teach and uplift their community. Black women leaders also have 

an embedded desire to help transform the black community that is due to their cultural memory. 

These ideas exemplify nation-building, mothering, and their call to educate. Gendered theories 

like feminism and womanism provide a counter narrative to the traditional rhetoric of patriarchy 

as it pertains to black women and leadership. Then, there is a summation on the literature 

already in existence concerning the emergent themes in my study – Mothering, Nation-building, 

and The Call or Consciousness to Educate. Lastly, the black women educators and leaders are 

described in an Afrocentric Cosmology displaying their roles as healers. The literature review 

46 

 

frames my study displaying my research significance and how it fills in gaps, while locating 

Africana women stories in the greater struggle and narrative of black liberation and resistance. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

47 

 

CHAPTER 2 

Research Design And Methodology 

 

I mean mothering is remembering, it's the broken parts and putting the dismembered parts 
together. It's calling them back and saying you will live, you will not die… Mama Sandra 

 
Introduction 
 
 

Chapter 2 describes my research design and methodology. Lightfoot's portraiture 

methodology allows me to blend the women’s narratives with scholarship to create an authentic 

story that is also empirically rigorous. The hybridity of this qualitative methodology weaves 

these women’s stories together in an aesthetic whole. In addition, the chapter explores the origin 

of  women’s leadership in South Africa and the United States as a critical tool in my 

methodology. Since the study focuses on Africana women, Africa is used as starting point to 

illustrate black women’s historical positions of power. Leadership is used as a tool, and 

acknowledging black women’s past and present leadership position adds to the story and analysis 

to place my study on a continuum. 

Why Portraiture? 

In searching for a methodology, I was looking for one that would allow me to have 

flexibility in telling these women stories and give me permission as a researcher to participate in 

the study in a holistic way.  I also consider myself a black woman, who is an African Centered 

Educator that has served in leadership positions in African Centered Institutions. Hence, my 

relationships with my subjects mattered, rather, or not I have known them for a brief or long time 

– I wanted the women in my study to feel as if I respected them and that they were in fact human 

beings and change agents making a difference in this world vs. just a subject of my study. 

There are many methods within qualitative research, and some do overlap. At times it can 

be difficult making a choice due to the variety. However, for my doctoral study, after much 

48 

 

contemplation, I have decided to use Portraiture Methodology, “a method of social science 

inquiry distinctive in its blending of art and science, capturing the complexity, dynamics, and 

subtlety of human experience and organizational life” (LawrenceWebsite).  There is also an 

emphasis on the overall authentic experience of conducting the research vs. just the validity and 

or necessity of proving your research agenda. This method “document the culture of institutions, 

the life stories of individuals, stages of human development, essential relationships, processes, 

and concepts” (LawrenceWebsite). Also, the portraits illustrate dimensionality of human 

experience in social and cultural context, conveying the perspectives of the people who are 

negotiating those experiences” (LawenceWebsite).  

There are 5 components of portraiture methodology: context, voice, relationship, 

Emergent Themes, and the aesthetic whole. Context is the research physical and intellectual 

setting. Voice is how the researcher inserts her own self into the study without being 

overbearing, but it also displays the relational nature between the researcher and subject. 

Relationship depicts the researcher’s interaction to the subjects, to self, to the study, and its 

greater contribution to the world. Emergent themes occur through the coding and triangulation of 

the data, interview descriptions of the phenomenon or metaphors are used to describe the 

situation. Lastly, the aesthetic whole is your research creation, what is the overall picture that 

gathered from you inquiry. 

 

A narrative inquiry is very similar to a portraiture methodology in that both are 

phenomenological studies of an experience. However, it consists of three commonplaces: 

Temporality, Sociality, and Place. I have a challenge with the ideas of temporality, there is an 

emphasis on the physical element of time. Time is only on earth, it does not include a space for a 

49 

 

more spiritual time, which cannot be viewed in a linear way. A space for Spirituality is important 

in an African Cosmology. 

There is a spiritual element to these women stories that cannot be measured, and it 

transcends the traditional view of time. There is still this element of rigidity in narrative inquiry 

that negates the flexibility of sharing a story that is authentic vs just scientific. There is also a 

justification component in narrative inquiry. Yes, the research should be justifiable, but one is 

practical justification and I want to know according to whose practicality? Who justifies rather 

or not your research is valid. It is a western hegemonic way of looking at research that is too 

linear. Both Narrative Inquiry and Portraiture or Conceptual models, but one is more spiritual. 

Portraiture Methodology allows for the spirit of these women to shine through, transcending 

space and time to ancestral land. It surpasses the initiatives of general narrative methods by 

providing room for the known and unknown. It’s not just temporal, it’s spiritual. The 

conversation with spirit in my work is the perfect blend of science and art, portraiture. My 

research is ancestral, based on a lineage of black womanhood. 

Portraiture Methodology 
 
 

According to Baylor, “Portraitists resist grounding their work in deficiency model, 

therefore the starting point seeks out the good…”, it is based on goodness (Baylor, 53). My 

research reveals successful black women educators and leaders in African Centered Education 

who have contributed to or created an African Centered Institution, displays continuous ties to 

their local and national community, and use mothering as a leadership style. These women have 

created in alternative educational institutions in response to the marginalization of black students 

and people worldwide believing that traditional spaces continue to assault our people and culture. 

These leaders take the stance that assimilation and multiculturalism are cultural assassination if 

50 

 

one is not rooted in self which inclusive of at least the basic knowledge of African(a) history and 

culture.  These women have African Centered institutions that have a greater impact on their 

social justice and counteract deficit studies on marginalized groups. Though there is a lot of 

challenges in black institutions and leaderships, there are some spaces that are thriving despite 

issues. It is these black women continued efforts to find hope in the hopeless, and to live and not 

die. 

Structure 
 
 

Lightfoot posits five essential features of Portraiture Methodology that include Emergent 

Themes, Aesthetic Whole, Context, Voice, and Relationship (Lightfoot, xvii). Though these five 

themes work together seamlessly to create an interwoven study, there is an emphasis on 

emergent themes which are critical to my findings chapters. 

Emergent Themes 
 
 

Emergent themes are revealed through interviews and reoccurring motifs in the data 

collection in my study. It “reflects the portraitist first efforts to bring interpretive insight, analytic 

scrutiny, and aesthetic order to the collection of data” (Lightfoot, 185). The triangulated data, 

internal observation, and relevant preoccupations highlighted the emergent themes. The 

questionnaire used to facilitate the interviews reveal symbols and patterns in the women singular 

and collective story. Resonant metaphors, meaningful words and symbolism also represent 

“…the central core of institutional culture or the dominant dimension of the life story” (198). 

Also, through triangulation, “various strategies and tools of data collection, looking for the points 

of convergence among them...emergent themes arise out of this layering of data, when different 

lenses frame similar findings” (204). Therefore, “the portraitist enters the setting with a 

51 

 

perspective, a framework, and a guiding set of questions that are the result of her previous 

experience, her reviews of the literature, and her conceptual and disciplinary knowledge” (213). 

 Aesthetic Whole 
 
 

The main goal within a portraiture methodology is to create an aesthetic whole by 

blending the empirical with the narrative, which will, “inform and inspire...document and 

transform...speak to the head and to the heart” (Lightfoot, 243). The aesthetic whole is the gestalt 

described as a quilt with many pieces put together strategically to make a beautiful art piece 

(Lightfoot, 244). By analyzing my data, highlighting emergent themes, weaving my findings 

together – I can create a scholarly and artistic work that is reflective of these women collective 

lives (Lightfoot, 247). 

Context, Voice, and Relationship 

 

Context is the research physical and intellectual setting. It is throughout the research 

discussions, in the introduction, literature review, and findings section. Context includes, but is 

not limited to, my rationale for researching women who are leaders in African Centered 

Institutions, as well as their political, cultural, and social environment. Voice is inclusive of the 

researcher and the participants. The researcher inserts her voice into the study through her ideas 

and revelation without being overbearing by displaying the relational nature between researcher 

and subject. Numerous voices are present in this methodology, such as the voice of witness, the 

voice of interpretation, voice as preoccupation, voice as autobiography, lastly, a voice in 

dialogue. My voice has multiple roles as researcher, participant, and interpreter. Lastly, 

Relationship depicts the researcher’s interaction with the subjects, to self, to the study, and its 

greater contribution to the world. Creating authentic and ethical relationships with participants is 

imperative to a portraiture methodology,  

52 

 

The relationship with actors of her research are empathetic in nature, the portraitist 
tries to develop an understanding of their perspective (Lightfoot, 146)…The 
portraitist is aware of the boundaries of her relationship, creating boundaries while 
protecting the vulnerabilities of the actors (Lightfoot, 152). 

 
 
 
 
  
Finally, by highlighting emergent themes, weaving findings together, while being cognizant of 

how context, voice, and relationship interact with other – I am able to create an aesthetic whole 

that is reflective of these women collective lives (Lightfoot, 247). 

 
Data Collection 
 
 

The participants were chosen based on preliminary studies and my academic and career 

experiences. It was through experiences like the Research & Action in the New South Africa 

study abroad (RANSA) program offered by the African American and African Studies Program 

at my university that helped me to form relationships and interest in most of the women chosen 

from South Africa in my study. Also, I met some of the women in Detroit through a previous 

academic internship I completed at Timbuktu Academy of Science and Technology. I engaged in 

the observation of the women leader’s institution before the beginning of my dissertation study 

to verify that it was African Centered in order for the women to gain entry into my study. After 

identifying the women and establishing that their institution fit the African centered criteria, each 

potential participant received an e-mail to gauge whether she wanted to participate in an 

extended study on black women leadership roles in African Centered Education. I also had the 

opportunity to have a brief dialogue with some of the women to garner participation. Before the 

interviews, all the women signed a consent form after an explanation of the study and their role. 

Triangulation is also an accepted analysis tool used to find the emergent themes in portraiture 

methodology. Particularly, using the interviews, content analysis and participant observation  

53 

 

together helped to reveal them. Using different form of data collection served as a way to cross-

check and verify the validity of the dominant motifs. 

Population, Sampling Methods, and Data Analysis 
 
 

My research has received clearance from the Michigan State University Institutional 

Review Board (IRB). In order for me to conduct my interviews, I sent a summary of my research 

to IRB and questionnaire to get approval to proceed with my data collection. I also provided a 

member check for the black women in the study. A member check, “participant or respondent 

validation, is a technique for exploring the credibility of results. Data or results are returned to 

participants to check for accuracy and resonance with their experiences” (Birt, 2016). 

 

Through preliminary research and travel over the last five years in South Africa and 

Michigan, I was able to identify six black women. I used purposive sampling to find black 

women who have created, managed, and or influenced African Centered Institutions. Purposive 

sampling allows the researcher to “select individuals or elements they believe possess unique 

characteristics or perspectives that will provide insight into a particular topic” (McDougal, 157). 

It should be noted that a “convenience sampling which involves drawing elements from a group 

(usually most appropriately regarded as a subpopulation) that is easily accessible by the 

researcher is one of the most commonly used purposive sampling technique” (Kemper, 

Stringfield & Teddlie, 2003, p. 280). 

 

Currently, there is no sampling frame for African Centered Schools and institutions in 

Detroit and South Africa. The Council of Independent Black Institutions (CIBI), listed some 

African Centered Schools in the United States, however, the website content has diminished 

since its creation. Therefore, based on the scholarship of African Centered Education and my 

research, I have created an African Centered Institution criteria list: 

54 

 

1.    The institution practices African Centered Education that allows the black student and 

community to be at the center of their learning experience, utilizing historical, social, and 

cultural examples that are valid to their experiences. 

2.    The institution is led, managed and or influenced significantly by a black women exhibiting 

an African Centered Consciousness. 

3.    The institution is located in South Africa and or Detroit. 
 
4.    The institution contributes successfully to the educational experiences of their black students 

and our community. 

5.    The décor, population, and or programs align with an African Centered agenda. 

       The study consists of 6 black women leaders from African Centered institutions diverse in 

structure. Their institutions include schools, universities, museums, and cultural heritage spaces 

to capture the diverse ways in which black women educate. Below, I provided a description of 

the women’s institutions and context because in Chapter 3 – African Centered Educators: A 

Biographical Context, I provide a more in-depth view of their general lives and experiences in 

order for the reader to become familiar with the participant's background. Chapter 3 also serves 

as a form of context for the reader, which is an essential element of portraiture methodology. 

 

The women in South Africa live in Midrand, Cosmo City, and Sunnyside - all areas 

within Johannesburg and Pretoria, two major cities. All the black women from the United States 

are from Detroit, Michigan. The women leaders have been pre-selected based on 

my earlier studies. Later, I provide the women leader’s names and a description of their African 

Centered Institutions. 

 

Using multimedia sources that describe the women’s identities and African Centered 

Institution has contributed to finding emergent themes through content analysis. These sources 

55 

 

include curricula, propaganda, websites, advertisements, mixed media, and other narratives. 

Most of the women in my study have generated multimedia digital data relevant to content 

analysis. The digitization of their profiles, African centered institutions, and lives illustrate how 

digital humanities intersect with my work. Below provides a list online sources that discuss the 

women work you can find online about their institution and or their lives. 

 

In addition, visiting all the institutions and participating organically in some events, has 

revealed the African Centered Institution and how each embodies their leader’s philosophy 

through their activities, environment, community, and people who frequent these spaces. 

Observations have also revealed emergent themes, allowing me to witness these leaders in their 

natural state illuminating an authentic essence. 

 

Lastly, through data triangulation revealed three emergent themes - mothering leadership, 

nation-building, and the consciousness and spirit to educate –, which converged in the stories of 

black women leaders in African Centered Education. Through repetitive narratives, metaphors, 

symbols, and common ideas surrounding their roles, emergent themes surface linking their 

stories together. For example, common terminology used in their interviews to describe their 

identities and perspectives were identified as it related to their roles. Some content was easier to 

decipher, while other content had multiple layers that required a more in-depth analysis. The 

multiple layers required a closer read of their interviews, content and understanding of silence or 

void. Lastly, there was a unification of the themes in the analysis chapter to get an aesthetic 

whole, a portraiture of the women as a collective. 

Instrumentation 
 
 

Using a survey design to collect data, the interview was the most important tool used to 

get information about their leadership roles and converging identities in African Centered 

56 

 

Education. I used structured interview, there was a “standardized set of questions in a fixed 

order” I used for my participants (McDougal, 230). I created structured interview questions to 

solicit the necessary information for the study that explores the women experiences and 

identities, which also reveal emergent themes that connect their stories.  

 

In visiting each African Centered Institutions, I acted as a participant observer, 

interacting with participants as well as their students, clients, and community members. I also 

surveyed digital content concerning their dimensional lives and African Centered Institutions. 

Origins of Black Women's Leadership  

 

Understanding the Black Women’s Leadership origins is an important tool in my study. 

There are many studies done on black culture from a deficit model like the Moynihan report. 

However, my study seeks to find the greatness of black culture, by highlighting the success of 

black women educators and leaders in African Centered Education. In order for me to discuss 

the positively about black women’s leadership position, I must display early examples of their 

successful leadership campaigns to build my study upon. Therefore, the historical accounts, 

specifically the origins of black women leadership display again that black women’s power has 

always been rooted in black resistance, liberation, and cultural preservation – it is not by happen 

stance. My study is a part of a strong legacy black women leaders, and I am just adding to it.  

 

Since the existence of a black woman, beginning in Africa, she was a Queen or King, 

Queen mother, Amazon, Priest (ess), an Entrepreneur, and even at times socially accepted as a 

man in some complex cultural situations – nevertheless essentially, she was a leader. Before the 

infiltration of colonial regimes, women leaders in Africa were standard versus an anomaly, for 

example, matriarchal political systems (Ampofo, Beoku Betts, Njambi & Osirim, 2004; 

Booysen,1999; Msila, 2016). In the case of South Africa particularly, Vende women who 

57 

 

helped settle disputes, regency, initiation, and spiritual roles were called makhadzi, and they 

were the father's senior sister (Matshidze, 2013). Zulu royal women held leadership roles in the 

military, political, and economic areas before and after the reign of the infamous Shaka Zulu 

(Weir, 2007). Such Southern African groups like the Ba-Pedi encouraged women's leadership 

with a culture of women chiefs (Weir, 2007). The Lovedu, not only had female leadership, but 

passed the role down to their daughter to continue the legacy (Kuper, 1982). Women warriors in 

the Dahomey kingdom beheaded their enemies (Weir, 2007; Ogobomo, 2005). Even in South 

Africa, there are some past women leaders executing people in what now would be considered a 

very manly thing to do. For example, Barotsi Mokwa beheaded her prime minister; she also 

demanded the respect of her kingdom having constituents lay prostrate when they saw her 

(Coillard, 1971). She could even dismiss her husband if she wanted too (Coillard, 1971). The 

Asante people of Ghana had the Queen Mother, affectionately called Ohema, who appointed the 

Ashantehene, ruler, had reign over all the men and women of the kingdom (Ogbomo, 2005). 

Despite the neglect of the significance of the Queen Mother's role due primarily to males who 

have ignored it or described it as "ceremonial catering to women's demands and pride," the 

Queen Mother's role was important even in aiding in wars for her people (Ogbomo, 2005). The 

Asante are in fact a "matrilineal society, children belong to their mother's clan - and matrilocal - 

related females live in one village, but males belong to the Asafo or military companies of their 

fathers" (Ogbomo, 2005). 

 

In Nigeria, chief women like Ahebi stood up to colonial rule despite it weakening their 

power and the Igbo society functioned from a place of egalitarian which accepted and facilitated 

women's leadership (Achebe, 2011). Even in patrilineal societies like the Yoruba, Queen 

Moremi facilitated military intelligence to save her people (Ogbomo, 2005). Also in the Yoruba 

58 

 

culture spirituality, there is a pantheon of goddesses, like Osun, in spirit form protects and fights 

for her people. All these are examples of African women's continued leadership. Pre-colonial 

African women experiences dispelled the myth of docile womanhood that was later forced on 

African cultures due to colonialism disrupting pre-established systems of female leadership. 

Afasi mentions, 

[T]he face of African society on gender equality changed owing to the influence of 
colonialism. Women began to suffer oppression from men. The shackles imposed by 
law, custom, religion, and attitudes forced women to play the second fiddle. In fact, 
women mostly remained relegated to the last rung of the social and political ladder. 
Women no longer were giving the opportunity to exercise any power except those 
supervised by men (2010). 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Again, the chapter highlights past leadership of African women while exploring the literature 

surrounding roles of black women educational leaders in South Africa and the United States, 

focusing on their experiences in traditional and more recently, African Centered institutions. It 

highlights the themes of mothering, nation-building, and spirituality as commonalities in these 

black women stories and how African Centered epistemologies and methodologies can be used 

to further understand their journeys. How are you connecting this previous section on history of 

Black women’s leadership to sections on Black feminist theory? 

 

Due to systems like patriarchy, "a gendered power system, a network of social, political 

and economic relationships through which men dominate and control female labor, 

reproduction, and sexuality, as well as define women's status, privileges and rights in a society", 

the story of the African women who reign and fearlessly wielded their power is skewed 

(Kalabamu, 2004). 

 

Yet and still, there have been female presidents in Africa like Joyce Banda in Malawi, 

and Ellen Sirleaf in Liberia that displays the strength of women's leadership (Madimo, 2016). 

Women have held short-term interim positions as presidents to assist with conflict or bridge 

59 

 

during a specific transition. Some of those women are Ivy Matsepe-Caseburri who served as the 

South African President in 2005, Sylvie Kinigi of Burundi who stayed in office from 1993-1994 

to help rebuild a shattered government, Ohsan Bellepeau of Mauritius, Catherine Samba Panza 

who presided over the Central African Republic, and Rose Francine Rogombé in Gabon (Riley, 

2015). Particularly, when it comes to the development of Africa, it is believed that "Women's 

politics, activisms, and personal practices are the core, the foundational basis, of this alternative 

future for Africa" (Makina, 2014). It is essential that we acknowledge black women's leadership 

roles irrespective of patriarchy violence. Though challenged, African women continue to press 

on, passing down ancient wisdom, 

Every woman lives, from one generation to the next in some society, and each 
woman also lives out her individual biography. By the very act of living, she 
contributes, however minutely, to the shaping of her society and to the course of 
history, even as she is made by society and its historical push and shove 
(Magubane, 2014). 

 
 
 
 
 
 
However, due to colonial and western oppression, women's leadership have been under attack, 

 

 

and research has been used to combat stereotypes and actions associated with black women as 

leaders. Due to the marginalization of women in educational leadership positions, an accurate 

assessment of their administrative skills are limited (Johnson and Thomas, 157). It is important 

to explore their diverse and convergent experiences due to their intersectionalities (Johnson and 

Thomas, 159) (Collins). 

Conclusion 

 

The following chapter discusses my research design and methodology for the study. It 

provides some context on why these women institutions are African Centered. There is also a 

rationale for the usage of a portraiture methodology including the emphasis on goodness, mixture 

of art and scholarship, and the inclusivity of the researcher’s perspectives. There is an 

60 

 

explanation of how the five tenets – emergent theme, aesthetic whole, voice, and relationship of 

portraiture contribute to the study. I describe my instrumentation, as well as my population and 

sampling method. I also provide my methods for data analysis and collection. In addition, I 

provide the origins of black women’s leadership to display that there is a tradition of black 

women’s leadership and this serves as an important tool of analysis. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

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Introduction 
 

CHAPTER 3 

Africana Women Leaders: A Biographical Context 

“A nation can rise no higher than its woman…” Mama Cha-Rhonda 

Chapter 3 provides biographical context for the women in my study. Context is one of 

the critical tenets of a Portraiture Methodology.  This is an in-depth synopsis that provides a 

compact portrait of their lives, as well as a brief description of their educational institutions. The 

six women are the following - Dr. Ziphora Moichela, who researches indigenous knowledge 

systems, and works at the University of South Africa in Pretoria. It is known proudly as Africa’s 

University. Makini Tchameni is the founder of the African Centered Educational Foundation 

(ACE) and principal of ACE schools, like the African Union International School in South 

Africa. Gogo Dineo Ndlanzi created the Gogo Dineo Ndlanzi Institute of Spiritual Healing in 

Cosmo City – a residential area in Johannesburg, South Africa. She has been a Sangoma and 

leader in African Spirituality for the last 10 years, and her school has been in existence for about 

four years. In Detroit, Michigan, Cha-Rhonda Edgerson, known as Mama Cha-Rhonda, is the 

principal of Timbuktu Academy. It is the last African Centered school in Detroit, Michigan. It 

began in 1997 by Mama Malkia Brantuo,  who wanted to contribute positive change towards 

their black community. Zukhanye Nondabula, known as Mama Zukhanye, is a teacher and 

leader at Timbuktu Academy. She has roots in the creation and development of other African 

Centered Schools in Detroit like Aisha Shule. Lastly, Reverend Mama Sandra Simmons, also 

affectionately called Mama Sandra, is the founder of the Hush House Community Museum and 

Leadership Training Institute. The community organization and museum has multiple 

educational programs targeted for the black and global community. These are the six black 

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women educators of my study who have developed or contributed significantly to an African 

Centered Institution. In addition to preserving the black cultural tradition, their work is aligned 

with other forms of black resistance to counter ongoing racism and oppressions in the African 

world. 

Dr. Ziphora Moichela 
 

The problem is that there is a type of problem with the kind of education system which is not 
relevant hence the dire need…for a review for the kind of education system that is fed to the 

indigenous people of the country …in this case Africa is a continent and South Africa in 

particular… (Caesar, 2016) 

 
 

I met Dr. Moichela in the summer of 2014 as she was finishing up her doctoral studies in 

the Department of Educational Leadership and Management at the University of South Africa in 

Pretoria (UNISA). The University of South Africa, in Pretoria, is an open distance learning 

institution, and has the largest library in Africa. UNISA’s mission is to “find answers to Africa’s 

educational and developmental problems”, demonstrating the institution’s African Centered 

nature (UNISA). In Dr. Moichela Department of Educational Leadership and Management, 

particularly there is an emphasis on creating a strong African leadership in education while 

uplifting the disadvantaged and being community oriented. 

Biographical Context 

According to Dr. Moichela, in her interview, she stated when she was young, teaching 

was seen as a stable position; “you will never lack bread on the table, you will never lack a 

place to stay” (Caesar, 20). Government bursaries or scholarship were available to assist with 

tuition and in addition to providing a stable income for women from poor backgrounds, there 

were perk in being a teacher in South Africa They received a subsidy for a home, and jobs were 

always available. It was specifically the security of a teacher, and access for women that drew 

Ziphora toward educational pursuits. While teaching she encountered bias in the South African 

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curriculum that overtly withheld the culture and history of black South African from the 

students. This can be seen as a residual of apartheid that occurred from 1948-1994. these, 

deficiencies motivated her to pursue her educational journey with passion, receiving her honors 

particularly there is an emphasis on creating a strong African leadership in education while 

uplifting the disadvantaged and being community oriented. These particular features are also 

aligned with an African Centered perspective. Since our first conversations, she has finished her 

doctoral degree and inserted herself into the conversation about indigenous knowledge systems 

and the South African curriculum through teaching, writing, and lectures. 

In her office, you are welcomed by South African art that illustrates a vital element of 

indigenous knowledge systems - the creation of mealie meal. Dr. Moichela discusses the artwork 

with strong appreciation for the artist’s visual interpretation of repetitive physical work 

commonly done by black women in the villages. She is a proud South African woman deeply 

rooted in her culture who believes that the current curriculum should reflect an African Centered 

Perspective. Dr. Moichela has over 25 years of teaching experience, including serving as a high 

school teacher, and 10 years of experience in higher education.  Masters, and most recently a 

doctoral degree by studying while she continued to teach. Bringing herself up from the “ashes”, 

Ziphora worked to get herself into a position where she could contribute to the educational 

advancement of black South African children. 

The current discussion on Africanizing the curriculum focuses on adding the African 

 
perspective to the South African curriculum. However, in order to Africanize the curriculum, the 
 
culture’s indigenous knowledge systems must be identified. Dr. Ziphora Moichela’s scholarship 
 
has focused on this identification and dissemination. In describing indigenous knowledge 
 
systems, she states, 
 

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Indigenous is an umbrella term for the indigenous people across the globe, people who 
are still native to their roots…They are all indigenous…depending on where they are in 
their time and place in the world, if the indigenous people of Africa would say, they are 
Africans...we talk about Africanizing the curriculum in term of the indigenous 
modalities… 

 
Her research argues for indigenous knowledge systems at the basic level due to the inability of 
 
institutions in higher education to reach the masses who need it the most. Dr. Moichela she 
 
states, 
 

…politically we realize that institutions of higher learning…have become arrested to 
higher ideology and nothing is actually happening and the more they try to bring about 
the solutions… the more the education becomes more and more irrelevant to the needs 
and aspiration of the Africans…as a result we are saying how about look at the 
roots…basic education… 

 
Her ability to conceptualize, identify, and protect South Africa’s knowledge and culture makes 
 
her a women leader in South Africa’s educational system. 
 
Gender Equity in Education 
 

Dr. Ziphora Moichela passionately supports women’s roles and opportunities in 

 
education. She believes women are the holders of tradition and encourages girls to attained good 
 
education by emphasizing an African proverb, “If you educate a girl child, you are educating the 
 
whole village…” Though, there is an increasing understanding of the importance of educating a 
 
girl child, traditional beliefs serve as an obstacle. Girls are expected to care for the family and 
 
marry early to fulfill womanly duties, 
 

I’ll talk about the current curriculums whereby women in Africa in particular are still 
seen, unfortunately still seen along the lines of patriarchies …whereby a girl child, 
especially from rural areas is still seen as a girl who must abide their African 
course…waking up early in the morning, making sure everything has been tended, their 
siblings been taking care of, the house is clean, you’ve collected wood, you’ve made fire, 
done this and that, and during your puberty years you’ll be prepared for womanhood and 
all that… 

 

 

Dr. Moichela promotes the critical needs of girls in South Africa by advocating for their 

65 

 

educational rights while she counteracts the traditional narrative that South African women must 
 
care for the whole family and neglect her own education. 
 
Gogo Dineo Ndlanzi 

 

I have always been doing the work of educating the world, educating Africans, educating people 

around me on what it means to be proudly African…you know some of it you can’t get in 

mainstream education … (Caesar, 2018) 

 

While studying abroad in the Research Abroad Program in the New South Africa 

 
(RANSA) program, we were taken to different cultural heritage events. I met Gogo Dineo after a 
 
Sangoma ceremony I attended. Sangomas, according to Gogo Dineo, are “facilitators of healing” 
 
by “going deep into an element of your spiritual identity… we work with body, mind, and spirit  
 
and when a lot of people come to us we know that something is out of tune at a spiritual level” 
 
(Caesar, 2018). In essence, Sangomas use the ancestors, god and mother nature to heal people 
 
And bring them back into good spirit and health. I was enlightened by my first Sangoma 
 
consultation. I learned that the Gogo Dineo Ndlanzi Institute of Spiritual Healing preserves 
 
indigenous knowledge in South Africa by training others with spiritual gifts. it was in every 
 
essence an African Centered School. 
 

I have participated in Sangoma consultations with her as well as being one of her 

 
students for 8 months– and gaining information from her Indumba, spiritual room. There were 
 
classes that range from topics on the healing power of muti or medicine and how to understand 
 
your “gift” in order to facilitate healing with your patient – here African Centered Institution is a 
 
place where God, the Ancestors, and nature are at the center and it is centered on South 
 
African indigenous belief systems. 
 
Biographical Context 
 

Gogo Dineo Ndlanzi grew up in Alexandria Township in South Africa (Caesar, 2018). 

 
She identifies herself as a spiritualist, a person “who is not cast in stone and it’s one that always 

66 

 

 
is evolving. Most of her spiritual belief systems are grounded in African spirituality. She 
 
mentioned, “I don’t believe Africans were religious at all…I don’t believe there was African 
 
religion…I believe there was African spirituality and that informed our culture and culture is a 
 
way of being” (Caesar, 2018). 
 

Her educational background is not one of importance in the traditional sense, she states, 

 

I feel very strongly and closest to, is my qualification as a healer you know African 
Centered Education is not based on you go and do this thing and it’s not quite rigid and 
religious in its function …for us teaching, learning, and qualification is continuous 
work on the craft that you are trying to master and that work is not always centered 
around a particular type of period based on framework (Caesar, 2018). 

 
Gogo Dineo continues to state how Western frameworks cannot be placed on African 
 
worldviews. Gogo Dineo has 15 years of experience in facilitation and discussions in schools 
 
and institutions surroundings African Spirituality. She also teaches cultural and emotional 
 
balance classes about life in general. She is trained as a relationship and human system coach. 
 
She continues and states, 
 

I don’t like to wear my qualification hats…because sometimes theory on its own is quite 
limiting …and when we speak about who and what has been my greatest teachings… 
always speak about myself and my own life experiences and what I have encountered 
in life…that has taught me the most than what the classroom had … when I birth into 
becoming a healer, a lot of things made sense on why things happen the way they 
do…sometimes doing things by the book did not present me with the answers that I was 
seeking…(Caesar, 2018) 

 

Just as she was called to become a Sangoma; Gogo Dineo was called to become a 

Sangoma trainer and open up an institute. Gogo Dineo Ndlanzi named the institute after herself 

because she was already a known household name in South Africa, as someone who pioneered 

African Spirituality into mainstream media with her broadcasting on the radio and television. 

At her school she trains Sangomas to consult patients and look into their physical, 

emotional, and spiritual well -being to facilitate a healing treatment. It must be noted that one 

67 

 

cannot just enroll in her school. Entry is given to those with an ancestral calling and be shown 

through dreams, symbols, and intuitive impulses their place of training. Only the gobela, or 

spiritual teacher, can confirm the authenticity of the student, and if he or she agrees – then they 

will train them to become a Sangoma. It is an ancient training that is secretive in nature and deals 

heavily with the esoteric realm. Through her institute, Gogo Dineo works towards demystifying 

myths and stereotypes around indigenous healing practices.  

Healing Through Dance And Music 

A Sangoma is known to use music and dance to facilitate healing, it is a form of gratitude 

and honoring your higher power. The drum is commonly played at most ceremonies, and 

especially at gitas in which participants evoke spiritual entities. Many songs are associated with 

praising the ancestors, for example Umoya is all about the spiritual journey to become a 

Sangoma and the returning spirit. When Gogo Dineo performs spiritual, the spirit takes over. 

She also teaches her children at an early age the power of the ancestors, healing, and 

performance and they usually accompany her in the ritual. 

…here on the African continent…my children enrolled in school were being taught that 

colonialism was a good thing …that is the colonizing, the literal occupation of African countries 
was a good thing by European Powers…the dividing of Africa into pieces…and splitting families 

and roots and everything was a good process…because in my child’s history book they were 
being told that was something that helped Africans   from killing each other and that if it had 
some disadvantages …one of the disadvantages was that some Africans resisted and they were 

killed… (Caesar, 2016) 

 

Makini Tchameni 
 

I have taught and done administrative work for the African Centered Educational 

 
Foundation (ACE) for the last 8 years in South Africa, Cameroon, and the United States. The co- 
 
creator of the ACE Foundation, Makini Tchameni is an African American woman, who left the 
 
United States after marrying, and went to Africa politicized by Pan-African organizations in the 
 

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United States. 
 

The ACE Foundation is, “an organization that was put in place to help with the efforts of 

 
establishing African Centered Schools on the continent, but also in the Diaspora” (Caesar, 2016). 
 
In addition to creating African Centered Schools and curriculum, the ACE Foundation also helps 
 
“those schools, individuals, and organizations that would like to move towards African Centered 
 
Education” (Caesar, 2016). 
 

The African American Academy (AAA) in Cameroon opened in 1998, was my first 

 
encounter with the ACE Foundation. The ACE school has been operating for 18 years, and is 
 
known as a leading institution where students can also obtain an International Baccalaureate, 
 
which allows students to competitively apply for university admission globally. 
 
Almost 10 years later in 2009, the ACE Foundation opened the African Union 
 
 
International School (AUIS) in Midrand, South Africa. AUIS operates as a primary school using 
 
the same ACE curriculum as the African American Academy in Cameroon. 
 
 

In describing the significance of her African Centered Schools, Makini explained, 

 

 

What is unique about our two schools, in addition to African Centered elements – we 
add a leadership element…That leadership development element is an important 
aspect because we need all our children to see themselves as leaders, carry themselves as 
leaders… (Caesar, 2016). 

 
While in Cameroon, she started African American Academy (AAA) in Douala, Cameroon along 

with her husband due to the colonial narrative that were taught to her students. They were joined 

by other dissatisfied parents. AAA was the first institution that I worked at; later I would work at 

their school in South Africa – the African Union International School. 

Biographical Context 
 

Makini Tchameni was born in Houston, Texas and it was in her hometown where she 

learned about the importance of an African Centered Education. In the beginning of her 

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educational career she received the opportunity to teach at a school run by a couple, Mr. Franklin 

and Ms. Rowe. This school run by a black woman and man displays the dedication they had for 

their community, and later on in life Makini Tchameni would emulate this structure creating 

several African Centered schools with her own husband. They were creating their own African 

Centered Curriculum (Caesar, 2016). She described Ms. Rowe as “the mother, she was the 

person that the children and the parents looked to inspire” (Caesar, 2016). [CTD6] Makini also 

stated that Ms. Rowe left a huge impression on her and was a very important role model in her 

educational career (Caesar, 2016). Makini was introduced to radical mothering at an African 

Centered school in Houston through Ms. Rowe. 

 

Radical mothering again is the ability to nurture your community and surrounding in 

which black consciousness is transferred and created. She continued her education and received 

her Bachelor of Arts in communication and journalism from the University of Houston in Texas. 

She also earned a Master of Arts in Education from the College of New Jersey in New York. As 

an active member of the All African Revolutionary Party (AARP) in Houston, her ideas on 

teaching nation building to our youth were formed. The AARP began in 1968 in 

Guinea Conkry as a study group, after Kwame Nkrumah published a book called Handbook of 
 
Revolutionary Warfare, in which he stated the, 
 

formation of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) is to co-ordinate 
policies and to direct action… A political party linking all liberated territories and 
struggling parties under a common ideology; and thus smoothing the way for continental 
unity… While at the same time greatly assisting the prosecution of the All-African 
People’s War. (Nkrumah, 56-57). 

 
By 1972, the AARP had its first chapter in the United States. Truly a Pan-African organization 
 
the AARP has locations in 33 African countries, US, Europe and Canada (AARP). It should also 
 
be noted that in 1980, the AARP began their All African Women’s Revolutionary Party that 
 

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“understands that the liberation of African people cannot come to reality without the effective 
 
and genuine liberation of African Women” (AARP). 
 

Throughout her educational career she has served as a teacher, head of department, and 

 
administrator. Now she serves as the principal of the ACE Foundation schools in Cameroon and 
 
South Africa. When I asked Makini Tchameni her rationale for becoming an educator, she stated, 
 
“I chose education out of necessity,” (Caesar, 2016) adding, 
 

I found myself and my family here in Cameroon, where the post-colonial educational 
system was in place and is still in place, and therefore children were, are educated from 
the perspective of the colonial powers. So, we, being my husband and myself, decided 
that it was really important that we try to provide and make available a different 
perspective to our children and to the children of Cameroon (Caesar, 2016). 

 
From those earlier experience, the first ACE school was founded – The African American 
 
Academy in Douala, Cameroon. 
 
Pan-Africanism 
 

It was also in an AARP meeting in Houston, Texas that she met her husband, Djeukam 

 
Tchameni from Cameroon also studying at the University of Houston. A political leader in 
 
Cameroon who ran for president in 2004, he has been a critical element in the creation of the 

ACE Foundation and schools. Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana and founder of the 

AARP stated, “All people of African descent, whether they live in North or South America, the 

Caribbean, or in any other part of the world, are Africans and belong to the African Nation” 

(Nkrumah, 4). Lastly, Black Panther and activist scholar Kwame Ture, Afro-Trinidadian, and 

founder of the AARP defined Pan-Africanism as the total liberation and unification of Africa 

under an all-African socialist party. It was through this Pan-African political identity that Mrs. 

Tchameni understood herself as an African despite her American origins, a part of the global 

African community. 

 

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Cha-Rhonda Edgerson 
 

African Centered Education to me is really taking the African child and putting them in the 
center of their education… where everything is surrounded by Africa and the child in the 

center… (Caesar, 2017) 

 

I did a summer internship at Timbuktu Academy of Science and Technology. The first 

person I was in correspondence with and met was Cha-Rhonda Edgerson, the principal. She 

helped me to make arrangements, allowing me to interview and sit in on classes even before I 

narrowed down my research to black women leaders who own and operate African Centered 

Institutions. For the last three years, I have maintained a relationship with Timbuktu Academy 

teachers and staff. 

 
Biographical Context 
 

When you walk in Timbuktu Academy, you may not even notice immediately Mama 

Charhonda - she is hardly in her office. She frequently walks up and down the hall finding 

solutions to daily problems, or just stopping in to say “hi” to the students and giving teachers 

support, as well as encouragement. She is a hands-on principal who keeps her door unlocked 

Teachers and students come in freely, knowing that Mama Charhonda will always make time 

for them. Timbuktu was founded in 1997 and currently serves K-8th grade students. The 

school instills cultural pride in their students through African Drum and Dance, a Family 

environment, and community support program like food drives. 

Mama Charhonda is a native to Detroit, growing up on Harper and Van Dyke, which is 

 
actually very close to Timbuktu Academy. When describing her location in Detroit, she states, I 
 
have been “an east-sider all my life”. She proudly identifies herself as an African. She attended 
 
King High School, Wayne State University, and Marygrove College, ending her traditional 
 
academic career with a Master of Arts in Educational Leadership, all in Detroit. In her 

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neighborhood, she proudly claims, “I was always the teacher, had students on the block” (Caesar, 
 
2017). 
 

Naturally, her educational pursuits in the community led her to becoming a tutor in a 

 
school, instructor of Africana Studies, and a teacher of many hats at Timbuktu Academy of 
 
Science and Technology. Her legacy at Timbuktu has also included working in the food 
 
department and being the dean of discipline. In each role that she held, she did it with love 
 
learning the landscape of the school. In describing African Centered Education and her 
 
institution, she states, 
 

Timbuktu…takes the best of all the African centered traditions, practices, 
ceremonies, and customs and adding it to the education they provide for the 
students …at the same time they are putting the student in the middle of their 
education…they are also exposing them to the best traditions, the best customs, and 
the best practices we have found in African centered or African countries, let me 
say that … 

 

She also mentions how African Centered Education is more than just the aesthetics of 

 
wearing dashikis and visual performances of playing the djembe drums. She described it as 
 
embedded in the school culture, through the nurturing behavior of the teachers, and the 
 
community outreach programs that helped families. African Centered Educations was also 
 
displayed in the field trips to the Black Jesus statue at the corner of Chicago and Linwood in 
 
front of the Sacred Heart Seminary. African Centered Education is a mind, body, and spiritual 
 
experience. 
 
Gender Balance 
 

Mama Charhonda is big on balance, she believes that men and women should work 

 
together in the education to help the child. She states, 
 

I am big on balance…so as much as you see women in our buildings you would see 
them…I want to make sure students get the full perspective…there are some things that 

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babas can only teach boys and there are some things that only mamas can teach 
girls…so I do feel that man play that backbone, the ones for when there is trouble, we 
call on the babas to help us out…in terms of being a little more stern where Baba 
Bernard will come in, I’m the person that is kind of understanding, compassionate, 
although he can be those things to… 

 
She also continues and discusses the need to have positive male influences around the school, 
 

…just having positive men, be positive role models for students is important for me…so 
it doesn’t have to be a certain type…because we are all different people so…we have the 
babas that wear suit and ties…and then we have the ones who will rock locks and a 
daishiki…we have those who will wear simple business clothes…so have a variety of men 
around students... 

 
Even though women play a huge role in the school, she doesn’t discredit the efforts of men. 
 
Matter of fact, she praises them for being there and their positive interaction with the students. 
 
Victoria “Zukhanye” Nondabula 
 
I would have summer school on my front porch with children in our community and it was just a 
need that we educate ourselves. Due to the fact, no one will put more energy into someone as far 

as through the full of education other than teaching your own, I mean it's your responsibility 

 

(Caesar, 2017) 

I also met Zukhanye Nondabula, also known as Mama Zukhanye, at Timbuktu Academy 
of 

 
Science and Technology. She was a primary teacher who had a revolutionary edge. Through our 
 
conversations, I learned that she helped to develop other African Centered Schools in the United 
 
States, and I knew that her diverse experiences would add value to my research. Mama 

Zukhanye has also travelled to South Africa for cultural engagement, immersing herself in 

a global African dialogue. 

Biographical Context 
 

She was born Zukhanye Nondabula in Detroit Michigan but changed her name to Mama 

Zukhanye when she married her South African husband. She identifies herself as an African born 

in America. Like many black children in the United States, she received her first educational 

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experiences from the mommas that surrounded her. Her grandmother, who lived in Camilla, 

Georgia, a small city with a history of racially incited events, had the greatest impact on her. 

The Camilla Massacre, a bloody Sunday, September 19, 1868 - black freedman and 

white liberals marched to Camilla from Albany to protest the forced removal of black politicians 

from their government, it resulted in the death and injury of many blacks, as well as the white 

stakeholders (formwalt, lee). Mama Zukhanye family fought for their rights, and she inherited a 

love for children and took up the initiative to educate black and brown babies for the rest of her 

life. In referencing the education she received from her grandmother’s stories, she states, “I think 

those stories were the most knowledge that I received, um, that have carried me throughout life 

and has helped me, um, determine my principles to live on”. 

She attended Alabama State University and University of Maryland, Eastern Shore, 

where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Physical Education. She also took some 

classes at Oakland University as well. She has occupied several positions in education, 

particularly at Timbuktu Academy; she served as a math teacher, parent liaison, and tutor. 

However, prior to her experience at Timbuktu, she worked at other African Centered 

Schools. The first one was the Marcus Garvey School in Los Angeles, where she was a fourth 

grade teacher, and Lugemah, where she was a pre-school teacher. At Aisha Shule in Detroit 

she was a gymnastic coach and a math teacher. Mama Zukhanye co-founded Nsoroma 

Institute in Detroit, where she occupied a position as an elementary teacher. 

It Takes A Village 

Family history was also very important to Mama Zukhanye. Her grandmother remembers 

when her own grandmother told stories of her mother (Mama Zukhanye’s great-great 

grandmother) being sold into slavery. Education was not limited to the schoolhouse; neighbors 

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taught children, for instance, “Mr. Masingayle who always taught children through play. And we 

would win pennies if we could answer questions”. Mama Zukhanye used to also teach the 

neighborhood kids on her porch; she called it summer school. Her grandmother and aunts taught 

her through stories, and expressed it takes a village to raise a child illustrating the essence of 

African Centeredness. 

 
Reverend Mama Sandra Simmons 
 

African Centered Education is “Teaching justice, peace, environmental studies, teaching 

spiritual warfare from the perspectives of survival, of healing” (Caesar, 2018) 

 

By investigating different cultural heritage institutes in Detroit, Michigan – I found out 

about the Hush House Museums co-created by Sandra Simmons. She has also created 

educational programs nationally and internationally focusing on African people, women, 

education, land and cultural preservation. 

A natural storyteller, her words on and off the page demand attention, and she takes her 

job as an educator of the people, ordained by God and her ancestors, very seriously. Though she 

grew up in Detroit, she defines herself as a southerner or a northerner with a southern flair. Her 

family migrated from the South and have retained their southern culture. She identifies herself as 

a black-woman, leader, healer, deep woman of faith, seer, reader, fighter, and general. She states, 

 “All those identities require a deep amount of sacrifice and so that’s how I see myself” 

(Caesar, 2018). 

In 2016, her and her husband opened the Simmons Center for Peace Justice 

Environmental and Education Studies. One of their main projects is an online free school for 

black students. She and her husband, Baba Charles, also have the Hush Your Multimedia, a 

collaborative department that teaches students how to strategically use the media to get their 

information out in the world. The Hush House Collective’s board of directors is comprised of 

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many individuals central to the black scholarly and activist worlds, including Dr. Gloria House, 

former secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and prolific scholar in 

African American Studies, Dr. Max Standford, civil rights activist, founder of the 

Revolutionary Action Movement and Black Studies Scholar, and Dr. Sonia Sanchez, African 

American poet, playwright and scholar. 

 
Biographical Context 
 

Mama Sandra believes that African Centered Education is the constant relocation of the 

center and the negotiation of space in an environment that continually assaults us (Caesar, 2018). 

African Centered Education is “Who see what and read by whom and from where” because “the 

center, just like us, keeps moving or being moved, being pushed” (Caesar, 2018). African 

Centered Education encompasses everything from books that discuss the abuse of black women 

to prison-based educational programs for healing. “To teach how to bear witness and how to 

read madness through its core…” is African Centered Education. 

 

Though she grew up in Detroit, she also calls herself a southerner or a northerner with 

a southern flare due to where here family migrated from and their ability to retain the southern 

culture. She identifies herself as a black-woman, leader, healer, deep woman of faith, seer, 

reader, fighter, and general – she states, “All those identities require a deep amount of sacrifice 
 
and so that’s how I see myself” (Caesar, 2018). 
 

No matter what institution she worked, she made sure that she took all of her blackness. 

 
While teaching at Wayne State University, she mentions, 
 

But a black woman, a woman is who centered within her own self, she can turn anything 
into an African centered institution. I turned Wayne State into an African centered 
institution every time I walk into the classroom. When my students walk into the room 
and they saw me with this head wrap on my head and these clothes and this talk and this 
way of seeing, what's going on you understand (Caesar, 2018). 

 

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Particularly when it comes to African Centered Education and black women’s contributions, 
 
she has exposed both her white and black students to W.E.B. Du Bois, Audre Lorde, 
 
and Ida B. Wells. She is the definition promoting and being unapologetically black. 
 
Kitchen School 
 

Mama Sandra recalls how, when she was growing up, the kitchen served as a school for 

 
the women when they would congregate. She mentions, 
 

You know Fridays at my grandmother's house when my maternal grandmother would 
have, holding court with all of us. We would all, all the women would come and we would 
stand around the stove, summer or winter when she roasted yams and had her feet up in 
the oven door. And they talked about being mothers, about being women and how we did 
it and how we didn't do it and why we didn't (Caesar, 2018). 

 
In this description, she discusses how black women would teach each other the secrets of the 
 
world from childbirth to marriage. Today Mama Sandra continues in that same vein, having 

this intimate conversation with women not only in her kitchen, but also in the neighborhood 

and around the world. 

African Centered Institutions  

University of South Africa: Pretoria, South Africa (Main) 
 
Dr. Ziphora Moichela, Lecturer and researcher 
 
 

The University of South Africa in Pretoria consists of Sunnyside and the main campus on 

Preller, which are not too far from one another. The main campus, where I conducted my 

primary research, is distinctive in that it is located on elevated land, you can see it high in the sky 

from the roads. If you look up at the main campus you will also view a tall image of Nelson 

Mandela, the first black president of the newly democratic South Africa. The campus includes 

big brown buildings that are mostly linked together by pathways and stairs. I spent most of my 

time in the AJH Building Van Der Walt Building in the Department of Educational Leadership 

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and Management. My South African advisor, Dr. Nomalanga Grootboom is a professor within 

the department. It was through her assistance during the summer months, I was able to identify 

an African Centered Educator at UNISA. Through my relationship, I was introduced to her 

student and now, Dr. Ziphora Moichela. Dr. Ziphora Moichela studies the necessity and 

practicality of Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) after spending years as an educator, 

teaching in areas like history, in the South African School System. 

 

The University of South Africa in Pretoria is known as Africa’s University in service and 

humanity due to its deep commitment to South Africa and Africa in general (Unisa). Their vision 

is “towards the African university in the service of humanity” (Unisa). It is considered the largest 

open distance learning institute in the world, and nearly one-third of South Africans attend this 

university (Unisa). UNISA is in the process of establishing “the institution as an African open 

distance and e-learning (ODeL) university leading the world in using all the technologies 

available in integrated ways so that technology is a means to an end, not an end in itself” 

(UNISA). It should also be noted that UNISA has the largest library on the African continent and 

selection of e-material. 

 

It was founded in 1873 under the name the University of the Cape of Good Hope. UNISA 

has made significant efforts in becoming an African University focused on promoting authentic 

African scholarship. For example, decolonising the Curriculum is a major topic on the campus. 

Recently, there was a conference to interrogate decolonialism in Africa further, it was titled De-

colonisation and Re-Afrikanisation: A Conversation (UNISA). I was able to attend this 

conference and be a part of a global discussion surrounding restructuring the African narrative 

through decolonialism and African Centered Thought. Currently, the Change Management Unit 

at UNISA is in charge of this initiative in which their policy goal is to "promote African thought, 

79 

 

philosophies, interests and epistemologies through inquiry, scholarship and 

partnership…Seminars, colloquia, debates and focus groups are planned to explore the nature of 

knowledge production, epistemic justice and an infusion of new thought paradigms” (UNISA). 

UNISA strives to emphasize the “importance of academia in turning the previously colonised 

into participants in a new and moral and cognitive venture against oppression through the 

development of a plurality of insights and critical traditions” (UNISA). The university has 

several institutes and programs that are currently leading in African thought and development 

such as the Institute of African Renaissance Studies, Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute, 

The Archie Mafeje Institute for Applied Social Research, The Institute for Global Dialogue, The 

Institute for Dispute Resolution in Africa, The WIPHOLD-Brigalia Bam Chair in Electoral 

Democracy in Africa, and the Africa Speak Program. All these branches of UNISA are African 

Centered, encourage African oriented research, with a strong lean towards community 

development. Within African Centered Thought There is a strong link to community. 

 

UNISA has graduated some very distinguished people in Africa and the world including 

African presidents Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki, Robert Mugabe, Cyril Ramaphosa, priest 

Desmond Tutu, politician activist Oliver Tambo, Edna Molewa, writer Sindiwe Magona, as well 

as UNISA principal and Vice-Chancellor Professor Mandla Makhanya. Dr. Ziphora Moichela 

comes from a lineage of African thinkers and provokers. She continues in the legacy by 

interrogating Indigenous Knowledge Systems and its role in basic education. 

Gogo Dineo’s School of Spiritual Healing: Johannesburg, South Africa (Cosmo City) 
 
Gogo Dineo Ndlanzi, Owner and Teacher 
 
 

In the middle of Cosmo City, a neighborhood area within Johannesburg, you will find 

Gogo Dineo’s School of Spiritual Healing. Their patients come in and out for spiritual, mental, 

80 

 

and physical support utilizing traditional African methods. Also, the space that embodies a clinic 

orientation is full of generational and herbal remedies created by South Africans. It is a school to 

train Sangomas, traditional healers in South Africa. Often South Africans are using both 

traditional and western medicine to assist with their illnesses (Mbelekani, 1). Black women in 

South Africa are usually formal or informal primary caregivers (Mbelekani, 1). The household is 

a “curative space of care,” where major decisions are made regarding illness and type of 

treatment that is sought out. The woman plays a major role in those health decisions as primary 

caregivers. The belief in traditional healers are deep and loyal in South as mentioned in a 

research concerning traditional healing the Free State, “There is always a traditional healer, who 

will be able to heal that illness” (Mbeklani, 6). In addition to health issues, medicine is used to 

prevent supernatural cause of in illness as well that may be provoked by bad or ancestral spirits 

(Mbelekani, 6). 

 

Early research revealed that there were 200,000 traditional healers in South Africa, with 

one at least in every black neighborhood (Mbelekani, 2, Dickinson, 2008, King 2012). A 

Sangoma is a healthcare provider and extends their reach to the esoteric world that is usually 

ignored within the traditional sciences. There is also a Traditional Health Practitioner Council 

that oversees these issues of healers, therefore the government supports and acknowledges the 

use of these practices (Mbelekani, 2). The Sangomas are a part of the medical eco-system in 

South Africa, a part of an African Cosmology, “that renders different lifeworld views on 

medicine to those associated with the scientific inquiry” (Mbelekani, 2, Dickinson 2008). 

 

The World Health Organization describes health as “a state of complete physical, mental, 

and social well-being; and not merely the absence of disease infirmity” (1998:9). Health is 

viewed in a holistic way, inclusive of the mental and spiritual wellness, and preventative 

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methods. A Sangoma’s practice is complementary with a traditional western or biomedicine 

approach. However, the challenge with a traditional western approach is the pervasiveness of 

Eurocentricity that impacts treatments, diagnosis, and how patients are treated. As stated in a 

recent article on the usage of traditional healers in the Free State, 

 
 
 
 
 
 

…practitioners are often unfamiliar with patients’ backgrounds, and they may lack 
empathy and humanity while operating state of the art technology (Charon, 2001). 
Patients are treated homogenously despite diverse cultural backgrounds and different 
understandings of the illness and healing modalities… (Mbelekani, 2).  

When a South  African chooses a treatment, there are “social-economic, traditional, and 

cultural trajectories associated with negotiating medical treatment” (Mbelekani, 1). The 

traditional route is usually less costly and more accessible. Also, there is a stigma surrounding 

diseases like AIDS that may contribute to how a patient may decide to choose the right 

healthcare.  Black South Africans access to adequate healthcare is low due to wealth disparities 

and cultural norms (Mbelekani, 1). Based on my observation in South Africa, due to the racial 

tension that still exists, some black South Africa’s fear of white doctors. This contributes to what 

scholar Harriet A. Washington coined in her book Medical Apartheid, iatrophobia, blacks fear of 

doctors (Washington). The book discusses African Americans long history of medical battles in 

the medical field. For example, American medicine frequently used black bodies for experiments 

without consent, the feelings of fear of white doctors and people are similar in South Africa due 

to the extreme violence inflicted on Black South Africans due to apartheid. Also, the medical 

field, comprised of mostly white South Africans does not have a cultural grounding in the 

diverse black South African lives. Therefore, traditional healers, like Sangomas, rooted in 

culture, provide a real space for South Africans and their healing that is at times safer and more 

comforting than a biomedicine facility. A Sangoma’s practice is seen as comfortable and 

culturally grounded.  

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African Union International School: Johannesburg, South Africa (Midrand) 
 
Makini Tchameni, co-creator and principal 
 
 

The African Union International School is a part of a collective of African Centered 

Schools in the ACE Foundation. This foundation tries to bring African centeredness throughout 

their school systems within their curriculum, classrooms, activities, training, supplemental 

material and environment. When evaluating teachers, there is a section on the evaluation form 

that states rather or not the teacher has implemented African Centered and Culturally Relevant 

information in their teaching. On teacher’s yearly and weekly plans, they are required to show 

African Centeredness throughout their lessons. Most teachers are coming from colonial schools 

and training in Africa. They set up educational and training programs during school meetings to 

help teachers attain African Centered pedagogy, 

Teachers and School staff “standard” Training has been and still is basically 
Eurocentric. The contribution of non-Europeans to the world's civilization is 
marginalized, and other knowledge systems are excluded. Such training develops in 
teachers and staff a number of barriers to good instruction. The greatest of these 
barriers stem from the teacher's attitudes and behaviors which are themselves the   result 
of the teacher’s training: Lack of understanding of the “other cultures”, low 
expectations for African students, the imposition of double standards etc…Teachers 
must thus be retrained to deliver an African centered curriculum. The training 
workshops will assure that the instructional staff is competent in the delivery of the 
African Centered Education as well as the core curriculum. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Even at the beginning of the school at general assembly, the students are instructed to say creeds 

and pledges displaying positivity towards African culture, 

 
 
 
 
 
 

We will remember the humanity, glory and suffering of our ancestors. And honor the 
struggle of our elders. We will strive to bring new value and new life to our 
people…We will be free and self-determining. We are African people. We will win, 
we will win, will win” from their African Pledge. 

One of their school songs is R Kelly song I am the Greatest, and he is an African 

American singer from Chicago. There are plenty more elements that demonstrate their Pan- 

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Africanism through their African Centered Education, but that was just a few. In a short video 

about the African Union International School in Midrand, South Africa, a brief description of the 

school is presented. The reporter begins by stating that AUIS has a “unique curriculum (that) is 

dedicated to grooming a new generation of African leaders” (SABC). 

Next one of the school administrator, Shabaka Tchameni, states, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
After more discussing AUIS authentic approach, and their urgent need to promote and African 

What makes the school unique (is that) we focus on African centeredness, meaning 
that we teach students to know their identity and be proud of where they come 
from…most student don’t know that we descend from the people who built the 
pyramids...(SABC) 

focused educational curriculum, South African teacher Nkululeko Keith Vumo talks about their 

small classes being equal to or less than ten students. He states that the small classes allow 

adequate time for the students to express themselves. From the video, you are informed that the 

school serves students from PreK-12 grade, serving all 53 states in the African Union and the 

worldwide African Diaspora. The reporter also mentions the ACE foundation long-term goal to 

create a “United prosperous Africa’’. Before the video ends, there is an introduction to a 1st-

grade pupil name Nandi who states, “My favorite subject is English because you read and you 

can write…my next favorite subject is math, science, circle time, story time, phonics…” The 

reporter ended by stating that the “We can expect a great crop of scientist with an African focus 

from AUIS” (SABC).  The goal of the ACE schools is to create a global citizen rooted in their 

culture. 

 

Also, if you examine the surroundings, a viewer will see many African Centered items. 

For example, The African Union International School displays the ACE Foundation symbol that 

includes an image of Egyptian God Thot representing his contribution to the creation of sciences, 

African maps, President Obama, Egyptian Mummies, the father of African Nii Quaynor, and 

84 

 

hieroglyphics. On the African Union International website, there is also a brief historical 

summary of the school, 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Founded in 2005 by the African Centered Education Foundation (ACE Foundation), 
AUIS is registered with the South African Department of Education as an  independent 
international school and is accredited by the United States Board. The African Union 
International School (AUIS) is a unique pan-African co-educational institution dedicated 
to grooming a new generation of African Leaders. The school accepts fulltime 
Kindergarten to Grade 12 students from the 53 states of the African Union and from the 
worldwide African Diaspora. AUIS seeks to instill in learners the competency and the 
commitment to become Servant Leaders and Social  Entrepreneurs striving for a united 
and prosperous Africa as well as a just and peaceful World. 

What makes AUIS unique other than the shared components of all the other ACE 

Foundation School is that it has a Language Centre, where they teach Swahili, French, and 

English while they teach other African Languages on demand. The classes are for traditional 

students to executives, and they have three terms in which all are three months. AUIS also states 

on their website display that they have “the competency and commitment for African Rebirth”, 

showing an overtly political stance towards the liberation of all African people. 

Timbuktu Academy of Science and Technology: Detroit, Michigan 
 
Cha-Rhonda Edgerson (Mama Cha), principal/ Zukhanye Nondabula (Mama Zukhanye), teacher 
and community leaders 
 
 

Many of the African Centered Schools closed in Detroit, as Nsoroma and Aisha Shule 

have closed due to funding issues. Nsoroma, in particular, was a school considered very 

traditional and robust in its African Centered curriculum. Uniquely, Timbuktu is one of the few 

African Centered schools in the Detroit area that is still in existence. Equally important, 

Timbuktu continues to meet the guidelines for a successful reauthorization process in the Detroit 

Public School system. According to the Detroit Public Schools Office of Charter Schools (OCS), 

the reauthorization process is based on academic achievement, ability to follow regulatory 

procedures of the charter agreement, and financial stability (Reauthorization). Notably, 

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Timbuktu has found a successful model that allows them to preserve their African Centeredness 

while meeting DPS standards of accreditation for a charter school, despite this being a difficult 

task. 

 

I was first introduced to Timbuktu Academy when I did a summer internship in 2015. 

Timbuktu was opened in 1997 as an African Centered institution. The school defines African-

centered as, 

…the foundation on which (they) stand-collectively and individually, academically 
and socially, mentally and morally, in thought and deed- (with) the very best 
wisdoms, lessons and practices of African people around the world” (ACE Handbook, 
2). 

 
 
 
 
 
Education is viewed as holistic because their instruction is multimodal addressing different 

learning styles (ACE Handbook, 2). The vision of Timbuktu is the following, 

To build and maintain a model African-centered institution founded on integrity that 
holistically nurtures the development of critical thinkers who use science and 
technology to improve the quality of life for  families and communities around the 
world…(ACE Handbook, 3) 

 
 
 
 
 
Additionally, the school involves the student’s families and communities into their 

establishment, furthermore contributing to their African Centeredness. Timbuktu Academy is a 

part of a collective of alternative schools that provide a counternarrative to the structural racism 

that exist in urban areas (Rickford) (Anderson) (Podair). 

 

Every adult at the school is called Mama or Baba, which is a sign of respect; they use 

those terms because they see themselves as a part of a big extended family (ACE Handbook, 4). 

During the week they have several Unity circles in the morning that serves to motivate and 

encourage the general assembly. I provides a sense of community that consist of songs, mantras, 

dancing and even the smooth jazzy sound of a saxophone played by one of the Babas. 

Subsequently, each grade level had a positive word to share with the school before they went to 

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their first class called Roll Call Good-News. Students, faculty, and staff also repeat the Nguzo 

Saba (Swahili values the reinforce family, community, and culture), Praise the Flag, Council of 

Independent Black Institutions (CIBI) Pledge, Words of Wisdom, Harambe, and Lift Every 

Voice and Sing (The Black National Anthem) (ACE Handbook, 7). The morning affirmation was 

very similar to the African Union International School in South Africa. 

 

One of the teachers, Mama Jas, stated that Timbuktu is very family-oriented; they have 

family nights and activities that include the community (Timbuktu). Mama Jas shared a story of 

a parent who spoke to her about familial challenges for hours, and she listened. Teachers at 

Timbuktu Academy usually care for the student’s academic success and the well-being of their 

family and community.  

 

One of the benefits of sitting in the staff lounges or curricular development areas was 

talking to different staff members about Timbuktu. I asked one staff member about the 

progression and challenges of Timbuktu over time. He told me that in the beginning there was 

much more parent participation in the school activities, however, over time the parents became 

younger, and less active within their student’s academic life. He also noted teachers in the initial 

years of Timbuktu Academy displayed more care. 

 

To put it differently, he did not believe in the stereotypical views of African Centered 

Education that appeared to have an emphasis on Dashikis and Ancient African traditions. He 

mentioned that the current community members would not be able to relate, and it is essential to 

incorporate curricular issues that the community as a whole could relate to and comprehend. I 

thought of the necessity a “New African Centered Paradigm,” one that included more of the 

current and does not focus solely on past conceptions. Within the school there were several 

African Centered mannerisms that I immediately witnessed. The school uses a variety of Swahili 

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words spoken in East African countries like Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. For example, Mama 

Jas told me that when you enter into a class you have to say Hodi, Hodi which means (May I 

come in…), then the teacher or staff in the class would say Karibu (welcome) (ACE Handbook, 

6). These are just a few things that describe how Timbuktu Academy of Science and technology 

in Detroit represents an African Centered Institution. 

Hush House Community Museum and Leadership Institute: Detroit, Michigan 
 
Sandra Simons (Mama Sandra), co-creator 
 
 

The Hush House Museum, located in the middle of Detroit, is in a primarily black 

neighbourhood on Wabash near the Motown Museum. The community has vacant and occupied 

buildings. In the community you witness the economic downfall and the movement to revitalize 

it, however it is not yet gentrified like some areas. The Hush House Collective hopes to counter 

these debilitating processes. Some of the Hush House buildings, consists of Dr. Charles 

Simmons family homes. The Hush House Collective also had an initiative to create a self-

sufficient community with homes and gardens that would provide sustenance due to the ongoing 

structural racism and the onset of gentrification. Though the neighborhood appears to be 

delipidated, Mama Sandra and Baba Charles have decided to stay within the neighborhood 

providing an African Centered institution that can help uplift the community despite their means 

to leave. They enthusiastically participate in cultural heritage preservation, not only in the 

restoration of the Detroit homes, but the black experience exhibits you can find in their museum 

– literally, a house on the block that was turned into a museum. Both Mama Sandra and Baba 

Charles Simmons previously worked in higher education in Michigan universities, but decided 

together to create African Centered Institutions that contribute to their local Detroit community. 

88 

 

 

One of the main initiatives of the Hush House Museum and collective is community 

building, their website states, 

As a collaborative organism, The Hush House makes opportunity to see, to participate, to 
invigorate, and to create the ground of peace where people find ways to share their 
highest selves. We see local to global grassroots community building with our hearts, our 
collective intellect, as well as with our eyes   endeavoring to evolve a collective vision 
(HushHouseWebsite). 

 
 
 
 
 
 
The acknowledgement of the local and global is very Pan-African in nature. 

 

The Hush House Museum has exhibits created by African American curators from the 

Smithsonian in Washington, DC (HushHouseVid). It was compiled at Howard University in 

1988 and traveled to several cities in the United States. The exhibits focuses on social justice and 

human right struggles of African Americans. It is one of the only museums that had a traveling 

exhibition created by black people, for black people. Baba Charles Simmons stated the reason 

they have a museum in the middle of the ghetto is because “we have to take the art and culture to 

the people”, especially in a time period where the Detroit Education system is failing and 

students are not going on field trips as frequently as before. Baba Charles and Mama Simmons 

mainly wanted to reach a disadvantaged group, like poor black people in Detroit so that they can 

experience black cultural traditions without the fees of the major museums. Besides, they also 

operate as a Bed and Breakfast and have hosted people from more than 20 countries ranging 

from France to South Africa. This African Centered Cultural heritage institute and educational 

center is highly sought out for its uniqueness and dedication to the black and global community. 

Conclusion 

In this chapter I have provided the reader with six short portraits with contextual 

 
information of my participants. There is a discussion on how I met each, and in addition to 
 

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biographical information, I described their African Centered Institution. The chapter also 

includes something unique about their life, whether it is their emphasis on balance between men 

and women or their advocacy for girl’s education. By understanding these women a little more, it 

is easier to connect to the discussion of them in the proceeding chapters that include their 

finding.  

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

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CHAPTER 4 

Mothering In Nation Building 

As Africans commit themselves to African Renaissance, which means a strong desire to 
rebuild, revitalize and develop the continent and its people worldwide, education must become a 
 

strategic tool for nation building… ~Makini Tchameni 

 
Introduction  
 

Chapter 4 describes nation building as an emergent theme in my study. I provide 

examples, primarily from my participant’s interviews, of nation-building as an emergent theme 

in black women’s leadership roles in African Centered Education. There is also a discussion on 

how the participants’ womanist ideologies also contributes to the significance of nation building 

within their narrative. The section highlights a Pan-African dialogue between black women 

educators in South Africa and Detroit as it concerns their dedication to African Centered 

Education that in itself is a form of nation building. It further displays their collective efforts in 

black liberation and resistance. 

Mothering The Nation 
 
 

In Revolutionary Mothering: Love On The Front Line, Cynthia Dewi Oka, activist and 

educator, explores the tenets of motherhood inclusive of a political space. She quotes Dana 

Erekat, “Motherhood is an act of defiance in the midst of colonization…” (Oka, 51). In addition, 

“The ethos of mothering involves valuing and of itself a commitment to the survival and 

thriving of other bodies. It presents a fundamental contradiction to the logic of capitalism, which 

unmoors us from each other” (Oka, 52). In Mama Sandra’s interview, she discusses mothering 

the nation as a form of healing and survival. Women of color have been, “violently punished 

and stigmatized for mothering…” (Oka). Tenets suggested for motherhood as a revolutionary 

praxis includes politicizing familial love, advances in a justice centered concept of health, 

development of radical mobile autonomous free schools, collective distribution and sharing, and 

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the decolonization of our relationship with mother earth (Oka). As displayed previously, there 

has already been research conducted that has connected mothering to nation building, also 

known as race uplift in past studies, and my dissertation adds to that narrative. 

Nation building is one of the core themes of black women educational leadership in 

African Centered Institutions, it is the “conscious and focused application of our people’s 

collective resources, energies, and knowledge to the task of liberating and developing the 

psychic and physical space that we identify as ours” (Akoto). It is a key to the African 

Renaissance as stated by Makini Tchameni, “As Africans commit themselves to African 

Renaissance, which means a strong desire to rebuild, revitalize and develop the continent and its 

people worldwide, education must become a strategic tool for nation building” (Makini). Pan-

Africanism is important in nation building because it emphasizes black people globally working 

together through black cultural sustainability and preservation against white hegemonic 

structures that have tried to annihilate black culture. Also, it should be noted that African 

Centered schools that emerged rapidly in the 1970s were created and operated by mostly black 

women, and it emphasized nation building (Walker) (Rickford). Also called Pan-African 

Nationalist schools, they were seen as a “political and spiritual extension of the Third World” 

positioning themselves against a global imperialism towards African descended people 

(Rickford, 3). 

Findings 
 
What is Nation building? 
 

Some of the women within their interview gave specific definition and tenets of 

 
nation building, by sharing their responses, we witness similarities within their identities as black 
 
women educators and leaders in African Centered Education in South Africa and Detroit. In 
 

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some participants’ interviews nation building was discussed throughout their interview like 
 
Makini Tchameni, the creator of the African Union International School In South Africa. She  
 
described nation building as, 
 

…an African perspective, even more so than teaching from an African perspective, it is 
what I call nation building…it is indeed a step towards nation building …it is through 
education that we build and lay the foundation of the nation…so for me African Centered 
Education to me is the attempt to rebuild the African nation that has been destroyed 
through mis-education and therefore, now we are attempting to rebuild, to strengthen, to 
rebound from the miseducation towards true education for nation building…to be a 
stronger nation, to be a stronger people, that is what I considered African Centered 
Education to be (Tchameni). 

 
In this statement she defines nation building as African Centered Education. It is important to  
 
work collectively together against the mis-education of colonialism. There is an 
 
emphasis on creating a stronger nation and people beginning with knowledge attainment. 

 
Dr. Ziphora Moichela defines nation building through the lenses of women’s 

 
empowerment.  Though most of the women of the study talked about women’s role in 
 
nation building, her gendered orientation in nation building was more profound, 
 

…I’m not propagating a party political slogan here, but the women of 1956 who marched 
against the past legislation…there was this popular slogan… “You Strike A Woman, You 
Strike a Rock!” Women everywhere in every communities are the bedrock of each and 
every communities. The survival of each and every society is based upon the strength of 
the women and not male in particular because women are able to face death, and to say 
we are prepared to die for the future of our children or for the future of generations to 
come (DrZiphoraMoichela). 

 
Within her narrative, the black woman is the core of nation building, “the bedrock”. 
 
While Dr. Ziphora Moichela asserts that nation builidng lies in the power of the woman, Gogo 
 
Dineo, states that Nation building cannot occur or exist without the acknowledgement of your 
 
ancestors, 
 

…you can’t be African and remove yourself from the very core thing that define you as 
African …and for me what define me as African is those core values and belief systems 
that remain rooted and grounded in my spiritual identity… 

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Mama Charhonda connects nation building to local community building, 
 

I mean nation building is just what it says, building a nation… unfortunately, the nation 
inside of the USA doesn’t really exist for us, so what we are trying to do is establish some 
form of …I wouldn’t say…we are trying to establish some form of modeling, government, 
or just community building, is what we can actually do in the US…because we 
are…unless we become a nation within a nation…but other than that we are doing some 
community building and making sure that the community that we live in, that we play in, 
we work in, which we support is supporting us as well… 

 
For Mama Charhonda stated it is very difficult to build a nation within a country where you are 
 
continuously marginalized – therefore she stresses power of change over her community 
 
jurisdiction where she is an African Centered Educator and leader. 
 

Mama Zukhanye discusses nation building in the form of pooling resources together and 

 
Sharing. This displays elements of the Kwanzaa principle, Ujamaa, meaning cooperative  
 
economics, 
 

I would define nation building as recognizing how we pull our resources as an African 
community. And as, to pull our resources together as an African community and provide 
for ourselves and do for ourselves. Meaning gardening, teaching each other how to can, 
how to heal ourselves through herbal medicine. How to respect, elders, their knowledge, 
their wisdom, their experiences… 

 
Mama Zukhanye emphasized the collective, while Mama Sandra starts at the individual level in 
 
describing nation building. Mama Sandra recognizes a black person’s greatness no matter how 
 
small the act, 
 

But this is my point, what is a nation? When I look at you I see my nation, when I look at 
my children, I see my nation. When I go to any place in the world and I look at the face of 
my beloved people, my babies on the beaches of Ghana, or South Africa carrying peeled 
oranges because they can't go home till they sell the whole tray, I see my nation. 

 

When I see my babies and I ask them, I say well baby what do you want to be when you 
grow up? A maid, and I say no baby. I say how about you owning 7 companies that do 
maid cleaning, I can do that, I see my nation. So, nation building for me is not this 
fallacious thing that white men have created, this is a white thing, this is what they 
created. This is, the people, my people are my nation. My people, in every encounter I 

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create nation, in every encounter. And our ideology is created through our conversations 
and our sharing like we're doing right now. This is nation building… 

 
All these definitions or strands of nation building involved linking the local and or both local and 
 
international community together centered in black womanhood. From education to personal  
 
interaction, they all represent a form of nation-building. 
 
Women, Nation-building, and Education 
 

Most of the women discussed how nation-building stems from an extremely 

 
oppressive Western and traditional curriculum that has been void of African cultural narratives.  
 
Cheryl O’Neal, an African American woman, fled with her husband Pete O’Neal to 
 
Tanzania due to their political involvement in the Black Panther Party. Cheryl contributed to the 
 
development of the United African Alliance Community Center (UAACC) in their hometown of 
 
Arusha. On the UAACC website it states, “From the beginning it was a family effort…” family 
 
is also a word that embodies nation and the collective community. The community center offers 
 
programs and courses in education, arts & crafts, computer science, sports, and health. 
 
Makini Tchameni 
 

Through a narrative of Nation building and Pan-Africanism, Makini Tchameni created 

 
three African centered institutions in Cameroon, South Africa, and Burkina Faso due to her 
 
connectivity to the global African community. Below I have extracted some statements that 
 
highlight the importance of nation building to her as an educational leader, 
 

What is unique about our two schools, in addition to African Centered elements – 
we add a leadership element…That leadership development element is an 
important aspect because we need all our children to see themselves as leaders, 
carry themselves as leaders because even the mission and the, I can say the 
objective of rebuilding the African nation is going to require leaders so therefore 
in addition to instilling cultural pride into our children, as we are educating them, 
we also need to build them up as leaders to move forward and carry that education 
that they received …and to move forward and build on that as well… 

 

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If you want to have a strong nation, you have to build the capacity of the people. Therefore, the 
 
emphasis on creating leaders to rebuild the African nation also speaks to aspects of 
 
nation building, it encourages educational institutions encourages unity. Makini Tchameni  
 
continues, 
 

what is interesting is that you will find African students present many more 
nationalities…they have many different passports…yet they are still African in origin…so 
it’s very interesting …when you see and put all of them together…how they are able to 
work together…and to play together and learn together …when they have a knowledge of 
self…and they are comfortable with who they are…and the other nations are confident in 
who they are…it’s really a beautiful thing to see… 

 
Nation building contributes to love for oneself and culture. Also, it contributes to protection and 
 
preservation of our cultural property, 
 

I’ll like to add that unfortunately what happens a lot in our struggle and has happened in 
the past in our struggles and continue to happen…when we are attempting to rebuild the 
African nation, rebuild the African family …our concepts are being confiscated, 
appropriated, and twisted …and for multiculturalism to be seen as a concept where 
others are not able to express themselves …it means that it’s been captured…that 
concept has been captured…and they are now trying to turn it against what it was 
intended to be…that’s unfortunate, but that’s a part of the ongoing onslaught and mis-
education and oppression that takes place in America…it’s an ongoing process… 

 
Some of the challenges of nation building is the stealing of our ideas and the cultural 
 
appropriation of our talents. Within nation building there is an emphasis on protecting not only 
 
the people, but our culture rather that is our history, art, stories, and technologies. There is an 
 
African proverb that says, “Until the lion has its own storytellers, the hunter will always have the 
 
best part of the story”. Therefore, nation building is just as much about protecting the culture as  
 
it is about building the nation. The ACE Foundation schools are for Africans in Africa and the 
 
African Diaspora and she identifies the work of Marcus Garvey as critical, 
 

I feel like Marcus Garvey that our work is still very much ahead of us, there still a lot 
work to do, and that no matter where we are in terms of African people, rather we are in 
Africa or rather we are in America or in Europe or in Asia…we have to strengthen that 

96 

 

knowledge of self and we also have to continue to push for nation building…for our 
African nation to be rebuilt…and to solidify our stance together as well as the way others 
see us and perceive us…we have a lot of work to do on the continent as well as off the 
continent… 

 
Within nation building there is also this notion of working together, “rather we are in Africa or 
 
rather we are in America or Europe or in Asia”, we have to join forces to create change similar to 
 
what scholar-activist Marcus Garvey did with the creation of the Universal Negro Improvement  
 
Association and the African Communities League. 
 
 
Dr. Ziphora Moichela 
 
 
Nation building is a very important element at her institution, it is even written within the  
 
mission. Below, are some ways in which nation building is displayed in her role as an 
 
educational leader in South Africa. In discussing her research on indigenous knowledge systems, 
 
she mentions its relevance and its necessity to build a nation, 
 

Dr. Ziphora Moichela works at the University of South Africa in Pretoria (UNISA).  

I would say globally we talk about indigenizing the curriculum in context of the continent 
we will talk about Africanizing the curriculum which actually mean that the curriculum 
should be indigenized to cater for the indigenous people who were not there or who were 
silent in the curriculum of the education system during the time of colonialism and even 
after the colonial period…Because even after the colonial period in our case in 1994 the 
policy education was still determined by so called external experts…which were western 
in particular…and really we realized more and problems were occurring…the more 
education is advancing, technology is advancing, but the problems of Africa of poverty, 
economic deprivation…They still are there…The problem is that there is a type of 
problem with the kind of education system which is not relevant hence the dire need…a 
review for the kind of education system that is fed to the indigenous people of the country 
…in this case Africa is a continent and South Africa in particular … 

 
Dr. Ziphora Moichela mentions that if we are going to building a nation, “the curriculum should 
 
be indigenized to cater to the indigenous people”. These ideas are similar to Makini Tchameni 
 
when she was discussing the relevance of African Centered Education and her institutions. In the 
 
next statement, she discusses the necessity of African countries working together to create a 
 

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curriculum, 

I think if we talk of the continent Africa…Africa is Africa…From Egypt to the Cape, and 
first of all we have to look at ourselves, as far as our identity, its African concerned, we 
have seen that Egypt which was the stronghold of Africa has crumbled…we have seen 
with the Arab Spring riots…you name them all they…the big States, the economical hub 
of Africa like Libya…it crumbled…and all that…the ideas like the people of Modar 
Gadaffi purported for, which was the integration of all the States of Africa which I 
believe they died for were real and genuine which is actually trying to tell us that we can 
never talk of one common curriculum for Africa unless and until there is this political 
and social cohesion of the whole continent… 
 
so only when we have received this integration of all the countries in Africa, then we can 
talk of one curriculum…Yes there are going to be challenges that have been created by 
the colonizer based on the fact that they are legalise of the colonies of the Anglophone, 
the Francophone countries…then the second thing will be what type of languages will be 
used to Africanize the curriculum…so that will be another issue... 

 
In this last statement she discusses how countries in Africa have to join forces against 
 
colonialism. She discusses the “crumbling” of Africa’s strongholds. She mentions the destruction 
 
of Egypt and Libya and how without “social cohesion of the whole continent” even the idea of 
 
creating an Africanize curriculum with indigenous knowledge systems. This is a direct call to 
 
build the nation, the African nation. She also mentions great Pan-African leader Marcus Garvey 
 
and how Pan-Africanism within the debate of Africanizing the Curriculum in South Africa is a 
 
missing narrative that will hopefully emerge again, 
 

Pan-African thought is the thought of Marcus Garvey you know or the great scholars of 
Africa which unfortunately seem not to be having that stake in the dialogue of the 
Africanizing of the curriculum, which is just a pity. As far as I’m concerned I think those 
are the people that really had the ideas of Africa pure Africanization at the bottom of 
their heart…Maybe that could have been the start …Pan-Africanism could really lay a 
very solid foundation of what we actually mean…or what we aspire Africanized 
curriculum…but unfortunately with all sort of ideas…the edge of different generational 
gaps…feeling the we are wasting to much time…we wasted to much time…in trying to 
free ourselves from colonialism …our fore fathers after independence wasted a lot of 
time on trying to fight the ideologies of Pan-Africanism, renaissance or whatever to let’s 
just talk Africanization of the curriculum and as a result it seems that Pan-Africanism is 
being downplayed…but as far as I’m concerned, I think some or somehow, it will emerge 
again on its on once the stride for Africanization of the curriculum is come to fruition. 

 
She highlights the fact that people in South Africa have fought so long against colonialism and 

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debated ideas surrounding Pan-Africanism that now people just want to discuss one thing at a 
 
time because to discuss anything else is “wasting too much time”. The fact that she identifies 
 
Pan-Africanism and Marcus Garvey displays the notion of nation building. Throughout Dr. 
 
Moichela’s interview, there are references to women and nation building in South Africa. Dr. 
 
Moichela is quite adamant of the role of women in nation building, 
 

So, we’ve got an adage and old adage in Africa in one of the African proverbs which 
says, “If you educate a girl child, you are educating the whole village…” or as opposed 
to educating a man…or just educating a cabal… or just a group of people…(we come so 
much nature)…with this type of education we inherit it…We inherited from our mother’s 
breast and we pass it on by nursing our siblings and our young children and we pass it 
on for the generations to come… And there is also a saying which says, “Culture…The 
women are the holders of each and every communities culture…” If the culture has been 
embedded in the hands of women you are sure of that, it will be kept safe, nurtured and it 
will be passed on…generations to come…so women are the real holders of each and 
every culture and they are the good banks to deposit the stride towards Africanization of 
the curriculum. 

 
She explains the nation cannot survive without women, which most of the women stated in some  
 
form or fashion. In discussing the necessity of her own research that looks at the indigenous  
 
knowledge systems at the basic level, Dr. Moichela states, 
 

…politically we realize that institutions of higher learning…have become arrested to 
higher ideology and nothing is actually happening and the more they try to bring about 
the solutions the more the education becomes more and more irrelevant to the needs an 
aspiration of the Africans…as a result we are saying how about look at the roots…basic 
education and saying if we argue …if the curriculum is indigenized from the bottom up 
and not from the other way around…maybe we can build step by step and make this tree 
grow…and flourish… 

 
In this statement, she explains that the reason she does this research is so “we can build step by 
 
step and make this tree (education) grow”. Education is one of the most basic forms of 
 
nation building, and she makes a relevant point stating that if our education system, no matter if  
 
it is an Africanized Curriculum with an Indigenous Knowledge System – if it is not created with  
 
the practicality of the people – it is useless. She is discussing accessibility and how this type 

99 

 

 
of education help build the nation and the people. She reiterates this idea of a good education 
 
being at the foundation of creating a better nation, 
 

that it doesn’t matter if I’ve been talking about the Africanization of the curriculum, it 
doesn’t matter if I’ve been talking about indigenization of the curriculum, but at the end 
of the day…here we are…all of us…those who have been at the bottom, we are all talking 
with one voice and one people…it doesn’t matter which continent you have been, but all 
indigenous people are free being trampled upon, from being non-visible entities, because 
with education …you are able to change the concept, you are able to change the world… 

 
She believes that you cannot affect change in a nation without a good educational system, based 
 
on the knowledge of the people. This is displayed in the form of indigenous knowledge systems,  
 
beginning with “the original civilization in Africa”. 
 
Gogo Dineo 
 

The preservation of culture also includes spirituality and ancient traditions in medicine.   

 
This is a perfect example of what Dr. Ziphora Moichela would consider an indigenous  
 
knowledge system. Within the Sangoma tradition, you witness ancient forms of healing that is  
 
inclusive of the ancestors or spirit world as well as herbal natural remedies. As stated before, 
 
nation building is also about the preservation of culture, the passing down of ancient wisdom. 
 
Baba Dineo expresses how her leadership position is a form of nation building, 
 

I have always been doing the work of educating the world, educating Africans, educating 
people around me on what it means to be proudly African that you know some of it you 
can’t get in mainstream education …we are in Africa, and people would assume that one 
of the main things we learn is about what does it mean to be African and taking pride in 
that identity…what are your values and norms and what are the things we believe in and 
that’s not accurate because we are …we live in a country that is still dominated by 
religious belief systems and so it’s not an obvious… 

 
Gogo Dineo, through her Sangoma practice, teaches cultural pride in African heritage. She 
 
admits that currently South Africa is dominated by Judeo-Christian faiths and western 
 
hegemonies that do not acknowledge African contributions. She is a “proud African”, aware of  
 

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the biasness in mainstream education. Gogo Dineo, also mentions specifically  the assault of  
Western Education, 
 

…a lot about who we are as Africans is projected to us by the West…ummm we 
understood ourselves through the books that we read based on stories from the West…we 
understand who we are through religious text and we have truly misplaced ourselves in 
those messages…because most of the messages that was taught from early on was to 
despise anything that really connected us and rooted us to our true identity… 

 
Mama Charhonda 
 

Mama Charhonda, the principal of Timbuktu Academy in Detroit, acknowledges 

 
nation building first with the role of women similar to Dr. Ziphora Moichela, 
 

There is a saying that the nation can rise no higher than its woman…we are the mothers, 
the teachers, and me as a black woman running an institution that caters to black 
children…I think that it’s important because you get that motherly feel… 

 
She acknowledges the “motherly feel” and the nurturing aspect that black women give to 
 
education. Mama Charhonda discusses the community aspect of nation building as well, 
 

So, I think African Centered Schools kinda came out of the Pan-African 
Movement…But at this point it is becoming a movement in itself…so as you see more 
schools failing our kids…there’s a movement to have more schools that will educate 
them about their heritage, about their culture, about themselves…and I’m not saying it 
is just for African kids because if there was a group of Chinese kids I think that their 
education should teach them their culture, their heritage, and about themselves…so I 
think it’s a winning combination…when you’re in a situation where you are educated 
about yourself… 

 
She emphasizes teaching students from a culturally relevant perspective. 
 
Mama Zukhanye 
 

Mama Zukhankye is a teacher at Timbuktu Academy, the way she identifies herself 

 
displays nation building, “I identify, I identify myself as an African born in America.” She places 
 
herself in a black global narrative connecting to Africa the continent and not just Detroit, a city 
 
in Michigan. She provides the importance of self-identification and nomenclature, 
 

There have been so many terms to describe African people, from colored to Negro to 
black to Afro-American, now African American. And then I realized when other 

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people identify us as a people we must realize at some point we must identify 
ourselves. 

 
Even in her definition of African Centered Education, she mentions Africans in Africa and in the 
 
Diaspora similar to Makini Tchameni, 
 

African centered education, African centered education is an, is a system of educating 
through a world perspective and giving credit that is due to African people throughout 
the Diaspora. Because often African people contributions to the world civilization is 
neglected through text books. 

 
She continues and describes Timbuktu Academy, 
 

Timbuktu is an institution that recognize the need of African children and they are willing 
to provide that need through any means necessary. It's very important that our children 
recognize the contributions that our ancestors have given as well as what is in their DNA. 
As the mothers of civilization it's very important that we combat, um, negative images 
that's projected through the media of people of color. If we look through the foundation 
of, education we all know that all races have been mis-educated when it comes to who 
African people are and what we have contributed to the world. 

 
The emphasis on DNA is critical, and being centered in your ancestors like Gogo Dineo would 
 
prescribe is mentioned. She also states, 
 

So many books that do not reflect their images as well as our culture. Um, so it's all 
important that we revisit education because too often education is used to control a 
group of people. 

 
The description of education, and the lack of culturally relevant material is also important and 
 
resonates with what the other participants have stated, 
 

Well, I've visit South Africa and as an educator it makes me recognize and understand 
that a book that I read years ago. The name of the book is The Miseducation of the Negro 
by Carter Woodson, was so, can be applied today. And as we mentioned the term Negro 
and colored it depends on what generation, what generation or what year or decade you 
were born on how a certain term can identify you. It is extremely important that we 
recognize how we've been miseducated and how we've been taught through education 
that we should value a system that oppresses us and uplift others. 

 
To add to the similarities, Mama Zukhanye states, 
 

Well one thing that I can say is that the struggle that I see with African people on one 
continent is the same struggle that I see on other continents. They are the same, the 

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system of education is the same, or the system of miseducation is the same. And, the 
political structure is the same. It's very important that when I think about the values that 
we have, we base our politics on our value system and the principles. And with that we 
will have focus on how we should develop our children as well as you know adults, 
including myself in the future. 

 
Again, these sentiments are similar to Makini Tchameni. She also asserts that 
 
Africans should have their own standards, 
 

Yes, I think often we must not measure our children through the standards that other 
people measure their children. Our children are highly gifted, extremely intelligent and 
often we measure our children concerning a test that Europeans measure their children. 

 
Mama Sandra 
 

Mama Sandra, an ordained minister, educator, and international activist has done  

 
educational, spiritual, and outreach in Africa and the African Diaspora. Some of the countries  
 
she has worked in has been Ghana, Liberia, and Belize. Within the study, I primarily discuss her 

influence with the Hush House Collective in Detroit, that she runs with her husband, it should be 

noted that Mama Sandra is truly a global woman taking upon initiatives all around the world, 

especially as it relates to our black brothers and sisters. On one of her missions to Belize she 

discussed how an African Centered ceremony was drenched in Eurocentrism, 

But you know and then what blew my mind is that in many of these churches it's one, I 
went to this ceremony, an African centered ceremony where people were remembering 
how they came to be in Belize, how black Africans came to be in Belize. But it's a mad up 
story, it's not true. It's, if you look at the history it's something that whites have 
perpetuated and black folks have accepted it too. But still there was some memory in it. It 
was beautiful, had to do with boats and I have film of all of that. So, I followed the crowd 
to this church where they were culminating, freaked me out. I walked up into this, this, it 
had to be about a statue that was about 7, 8 feet tall of this white Jesus standing up, 
holding his hands out. 

 
Apart of nation building is identifying the erroneous nature of Western mythology on African  
 
culture. The idea that an almost 8ft tall statue of white Jesus was centered in the African 
 
Diaspora showed the erasure of a social, cultural, and historical narrative. Next, she discusses the 
 

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concept of teaching from a place of survival. As stated before, nation building in about the 
 
preservation of African culture. She comments on the need to protect the knowledge for 
 
generations to come, 
 

Teaching justice, peace, environmental studies, teaching spiritual warfare from the 
perspectives of survival, of healing. This perspective, gaining this perspective of, is 
deeply complex because the idea of how we're centered I'm trying to get to my question. 
This idea of how do we become centered in our African places because of the assault on 
us continually. We have, we're constant re-centering and re-orienting our view. One 
thing is clear we know we know who the monsters are, we've always know who the 
monster are. They come, sometimes it's, in the bible there's a passage it says light which, 
it's darkened lightness, it's this idea of light that's really dark. We have been able to 
interpret that, and interpreting that we have birthed this form of teaching that has to do 
with survival. This notion of teaching to live and not die centers on it. 

 
There is an emphasis on healing in teaching and participating in African Centered Education, as 
 
She mentioned, “How do we become centered in our African places because of the assault on us 
 
continually?” We  have to teach “spiritual warfare from the perspectives of survival, of healing”.  
 
This statement is also connected to the ancestral traditions of Sangomas presented by Gogo  
 
Dineo. Mama Sandra links Pan-Africanism to mothering, 

 
Because the wombs centers my darling. And so the idea of Pan-Africanism, I think that 
You almost have to, if you don't really study mothering, radical, which encompasses 
radical healing. Which encompasses radical gathering, then you can't really talk this pan 
thing, this you know. 

 
Mama Sandra states that nation building begins with a woman, social movements begin with a 
 
woman, “the womb centers my darling”, when studying Pan-Africanism, you have to study 
 
“mothering”. She also states that Pan-Africanism includes sharing your knowledge with one 
 
another and teaching what you know, 

 
Yeah, I believe that absolutely teach what you know, trust and believe. We think that what 
we have, we don't have enough to offer to teach. The sisters in the neighborhood need to 
teach. If you know how to sweep a floor teach that. If you know how to wipe up good 
teach that. If you know how to braid hair teach that. Whatever you, whatever we have is 
the information that we need to know. 
 

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 We need to embrace and understand that everything that we do is important. How we 
do it is important. I need to know how the sisters in South Africa minister to young 
brothers who have, sisters who have PTSD. Because they have had to live in a war zone 
their entire life because, I have actually borrowed ways of learning. Did you lost that, I 
have actually borrowed ways from my sisters in Liberia who stood up together to fight, 
to get our brothers to stop warring against them in a national or country-wide war that 
consumed them, women to be exact. But we have to teach each other what are we doing 
in our communities to combat depression, to come against that would tell us that we are 
not worthy… 
 

Nation-building is sharing knowledge. 
 
Nation Building and African Centered Institutions 
 

Each woman is affiliated with an African Centered Institution in Detroit or South Africa. 

 
These women own and manage these institutions or they are in leadership positions that  
 
contributes to change. In this section there is a discussion on how Nation building is exhibited  
 
within the structure and existence of their establishment. Again, nation building is the “conscious  
 
and focused application of our people’s collective resources, energies, and knowledge to the task  
 
of liberating and developing the psychic and physical space that we identify as ours” (Akoto).  
 
The question then entails, does the development of African Centered Institutions  
 
contribute to the collective resources, energies, and knowledge of liberation? In addition, do they  
 
develop the psychic and physical space of Africans and Africans in the Diaspora? 
 
The African Union International School in Midrand, South Africa 
 

The African Union International school (AUIS) illustrates a distinct contribution to black 

 
globalization through Pan-Africanism. They use a liberatory model of education described as 
 
African-Centered whereby the curriculum emphasizes the holistic need of the African child 
 
teaching historical and cultural information pertaining to black people in Africa and the  
 
Diaspora. In engaging with classic African-centered and Pan Africanist philosophies and 
 
practices, this form of Black internationalism can bring a distinctive contribution through the 
 

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joint efforts of Africans in Africa and in the Diaspora, as African Centered Education emerges as 
 
a form of global education via globalization and transnationalism. There has been research  
 
conducted on African Centered Schools in the US (Rickford)(Podair)(Murrell)(Robinson); little 
 
work has been done to understand the 'international' study of African-centered schools. The  
 
schools are grounded in theories like Afrocentricity is a critical perspective that means 
 
“placing African ideals at the center of any analysis that involves African culture and behavior” 
 
(Asante 2). Afrocentricity goes against the idea of universality which places emphasis on the 
 
Eurocentric culture and makes it the standard of measurement for everything (Asante 3). During 
 
the Black Power Era there were many schools that arose as well (Rickford) (Biondi). In Carter G.  
 
Woodson book the Miseducation of the Negro he writes, 
 

If you can control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you 
determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will 
do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an 
inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an 
outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and 
if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one (Woodson, 71). 

 

Biondi states that the “goal of these schools was to create Black educational 

 
independence and self-determination in an African-Centered Framework and to shape and 
 
cultivate the next generation of leaders” (220).  The New Concept School in Chicago founded 

by Carol Lee and Haki Madhubuti during Black Power Movement, occurred in conjunction with 

the Black Studies Movement. African Centered schools were a political resistance to white 

institutions that mis-educated black children. Also African Centered Schools can be found in 

countries like Cameroon and South Africa further expanding the Pan- African and transnational 

narrative of nation building. The African Centered Educational   Foundation is as “an 

International NGO working in the field of educational research and development. Africans from 

the continent and the Diaspora initiated the foundation in 1996. The ACE Foundation currently 

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has offices in Western and Southern Africa and works on projects in the six regions of the 

African Union.” (ace).  

YouTube Video 1: 

Africa's Basic Education can be transformed to reflect the needs of individual 
countries… Published on Sep 14, 2013 (From SABC News, Africa's news leader at 
www.sabc.co.za/news is the online news portal of South Africa's public 
broadcaster.) 
 
In this short video (2:35min) about the African Union International School in Midrand, 

South Africa, a brief description of the school is presented. The reporter begins by stating that 

AUIS has a “unique curriculum (that) is dedicated to grooming a new generation of African 

leaders” (sabc). Next one of the school administrator, Shabaka Tchameni, states that “What 

makes the school unique (is that) we focus on African centeredness, meaning that we teach 

students to know their identity and be proud of where they come from…most student don’t know 

that we descend form the people who built the pyramids”. AUIS an urgent need to promote 

African focused educational curriculum. South African teacher, Nkululeko Keith Vumo, talked 

about their small classes being equal to or less than 10 students. He mentioned the small classes 

provided adequate time for the students to express themselves. From the video, you are informed 

that the school serves students from PreK-12 grade, serving all 53 states in the African Union 

and the worldwide African Diaspora. The reporter also mentions the ACE foundation long term 

goal of created an “United prosperous Africa’’. 

YouTube Video Two: ACE Volunteer Teacher 2011-2012: Douala, Cameroon  

 
The Ace Volunteer teacher cohort from 2011-2012 consisted of three individuals, Lamar 
 

Johnson, Keisha Brown, and Ngozika Amalu. The ACE Foundation Volunteer Teacher Program 

gives Africans in the Diaspora an opportunity to teach in Africa, providing a cultural exchange 

program. It also displays nation-building, 

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A volunteer is a young person of African descent that wishes to give one or two years of his/her 

life to travel to and teach in Africa. The Volunteer will get an experience that will enrich his/her 

life and uplift his/her resume. The receiving school will cover all travel and living expenses and 

give to the volunteer a stipend. Though the volunteer does not get what would be considered a 

professional salary in the USA or Europe, he/she receives a stipend that is equivalent to a middle 

class salary in Africa. The love for Africa and African people should be the greatest motivating 

factor for the Volunteer The video clip consisted of all three volunteers plus a student named 

Adissa Tarek. Lamar Johnson, an African American from Houston, Texas from discussed the 

mission of the ACE Foundation, as well as the journalist named Junior. Lamar stated, the ACE 

Foundation “develop schools on Africa and around Africa such as the schools in Cameroon and 

South Africa…and serve as an annex to the universities in Africa and the world…shaping into a 

college placement program”. He stated that the ACE Foundation “gives educators in the United 

States an opportunity to teach from an African Centered Perspective in Africa…” He also 

emphasized there character development program that begins at Pre-K. 

ACE Website 

The Ace Foundation has three websites; one is the official website for ACE Foundation 

 
(http://www.acefoundation.org), while the other two are for each of their schools that include the 
 
African American Academy in Cameroon and the African Union International School in South 
 
Africa (http://africanamericanacademy.com and http://auis.co.za/). On the ACE Foundation 
 
website, a viewer is provided with a background of the foundation that includes a definition of 
 
African Centered Education, Philosophy and Vision, Strategic Vision, and Updates concerning 
 
African schools. For example their philosophy begins with A Global Citizen rooted in his/her 
 
own culture, 
 

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The ACE Foundation believes that true multicultural education is the key to a brighter 
tomorrow in the Global Village. Knowledge of one’s history and culture instills pride, 
unlocks creativity and promotes academic excellence. Once self-knowledge is acquired, it 
is also important to teach children the truth about other people. School curricula must be 
designed to produce an international citizen rooted in his/her own culture with open arms 
reaching out to other members of the human family. 

 
There is also information about their major realizations that include: the African American 

Academy, African Union International School, and AU Council for International Education, and 

their International Student Assistance Program. The websites even have four  publications from 

their key members of the ACE Foundation Makini Tchameni and Djeukeum Tchameni that are 

comprised of the following titles: The Roadmap From Colonial To African Centered Education, 

Primary & Secondary Education For African Renaissance, Inclusion and Multiculturalism in 

South African Schools: A major challenge for the second decade of Democracy, and Inclusion 

and Multiculturalism in South African Schools: A major challenge for the second decade of 

Democracy. 

  

In addition, the ACE Foundation educational programs include The African Renaissance 

Youth Camp and Saturday Academy. There is information on their curriculum as well as their 

consulting and training programs, and college placement program. All traditional subjects are 

supposed to be infused with culturally relevant material such as Social Studies described as: 

KMT: Our African Ancestry - History that begins with the origins of humankind and 
moves to one of the greatest civilizations of all times, KMT (Egypt). The contributions 
of Africans is related to current western philosophy, monuments and symbols. 

 

Some of African Centered Educational Books are African Mathematical Genius, 

 
Heshima To Hotep, Becoming an Afrocentric Language Arts Curriculum, and KMT: Our African 
 
Heritage. 
 

On the African American Academy website, you are greeted with the principal Mrs. 

 
Tchameni and some students. You are provided with the history of the school that states, 

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The African American Academy is a K – 12 international school created in 

1998. Accredited by the ACE Foundation, the Academy offers a holistic and 
multicultural curriculum leading to the International General certificate of Secondary 
Education (IGCSE) and the Advanced Placement International Diploma (APID). Our 
graduates have gained admission in the best universities in the United States Europe and 
Africa.  

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
There is also a summer program for grades 6-9. There is also a page for you to donate your  
 
money to help in their educational endeavors. Knowing most of their teachers are coming fro m  
 
colonial school in Africa, they set up programs at meetings to help teachers attain African  
 
Centered pedagogy, 
 

Teachers and School staff “standard” Training has been and still is basically Eurocentric. 
The contribution of non-Europeans to world civilization is marginalized. Other 
knowledge systems are excluded. Such training develops in teachers and staff a number 
of barriers to good instruction. The greatest of these barriers stem from the teachers 
attitudes and behaviors which are themselves the result of the teacher’s training: Lack of 
understanding of the “other cultures”, low expectations for African students, the 
imposition of double standards etc…Teachers must thus be retrained to deliver an 
African centered curriculum. The training workshops will assure that the instructional 
staff is competent in the delivery of the African Centered Education as well as the core 
curriculum. 

 
Even at the beginning of the school at general assemblies the students are instructed to say creeds 
 
and pledges like, 
 

“We will remember the humanity, glory and suffering of our ancestors And honor the 
struggle of our elders. We will strive to bring new value and new life to our 
people…We will be free and self-determining. We are African people. We will win, we 
will win, will win” from their African Pledge. 

 

Also, one of their school songs is R Kelly song I am the Greatest, and he is African 

 
American singer from Chicago. There are plenty more elements that demonstrates their Pan- 
 
Africanism through their African Centered Education, but that was just a few. 
 

On the African Union International website, there is also a brief historical summary of 

 
the school, 

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Founded in 2005 by the African Centered Education Foundation (ACE Foundation), 
AUIS is registered with the South African Department of Education as an independent 
international school and is accredited by the United States College Board. The African 
Union International School (AUIS) is a unique pan-African co-educational institution 
dedicated to grooming a new generation of African Leaders. The school accepts fulltime 
Kindergarten to Grade 12 students from the 53 states of the African Union and from the 
worldwide African Diaspora. AUIS seeks to instill in learners the competency and the 
commitment to become Servant Leaders and Social Entrepreneurs striving for a united 
and prosperous Africa as well as a just and peaceful World. 
What makes AUIS unique other than the shared components of all the other ACE 

Foundation School is that it has a Language Centre, where they teach Swahili, French, and 

English while other African Languages are taught on demand. The classes are for traditional 

students to executives, and they have three terms in which all are three months. AUIS also states 

on their website that they have “the competency and commitment for African Rebirth”, showing 

what seems to be a more overtly political stance than the African American Academy though 

they are both, essentially, the same. 

Timbuktu Academy of Science and Technology, Detroit Michigan 
 

Timbuktu Academy was created to “extend African-Centered learning experience” to an 

east side community in Detroit where despite its impoverished state, parents and caregivers 

continued to advocate, create, and search for a quality of education for their children 

(Testimonial Resolution). It originally was called Operation Get Down’s Ujima Early Childhood 

Development Center, however when charter school legislation was passed in 1995, the leaders 

E. Malkia Brantuo and Bernard Parker decided to make it into a school (Testimonial 

Resolution). The school opened in 1996 and was called Timbuktu Academy. It was named 

Timbuktu because “Timbuktu is a city in Mali, West Africa, in which the University of Sankore 

stood as an ancient seat of advanced learning” (Testimonial Resolution). Even when the school 

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closed for a few months, it was re-opens due to local efforts and black academic powerhouses 

like Dr. Gloria (Aneb) oversaw a lot of the school’s expansion. Due to the growth of the school 

over the past 20 years, it has moved to at least 3 different location. Throughout the development 

of Timbuktu Academy of Science and Technology there is nation building. The school started 

out first as a small African Centered childhood development center, and then they expanded to a 

school that now house many students due to the ongoing community involvement. 

However, one of the more interesting facts, the founder Mama Malkia Brantuo, left 

Detroit, Michigan and founded another African Centered School in Ghana called Ayensudo 

Akoma International Academy of Arts of Science. It was one of her lifetime dreams to build an 

educational institutional in Africa, and she did so with her own money and donations. Most of 

the students that she served in this small rural area in Ghana where orphans and or their parents 

could not afford to pay. She was affectionately known as Queen Mother Malkia Brantuo or Big 

Mama. The school is primarily being operated by her daughter Chekesha (Bomaniyoutube). 

Mama Charhonda and Mama Zukhanye both work at Timbuktu Academy of Science and 

Technology. The school defines African-centered as, 

“…the foundation on which (they) stand-collectively and individually, academically and 
socially, mentally and morally, in thought and deed- (with) the very best wisdoms, lessons 
and practices of African people around the world” (ACE Handbook, 2). 

 
Education is viewed as holistic because their instruction is multimodal addressing different 

learning styles (ACE Handbook, 2). The vision of Timbuktu is the following, 

To  build  and  maintain  a  model  African-centered  institution  founded  on  integrity  that 
holistically nurtures the development of critical thinkers who use science and technology 
to  improve  the  quality  of  life  for  families  and  communities  around  the  world…(ACE 
Handbook, 3) 

 

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Additionally, the school also involves the student’s families and communities into their 

establishment, furthermore contributing to their African Centeredness. 

A couple of days a week the school begins with a Unity Circle that occurs before school starts 

as a motivational general assembly. It incorporates a sense of community. It incorporates a 

sense of community through song, dance, and collaboration. Subsequently, each grade level has 

a positive word to share with the school before they went to their first class. Timbuktu is very 

family-oriented; they have family nights and activities that include the community.  

 

Mama Jas shared a story of a parent who just spoke to her about familial challenges for 

hours, and she listened. The teachers care for students holistically. Uniquely, Timbuktu is one of 

the few African Centered schools in the Detroit area that is still in existence. 

 

 Equally important, Timbuktu continues to meet all the guidelines for a successful 

reauthorization process in the Detroit Public School system. According to the Detroit Public 

Schools Office of Charter Schools (OCS), the reauthorization process is based on academic 

achievement, ability to follow regulatory procedures of the charter agreement, and financial 

stability (Reauthorization). Notably, Timbuktu has found a successful model maintains African 

Centeredness while meeting DPS standards of accreditation for a charter school, despite this 

being a difficult task.  

 

Though, Timbuktu Academy does have a lot of family involvement, they are also 

dealing with a younger generation of parents who just drop their students off. Teachers are put 

in position where they are parents, mothers, fathers, and grandmothers, giving the children 

extended care. These type of interactions are very common at an African Centered School.  

Within the school there were several African Centered mannerism that I immediately 

witnessed. The school uses a variety of Swahili words spoken in East African countries like 

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Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. For example, Mama Jas told me that when you enter into a class 

you have to say Hodi, Hodi which means (May I come in…), then the teacher or staff in the class 

would say Karibu (welcome) (ACE Handbook, 6). Also, as mentioned earlier, all the teachers 

were called Baba’s and Mama’s as a sign of eldership (ACE Handbook, 4). 

Both schools begin the day with a school gathering in which there is a roll call/good news, 

encouraging praise songs and mantras, as well as words of wisdoms. AUIS uses the Nguzo Saba 

within  their  curriculum.  Also,  both  schools  have  strong  women  leadership  within  their 

administration  and  faculty.  Timbuktu  and  AUIS  emphasizes  a  socially  conscious  rhetoric 

throughout both schools concerning the well-being of the African people. 

The Hush House Museum 

The Hush House Museum is located in the middle of a black neighborhood in Detroit, 

Michigan. Despite the block having vacant and occupied buildings, there is still a robust 

community. At any giving moment you will see children on the street and the sidewalk playing 

with each other, a neighbor having a gathering outside with music playing and barbecue smoke 

in the air. It is definitely a neighborhood, not the one described by the American dream, with 

the white picket fence, two working parents, and a dog, but one built on resilience despite the 

economic fall and the stereotypes associated with black people and Detroit. It is not considered 

your idea place to create a museum, however Mama Sandra and Baba Charles believed that 

there is community.  In addition, the community deserves a chance to receive quality 

educational tools and exhibits about the black experience that would inspire them despite being 

a community that would be described as partially dilapidated. They created with the help of 

early black Smithsonian curators a great exhibit sharing black history and culture.  

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Prior to the black cultural exhibit having a home in the Hush House, it toured all around 

the United receiving critical acclaim. Believing in the power of word and creation, Mama 

Sandra and Baba Charles took one the old abandoned buildings and created a museum, “If you 

say it’s a museum, then it’s a what?...a Museum…” Nation building is all inclusive of people, 

they are not just serving high class black people or even upper middle class black people, they 

wanted to make sure to create an institution for people who would not ordinarily go to museum 

due to location and lack of experience could frequent. Even in their positionality in a mixed 

income black neighborhood, you see their attempt to create a space for everyone. 

 

In addition, the Hush House Museum is global. They receive guest from all around the 

world who visit the museum and stay at their bed breakfast. Essentially, they are sharing their 

nation building mission all around. They have received guest from South Africa, France, 

Guyana, Nigeria, and other parts of the world. Even world-renowned stars like Danny Glover 

have visited the Hush House Museum. Nation building is local, national, and international – and 

that exactly describes the Hush House Museum. University of South Africa In Pretoria 

Nation building is global, as discussed earlier. The University of South Africa in Pretoria 

is one of South Africa and Africa’s premier institution. One of their key features that 

makes them stand out from the rest is their Open Distance Learning Program. This 

program allows you to attend classes and finish your degree online. Through their ability 

to reach masses via technology, they are able to build not only Africa, but also the world. 

It is highly advisable that students have personal computers to assist them, though 

UNISA provides computer labs for the students if needed. In addition, UNISA library is 

the largest library in Africa, allowing students to access a plethora of e-books and e-

material that will allow them to complete their courses (ODL). UNISA serves students 

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from all around Africa, and even outside of Africa due to their Distance Learning 

Program.  

Also, Nation building is seen through UNISAs community engagement and 

outreach programs. UNISA has over 100 program that engage the community including the 

Mothong African Heritage Project, Polokwane Rural School Project, and the End Violence 

– Talk to children about gender violence. All these programs are extension of UNISA 

mission and objectives. It also displays locally how they are able to nation build outside the 

campus. 

Conclusion 

 

Though the literature concerning black women leaders in ACIs is scarce, we are able to 

see some trends in the scholarship about black women educators as it concerns nation building. 

Black women leaders in educations have a clear commitment to their task to teach and uplift 

their community locally and globally. They treat their students like their children affectionately, 

generally teaching from a place of love. Black women leaders also have an embedded desire to 

help transform the black community that is due to their cultural memory. These ideas are 

expressed in the connection of nation building and mothering. 

Lastly, I would like to call these black women leaders in education, Africana women. 

Africana allows me to acknowledge both African women in the diaspora and on the 

continent simultaneously. Though, I am very happy that these women have worked very hard 

to establish a better education for black students - I am concerned about their self-care. To 

me an Africana woman does not just work, work, work for the liberation of the people, 

An Africana woman is committed to cultural preservation in Africa and the African Diaspora. 
She knows that self-preservation comes first, including physical, mental and spiritual renewal, 
therefore she takes time to restore her energy so that she can continue to change the world - 
resting and retreating when necessary. 

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CHAPTER 5 

Mothering the Spirit or Consciousness 

I see, I hear, I connect to African spirits…I am a Sangoma… Gogo Dineo 

 
Introduction 
 

Chapter 5 discusses how each women were led to become educators by spiritual call or 

black consciousness. Mothering the spirit or consciousness discusses why the six black women 

of my study in Detroit and South Africa created African Centered institution. During their 

interviews and my observation, most of the women mentioned how or a higher power, rather, it 

was ancestors, spirit, or God contributed to them opening their institutions. Most of these 

women were driven by a cause greater than themselves when they decided to open their African 

Centered Institution. This is also rooted in the history of black women educators who in early 

American history educated the black south due to race upliftment. Chapter 5 provides a 

definition and explanation of spirit and consciousness as it relates to their stories. It displays 

trigger stories, phrases, and words that connected them to spirit or consciousness revealed 

through their stories and institutional creations. In addition, Chapter 5 connects their institutions 

to the spirit or consciousness of the women, and how it reflects a deeper manifestation of their 

soul. 

 
Mothering The Spirit Or Consciousness 
 

In previous chapters, we have discussed the significance of mothering, stating that it 

“involves valuing others, and of itself a commitment to the survival and thriving of other bodies” 

(Oka, 52). According to previous scholarship, characteristics of mothering is to nurture, teach, 

mold, be a bearer of culture, mentor, and to be conduit for the spiritual regeneration of the 

ancestors (Karenga) (Dove, 520) (Godono). Mothering is extended to “emancipatory 

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organizations, institutions and social movements as is reflected in the history of the mothers of 

the freedom movements in this country and throughout the pan-African world” (Karenga) 

Again, in this chapter we are emphasizing mothering as being a “conduit for the spiritual 
 
regeneration of the ancestors” and a creator, consciously of emancipatory organizations as 
 
“mothers of the freedom movements” did and continue to do (Karenga) (Dove, 520) (Godono). 
 

A key word within mothering is “nurture”, you have to cultivate different things to 

 
manifest. In this chapter, we discuss how these women nurture their spirit and consciousness and 
 
in turn, their spirit and consciousness give them the strength to continue to teach, lead, and 
 
manage their African Centered institutions. 
 

In addition to consciousness, most these women exhibited what South African activist 

 
Steve Biko called a “Black Consciousness”. He described it as, 
 

Black Consciousness is in essence the realization by the Black man of the need to rally 
together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression - the blackness of their 
skin and to operate as a group in order to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to 
perpetual servitude. It seeks to demonstrate the lie that black is an aberration from the 
normal which is white. It is a manifestation of a new realization that by seeking to run 
away from themselves and to emulate the white man, blacks are insulting the intelligence 
of whoever created them black. Black consciousness therefore takes cognizance of the 
deliberateness of God's plan in creating black people black. It seeks to infuse the black 
community with a new-found pride in themselves, their efforts, their value systems, their 
culture, their religion and their outlook to life… (SASO NEWSLETTER, SEPTEMBER 
1971) 

 
Even in Biko’s definition, he emphasizes three major points that are critical to a black 
 
consciousness, black people should 1. rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual 
 
servitude, 2. take cognizance of the deliberateness of God’s plan in creating black people black, 
 
3. infuse the black community with a new found pride in themselves, their efforts, their value 

systems, their culture, their religion and their outlook to life. All these women subscribe to at 

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least one or all of these tenets of black consciousness. In the essence of these women lives, 

consciousness is not only spiritual, but as Steve Biko has highlighted, it is political. 

 What is Spirit and Consciousness? 

Consciousness is defined as the "permeating essence or pervasive energy, or spirit" 

(Optimal Psychology, 13). Consciousness is energy, it is spirit, and it is a manifestation of you. 

Spirit "refers to that permeating essence we come to know in an extrasensory fashion" (i.e. 

energy/consciousness/God) (12). Consciousness and spirit are interchangeable, and it is felt 

outside of the normal five senses. According to Mutombo Nkulu-N'Sengha, an African scholar, 

in an African epistemology there are the supernatural, the natural, and the paranormal paths to 

knowledge (68). The paranormal paths skirt the edge of the unknown. However, spirit is one of 

the elements that is frequently discussed within an African world view and is essential in these 

women lives. A spiritual experience is subjective to the individual; it is accepted as true based 

on his or her own knowledge. 

Understanding the sacred and secular, also helps us to understand the parallels of 

consciousness and spirit. The fusion of the sacred and secular is one of the components of an 

African worldview. The encouragement of the diunital, when complementary opposites coexist-

such as the spiritual and secular, has been documented in traditional African cultures. According 

to Myers, this fusion has the ability to provide a remedy to the negative effects the Eurocentric 

worldview has had on the African mind. Optimal consciousness recognizes the erroneousness of 

the Eurocentric epistemology and attempts to alleviate the manacles of the cultural brainwashing 

placed on the descendants of Africans. Myers states, "[t]he intellectual imperialism of Western 

patriarchy has proven to be viciously intolerant of any perspective that breaks the bonds of its 

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conceptual incarceration" (Optimal Psychology 4). Viewing the sacred and secular as a unit 

versus separate entities assists in breaking the conceptual bondage of Blacks in America, Africa 

and the greater African Diaspora. It also helps us to better understand the complexity of 
 
spirituality in these women lives. 
 
Findings 
 
Women, Spirit, and Education 
 
Makini Tchameni 
 

When Makini Tchameni decided to create her first African Centered Institution along 

 
with her husband in Douala, Cameroon – it was out of mere necessity. There was just no school 
 
in the surrounding area that could properly educate their children with an African Centered 
 
ideology, so she solicited the help of other parents who also wanted a quality education and 
 
asked them to assist her in the process. She was driven by a force beyond herself, the spirit of a 
 
mother who wanted the best for her children. She started more than a 30 years ago, and she has 
 
not stopped, creating schools and curriculum in four countries in Africa including the United 
 
States of America. She further explains her rationale for starting these African Centered Schools, 
 

Ms. Caesar, I chose education out of necessity. There was, at the time I made that choice, 
a very strong need for a perspective that was different from the one that my children 
were exposed to…So it was really out of sheer necessity. For me to ensure that, not only 
my children, but other children also – would have access to a perspective that was not 
colonial because at that particular time when that decision was made, I found myself and 
my family here in Cameroon, where the post-colonial educational system was in place 
and is still in place, and therefore children were, are educated from the perspective of the 
colonial powers. So, we, being my husband, myself decided that it was really important 
that we try to provide and make available a different perspective to our children and to 
the children of Cameroon. 

 
There is an emphasis on the challenges of the post-colonial educational system and the need for a 
 
different perspective, one that was African-Centered. 
 

She also discusses her philosophy that she links to the spirit of being a woman, 

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…My philosophy would be that first of all the woman, the mother, the women in the 
society are the ones that transmit or have very strong roles in transmitting the culture 
and learning…of course we need our men to be able to do that well …I find that I don’t 
have any particular “ism” that I am linked to philosophically other than it takes a village 
to raise a child… and the mother is the one that is generally providing the first education 
to the children and therefore she is at the center of their educational process… 

 
In this quote, she emphasizes the importance of the role of the woman in the educational process 

of the child, she states “women in the society are the ones that transmit…the culture and 

learning”. It is a form of feeding the society or as Ziphora Moichela discussed, “Breastmilk”. It 

is the role of the woman, linked to her duty within any functional society. Also, even though she 

acknowledges women primary roles in tending to the educational needs of a child, she states, “it 

takes a village to raise a child” providing an illustration of how collectivism is rooted in her 

consciousness, as well as Pan-Africanism. This is also a very womanist perspective in which 

women see themselves as a part of a community, and one of their roles is to uplift it and 

facilitate it’s progress, even though she does not associate with any “isms” like many of the other 

women in my study. 

 
Gogo Dineo 
 

Gogo Dineo is a leading Sangoma in South Africa, who also has an institution called the 

Gogo Dineo Ndlanzi Institute of Spiritual Healing that trains people who have a “calling” to 

become a Sangoma. The school represents how South Africans have preserved indigenous 

knowledge systems within their society. Even though the Sangoma tradition is at times seen as 

taboo, Gogo Dineo continue to press own advocating for the usage and continuation of 

traditional healing being very vocal on different media streams including radio and television. 

She believes that a part of her calling is to breakdown stereotypes of what it means to be a 

traditional healer because moste people believe, 

 

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Sangomas are people who cannot express themselves, you know Sangomas are people 
who are not educated or you know like there is a lot of stereotypes around it…and my 
work is to challenges those belief systems… 
 

Gogo Dineo provides a space where African spirituality can flourish and be contested in an 
 
healthy way. 
 

Unlike most schools where you ordinarily can just apply in order to obtain admittance 

 
into the institution, the Gogo Dineo Ndlzanzi Institutite of Spiritual Healing is not the same. One 
 
must have an ancestral calling that is accompanied by some type of esoteric signs that can be 
 
interrupted as “the calling”. It was “the calling” that caused Gogo Dineo Ndlanzi to undergo 
 
initiation, and since then, her whole life has been dedicated to healing and preserving the 
 
traditional culture. It is the primary of the reason that she became the a Sangoma and created a 
 
school to train others. She reiterates the esoteric essence of the calling, 
 

and on a bigger scale…I also train Sangomas, people who are called to take on this 
work…I am always very hesitant to say this because it’s not an institute where you can 
just show up and register, and then you’re in it…being a Sangoma…you’re 
called…you’re chosen…you’re called…and the same way whoever is going to mentor, 
coach, and train you is also called into that position…and you are also sent through to 
that person…so there is something on an ancestral or spirit level that happens to …to 
facilitate those things… 

 
She acknowledges the spiritual elements and mysterious nature of the school, and sacredness of 
 
the gift. 
 

Her identification with spirit was more overt than some of the other women that I 

 
interviewed. In her description of herself, she states, 
 

So identify myself as a spiritualist, and what I mean by being a spiritualist is one who is 
not cast in stone and it’s one that always is evolving and one that always tries to be 
present with this time and this moment… and a lot of my spiritual belief systems are 
grounded in African spirituality…I don’t believe Africans were religious at all…I don’t 
believe there was African religion…I believe there was African spirituality and that 
informed our culture and culture is a way of being, but the way of being is informed by 
you know that spiritual identity so that’s how I identify myself as an African spiritualist 

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and then everything else branches out from that core…which is me an African 
spiritualist… 
 
As mentioned before, a Sangoma is a traditional healer who works with the ancestors, in 

addition to other spiritual entities and nature to create healing. She directly calls herself an 

African spiritualist connecting herself with a higher power. She continuously emphasizes that her 

roots are in “African Spirituality”, and that displays her African Centeredness. Gogo Dineo does 

not discuss a stagnant spiritual system, but one that “evolves” with time, which allows her 

fluidity in her spiritual practice and interpretation of the divine. Even though she disputes 

between religion and spirituality, she recognizes spirituality in general as an indigenous 

knowledge system that informs South Africa’s culture and must be taught accordingly. Currently 

in South Africa, there is discussion surrounding the Africanization of the curriculum and what 

will inform that new educational tool that inform the South African knowledge system. Much 

research has stated that you cannot Africanize the curriculum without adding indigenous 

knowledge systems, ways of knowing rooted and related in South African traditions. Sangoma’s 

represent a traditional form of medicine, many schools in South Africa that were once entirely 

drenched and covered in western ideologies and methodologies are now looking at traditional 

medicine for answers. Therefore, Gogo Dineo continue to speak at universities concerning 

traditional medicine and the possible collaborative efforts with western ways displaying how 

science and spirit can work together in a holistic healing. 

 

Gogo Dineo states at the root of a society is spirituality and from that “everything else 

branches”. She takes her role as a transmitter of tradition by initiating others, primarily women, 

into the Sangoma wisdom very seriously. She also describes it as a birthing process when she 

teaches someone the essentials of being a healer. Being a “Baba”, a spiritual teacher and leader 

is just like being a parent, the only difference is she focuses on helping her students birth their 

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spiritual “calling” while being holders of an ancient healing practice.  Gogo Dineo continues and 

breaks down the fundamentals of African Spirituality, which for her, is the fundamentals of 

being a Sangoma, 

what has been the most frequent request is about our relationship to God as 
Africans…and if we believe in those who lived before us, in African Spirituality we 
believe that the body dies, but the spirit goes on to live on it reconnects to the creator, the 
divinity, which people call God… we call it…Mvelinqungi, Modimo, Ramasedi…in that 
context there is no gender, there is no color, there is nothing of those isms or 
skisms...affiliations associated to it…we call that creator energy … 

 
The highest power in African Spirituality is the creator energy or God, there are different names 
 
for it, yet the same. She does discriminate or provide hierarchies for nomenclature on who your 
 
God or creator energy, God is genderless, colorless, and without ism, God and or creator energy 
 
just is, and it cannot be explained as anything else. For her, in many ways Christianity has 
 
assaulted African spirituality, adding all of these characteristics, creating it into a white Jesus that 
 
is a man with blue eyes and blond hair. That is not what African Spirituality promotes at all. On 
 
the other hand, though the creator energy is genderless, when there is a highly spiritual, in 
 
African tradition, it was held by a woman. So, if a gender was ascribed to God, it would be 
 
woman usually, 
 

you know patriarchy mostly does come from Western belief systems…if you look at 
religion…you know mostly Western religions have God as a man…and in African culture 
God is a woman…(Zulu word for God) Uthixo, Modimo…there’s no gender attached to 
that…right there is no gender attached to that…and you know we use to have queens, 
matter of fact we still have a queen of South Africa which is Modjaji…we have the role of 
the Makatzi, which nothing can happen without Makatzi …so the Makatzi is the main 
facilitator of a lot of things that need to happen in the family, but because we have been 
programmed to believe that a man is more powerful because, there, we have a man who 
is a God…then some of those things are you know…downplayed in African spirituality… 

 
She continues to discuss the spiritual tier of African spirituality by stating that after the creator 
 
energy, there is the ancestor, 
 

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…and we then believe in our ancestors, those who have lived on this earth and have 
served us would continue to serve us on the other side as spirit guides and they intercede 
between us and the creator energy… 

 
When you Pahle or pray, you always acknowledge God and the creator energy, however it is 
 
your ancestor that will intercede to God on your behalf. As she stated prior, an ancestor is a 
 
someone who has passed away that is a part of your bloodline. In my case, for example, my 
 
mother and grandmother would be my ancestors. In a prayer, I would always acknowledge God 
 
with gratitude and ask for forgiveness, but I would ask my grandmother to help me with my 
 
problems or issues. My grandmother spiritually helps me and also ask God to assist me through 
 
an intercession. Though, many South Africans have some type of reference o this tradition, she 
 
states the difficulty of people now accepting this as true, 
 

but people have found it very difficult to believe in their African ancestors, to believe in 
the spirit guide of their grandmother, the spirit guide of their late father, late 
…anyone…but you know they are very ok to go to the spirit guide of Abraham, Joshua 
and so forth…not that there is anything wrong with it…but it’s something wrong…when 
what is our own…is demonized and what is not our is celebrated and acknowledged and 
been made ok…so that is what the institute is trying to do…(break stereotypes) 

 
She emphasizes the negative association with indigenous knowledge systems of South Africa, 
 
and yet many people are fine with worshiping something that has nothing to do with their 
 
culture. For her, that is the anti-thesis of African Centered, to practice another form of spirituality 
 
is one thing, however to then demonize your own cultural tradition is a form of self-hate and 
 
denial. She mentions more about breaking stereotypes as it concerns African Spirituality, 
 

I’m like that to…I see, I hear, I connect to African spirits…I am a Sangoma…you know I 
was once at one these big conferences and I always introduce myself as, my name is gogo 
dineo ndlanzi, and yes I am a Sangoma and yes I am going to burp and I’m not going to 
apologize and at the end of that conference…one of the ladies who have never told 
anyone in public that she is an Sangoma stood and burped and said I am Sangoma and 
said thank you very much to gogo dineo…so if this institute can serve a purpose where 
people are ok what has been demonized or discriminated against you know then to me it 
serves its purpose and I also need to challenge some of the assumptions and stereotypes 

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about you know what is our way of being as Africans because people also automatically 
assume because I’m Pan-African that I’m automatically against things that seem or 
deemed as western… like you know same sex marriages…people always believe that my 
opinion would be like no that’s not African…I don’t believe Africa is like that…I believe 
African culture has always being present to this time…that’s what I believe African 
spirituality is about… 

 
It is important for Gogo Dineo to describe herself in terms of an evolving definition of African 
 
Spirituality, and she reiterates similarly that she does not really identify with feminism, 
 
womanism, or any “ism”, especially when comes to her calling and her people, 
 

I’m a spiritualist…so I can’t stand by womanism, feminism…I believe in the 
interconnection of people so even when I have strong views about…you know I’m a 
Pan-Africanist …so meaning I am pro things that are African, but I am pro things that 
are allowing for Africans to thrive and progress… 

 
It is clear that Gogo Dineo wants to see Africa move forward and that she is pro change, as 
 
Long as it move the African people forward. 
 

She is also very respected by her family, men and women alike. A Sangoma in the family 

 
is one of the highest signs of leadership in a family, and she affirms it by saying, 
 

and when I call my family forward and call my family to order … no one is like you’re a 
woman…you’re this…you’re young there is not any of that because of my role as a 
Sangoma and my family revere that I am a Sangoma and they trust in it…everything else 
com after…that I’m a woman, that I’m young , and all of those things don’t play when 
I’m speaking to the men I care about cause there is a lot of respect that I get, honor, 
there’s a lot of trust in my ability to carry the family forward and I don’t believe that’s 
because of me along…I believe it’s because you know…in it, us as Africans…we know 
how powerful the woman is…how the womb is powerful…I mean woman…”womb man” 
as others may refer to it…is it’s where all life begins I believe in it as Africans we do 
know that you know life begins with a woman and women are the life givers and they 
facilitate a lot of things… 

 
Her spiritual position in the world, places her at the head of the table with her family. She serves 
 
in a leadership advisory role that is highly respected. It is clear that Gogo Dineo’s spiritual 
 
practice has a huge position in her life. 
 
 
 

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Dr. Ziphora Moichela 
 
Dr. Ziphora Moichela is a lecturer at the University of South Africa in Pretoria, she 

 

studies indigenous knowledge system and the logistics of incorporating into the current South 
 
African curriculum. The University of South Africa in Pretoria is one of largest universities in 
 
South Africa, and it is known as the African University, for Africans and by Africans. UNISA 
 
have created radical and inclusive space for years that conducts research for the betterment of 
 
Africa and African people. Though, Dr. Ziphora Moichela is very conscious of the rationale for 
 
conducting research on indigenous knowledge system in a post-apartheid South Africa, she was 
 
one of the few members who had a different reason for becoming a teacher. Dr. Ziphora 
 
Moichela states, 
 

In my case I would say, looking at my background in South Africa, teaching was a way 
out…I would say it was a poor persons profession whereby if you were struggling at 
home it was the only way out where you will get a bursary, a government bursary…and 
into 10 you would go for teaching whereby then it was seen as a profession for women 
and a kind of stable profession and you knew that if you are there, there will never be a 
situation whereby there will be no jobs…and also the benefits that went with teaching 
…coming from a poor background, you knew that if you were really serious and 
dedicated about life…you will never lack bread on the table…you will never lack a place 
to stay…even if you don’t get that lucrative salary, but there are benefits at the end of 
the day…you’ll be able to get a government subsidy to buy a house or buy your family 
house which they didn’t have…so mostly went into teaching for that…of which, if you 
had a wide vision, you could expand…just like I said…I started as an ordinary teacher, 
but because I knew my basics that I come from the ashes…I did not relax…when I was a 
teacher I started improving and studying privately until I acquired my honors, my 
masters, and right now I’m busy doing my PhD, just from being a teacher… 

 
In her case, she was looking for a better life. She was looking for an economic advantage. 
 
However, through her experience in the South African school system, she was conscientized to 
 
the disparity of black people in education and became more radical with work as seen in her 
 
research. She states, 
 

my PhD subject is on the indigenization of the curriculum, so anybody can say…what do 
you mean by indigenizing and Africanizing … I would say globally we talk about 

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indigenizing the curriculum in context of the continent we will talk about Africanizing the 
curriculum which actually mean that the curriculum should be indigenized to cater for 
the indigenous people who were not there or who were silent in the curriculum of the 
education system during the time of colonialism and even after the colonial… 
period…Because even after the colonial period in our case in 1994 the policy education 
was still determined by so called external experts…which were western in 
particular…and really we realized more and problems were occurring…the more 
education is advancing, technology is advancing, but the problems of Africa of poverty, 
economic deprivation…They still are there…The problem is that there is a type of 
problem with the kind of education system which is not relevant hence the dire need…a 
review for the kind of education system that is fed to the indigenous people of the country 
…in this case Africa is a continent and South Africa in particular … 

 
Again, through her research she was able to recognize the challenges of the apartheid era 
 
education and the 1994 policies that were still drenched Western modalities. This caused her 
 
study indigenous knowledge systems that would influence this new Africanized. 
 

Also,  she  mentions  how  education  is  passed  down  from  one  generation  to  another 

 
through a woman’s body, 
 

We inherited from our mother’s breast and we pass it on by nursing our siblings and our 
young children and we pass it on for the generations to come… And there is also a 
saying which says, “Culture…The women are the holders of each and every communities 
culture…” If the culture has been embedded in the hands of women you are sure of that, 
it will be kept safe, nurtured and it will be passed on…generations to come…so women 
are the real holders of each and every culture and they are the good banks to deposit the 
stride towards Africanization of the curriculum. 

 
The metaphor of the breast feeding a child education is a very spiritual depiction. It displays how 
 
women give mental, physical and spiritual life. The act of passing down one’s culture is also a 
 
very sacred act that are kept safe “in the hands of woman”. Even though Dr. Ziphora Moichela 
 
did not have spiritual or consciousness epiphany like the other women on why she decided to get 
 
into African Centered education, by the end of her PhD program she had reached that spiritual 
 
moment. 
 
Mama Charhonda 
 

Mama Charhonda is the principal of Timbuktu Academy of Science and Technology in 

128 

 

 
Detroit, Michigan. She discussed the responsibility that she has to serve her people, she states, 

Also just to know the plight of some of the students gives us an even bigger and even 
better edge…because I was born in the neighborhood just like this …and I have the same 
experiences, we share some of the same relatives I see them in the grocery store so it’s 
important for a black woman to head an institution that is catering to black children… 

 
She relates to the community and students because she grew up in the same neighborhood.  
 
Mama Charhonda know these students, because she was one these children too! Just like some of  
 
the women like Gogo Dineo, she describes herself as a Pan-Africanist, 
 

So the closest thing you could say is a Pan-Africanist, I think… grew up in an era where 
we were just proud to be black…and you know, we wanted to make sure we were heard 
and seen and that because of all the past oppression and past neglect that black people 
had had or African people have had…Is that we wanted our fair chance to represent to 
let the world know that we did make contributions to this world… 

 
Mama Charhonda grew up in an era where she was just “proud to be black”, so it was instilled in 
 
her to carry that same legacy to the next generation. Another thing that she stated was that black 
 
community need is love, 
 

you know umm knowing that our kids sometimes just need some love, some guidance, 
some support…and sometimes that spiritual background they just don’t have…and so 
although I won’t force anything religion, or spirituality on them …I think it’s important 
for them to recognize that there is a higher power or although things may seem bleak 
today…there’s hope for the future… 

 
Her ability to share a sense of hope to students that have been told they are hopeless due to the 
 
color of their skin and economic situation provides that students with a black consciousness that 
 
allows them to take pride for themselves, “proud to be black”. She was heavily rooted in black 
 
consciousness, understanding the notion of Sankofa – in order to move forward you have to go 
 
back and remember you past. 
 
Mama Zukhanye 
 

Mama Zukhanye discussed like some of the other women, becoming an educator was an 

 
easy thing to do because she grew up in a neighborhood where she would play teacher, 

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Well it was just, a natural process. I remember as a child I always played wap school 
where, you know children played teacher and there was this elder named Mr. Masingayle 
who always taught children through play. And we would win pennies if we could answer 
questions. And, actually it was just a need, it was a need. I would have summer school on 
my front porch with children in our community and it was just a need that we educate 
ourselves. 

Due to the fact, no one will put more energy into someone as far as, through the full of 
education, other than teaching your own, I mean it's your responsibility. I wouldn't ask a 
cat to teach a fish, I think it's very important that we teach the children in our own 
community. 

Within her community, she was instilled a sense of responsibility, community, and 

 
consciousness. She knew at early age that “no one will put more energy into someone…other 
 
than teaching your own”. The school games that she played with the elder Mr. Masingayle left a 
 
lasting impression on her, because she continued to teach her own by being an African Centered 
 
educator in various places around the United States. Mama Zukhanye continues to describe her 
 
philosophy, 
 

My spiritual practice is upliftment in life…everything that I've tried to do or I seek to do I 
recognize that my actions affect my community. And it is crucial that just for, to sustain a 
certain principle that I need to live, I need to live and practice, the richness of African 
culture. 

 
Within her life she practices a communal orientation, similar to some of the things that Mrs. 
 
Tchameni stated when she described some of the things that helped her to push forward. She 
 
states, my spiritual practice is “upliftment”, “my actions affect my community”, and “I need to 
 
live…and practice the richness of African culture”. All these statements are profound because it 
 
describes her spiritual essence and the rationale for why she continues to work with little black 
 
children at Timbuktu Academy. 
 

I never, well just to think about the question I would say, as an African woman we can do 
because we're capable. I will use that as a philosophy. We are brilliant and we are 
beautiful, we're graceful. And if we want to identify what a woman is I would say as an 
African look at me. 

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Everything is rooted in blackness. 
 

Mama Sandra 
 

Some of the women were very overt about their spiritual calling to educate like Reverend 

 
Mama Sandra Simmons. When asked why she decided to be an educator she stated, “I didn’t 
 
choose a career in education, teaching is my gift from God”. The gift in her mind that continued 
 
to give, even now, as she battles her own personal ailments, she continues to educate with ease 
 
and a skill that can only be described as a natural born gift. She even describes herself in spiritual 
 
terms, 
 

besides being an African American woman, I see myself as a leader, healer, and in 
that…a deep woman of faith, a seer, a reader certainly all those other designations that 
were given…partnership as a mother, a woman, a fighter…and I often say that I’m a 
general because it’s absolutely necessary …because all those identities require a deep 
amount of sacrifice and so that’s how I see myself… 

 
These other adjectives include words likes healer, a deep woman of faith, and a seer. These 
 
biblical references cover her, and she makes sure that her life is guarded by the power of the 
 
Godly word and spirit. She trusts God’s journey with her faith, she cures the sick with her 
 
healing power, and practices spiritual divination with her ability to see into the future. Reverend 
 
Mama Sandra Simmons gifts more than educating others, she has been called by her God and the 
 
ancestors for a very special mission in her live that she takes very seriously. 
 

Even while growing up, older women use to look at her differently. There were African 

 
American colloquiums they you use to tell her, 
 

So, you know in my life I've always been told you just so old, my god mother used to tell 
me that. You, you're just like a little old lady, you've been like an old woman ever since 
you've been a baby you know what I'm saying. 

 
Within the African American tradition these saying are common, either you act a little bit too old 
 
for your age or your character resembles an ancestor. Maybe you act like Grandma Joyce or you 

131 

 

 
following the ways of Uncle Peete. The point of it all, there is a hint of reincarnation in these 
 
undertones that somehow or one way or another your spirit has been her before and we, being 
 
friends and family, recognize, that old soul of yours – it is an ancestral acknowledgement. 
 

Reverend Mama Sandra Simmons also discusses how she was taught as a young girl, and 

 
the way wisdom was passed down from one generation of black women to the next. She 
 
discusses how the kitchen and the gathering of the black women folks was not only a school for 
 
little girls like herself at the time, but it was sacred. She provides memories of her early 
 
schooling days, 
 

You know Fridays at my grandmother's house when my maternal grandmother would 
have, holding court with all of us. We would all, all the women would come and we would 
stand around the stove, summer or winter when she roasted yams and had her feet up in 
the oven door. And they talked about being mothers, about being women and how we did 
it and how we didn't do it and why we didn't. And you learn mothering when you hitched 
up the back of your skirt and you heated your butt at the fire and…And I was taught the 
mysteries of life in mothering. Now this complex experience of being taught by women, 
how to mother, they created a womb, you see when women gather together, when we 
encircle ourselves we create yet another womb. This is our birthing place… 

 
In this quote, Reverend Mama Sandra Simmons discusses the power that occurs when women 
 
gather. Magic occur with black women gather in the kitchen, it is not just a place where women 
 
cook and serve food, it is a place that teaches the “mysteries of life”. She even expands on the 
 
mothering metaphor and discusses that a womb is created, a womb in this since is a space where 
 
something is generated or as Gogo Dineo states the “womb man”. Once, it is cared for and 
 
nurtured, it is birthed into creation. This is the original black girl magic, and according to 
 
Reverend Mama Sandra Simmons – it began in her granny’s kitchen. 
 

Reverend Mama Sandra Simmons continues, 

 

This is our birthing place, you and I we're gathered together. In our gathering together 
we have created this womb where no one can hurt us, where we teach each other, where 

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we are listening with our spirits, with our minds and with our learning place. This deep 
space in our wombs that teach us things that cannot be comprehended in natural life, it 
happens in spiritual life. So, this is the incantation of live and not die. This is that, I 
thought about, and this incantation that creates this womb of living and not dying, 
centered that, the centre called African. Is this place where we remember, and I mean 
this literally. I mean mothering is remembering, it's the broken parts and putting the 
dismembered parts together. It's calling them back and saying you will live, you will 
not die. 

 
There is no separation with between the sacred and secular in the world of Reverend Mama 
 
Sandra Simmons, her work is all encapsulated together. The kitchen was a sacred, healing, and a 
 
wombman place. There is no end to her creating wombs and giving birth, the point is of ending 
 
does not existent – like the cycle of life it continues, it the repetition of “putting the dismembered 
 
parts together…It’s calling them back and saying you will live and not die…”. The womb is a 
 
circle, it is never ending. 
 

She also continues and discuss her philosophy, incorporating her spiritual self, 

 
reinstating, 
 

my philosophy is this, that we shall live and not die. That we shall, we shall live and not 
die. To have the power to say it that is claiming the power to resurrect, that is claiming 
the power that we shall live. That is claiming the power that we, we, in my tongue, in my 
mouth, that I have the power to make it live. 

 
Within her conglomerate of community institutions within the Detroit and the world, she makes 
 
sure continues to incorporate her faith and spiritual belief system, taking her job of mothering 
 
deliverance very seriously. In describing the Hush House Museum, she states, 
 

Our spiritual practices are the lights that guides hush house. We consider our self a 
lighthouse you know and everywhere we go we plant lighthouses because we want out 
people to find that we're here. 

 
Again, the Hush House Museum and collective is led by herself and husband, Dr. Baba Charles 
 
Simmons. They work together with a board, community of fellows, and volunteers to operate 
 
several functional services within the community that include educational tours and events at the 
 

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Hush House Museum, The Tru Da Soul Bed and Breakfast, and community programs that 
 
program creative, spiritual, and economic growth. She continues to give a description of the 
 
establishment she and her husband created, 
 

We want them to find their way to hush house wherever we plant it. And we believe that 
we are under a mandate by the creator to do this work. And we know it to be true because 
of the deep sacrifice, I did not have to live poor. I didn't, you know we did not have to 
choose to live, before this became a gentrified space we, this was a deeply impoverished 
space in terms of how people were living their lives and so on. But I know that I was 
guided here by the creator and accepted that challenge. 

 
There is an emphasis on a force greater than them to complete their mission and their call. She 
 
describes it as a “mandate”, by her community. She even recognize the community as a space 
 
that is impoverished, but emphasizes that she will go where over the Lord sends her to complete 
 
her mission. Though, she is a reverend, she chooses to approach people in a different way, 
 

Because on Easter for instance you won't likely find me in a church dressed up, you'll 
find me in the street knocking on cars of people smoking weed you know saying hey 
come on let's get this blessing on right here. Or having Sunday school you know prayer 
with sisters that's working the corner. Or maybe serving some children some food on the 
porch you know. So it informs what I do else wise I could have, I have not been able to 
give this work up and I've wanted to. I've wanted to walk away from it because it's too 
hard to bear. 

 
When you have a calling on your life to do something, nothing can stop you. She continues, 
 

So, this spacing, my spiritual practice comes out of faith, my strong faith and belief. The 
faith that saved me as a child out of brutality... (to live and not die…) 

 
Conclusion 
 

Most of the women became educators because they had a spiritual calling and or a strong 

 
black consciousness to educate their community. Dr. Ziphora Moichela was the only woman 
 
who became an educator due to economic advancement, however by the end of her PhD career at 
 
UNISA she was politically aware of the importance of her research on indigenous knowledge 
 
systems in South Africa. Many of the women identified as not only spiritually connected to their 
 

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work, but as Pan-Africanist or some type of collective being working for their community. Many 
of the women did not particularly describe to isms, agreeing that feminism and womanism 

were terms they were unfamiliar with or that it did not describe what they were doing or 

represent them culturally.  

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CHAPTER 6 

 

Mothering in Educational Leadership 

There is a saying that the nation can rise no higher than its woman…we are the mothers, 

the teachers, and me as a black woman running an institution that caters to black 

I think that it’s important because you get that motherly feel… Mama Cha-Rhonda 

children… 

 
Introduction 
 

Chapter 6 discusses more in-depth how mothering is displayed in these women’s 

leadership styles. The role of black women in educational leadership is increasing in importance. 

Due to the marginalization of women in educational leadership positions, there is a limited 

assessment of their true administrative skills (Johnson and Thomas, 157). It is critical to explore 

their diverse and convergent experiences due to their intersectionalities (Johnson and Thomas, 

159) (Collins). Through there interviews and my participant observation at their African 

Centered Institution, one witnesses how mothering and leadership merges together to create this 

unique leadership style amongst black women educators. 

Findings 

Mothering and Educational Leadership Experience 

 
Makini Tchameni 
 

Makini Tchameni is the leader of the ACE Foundation, she leads several African 

 
Centered institutions in Africa. Most of her institutions are led by women whom she has also 
 
trained to be leaders as well. In discussing her leadership style, experience, and training, she 
 
states, 
 

I feel that What I am doing, is just a continuum of what …our African women…the 
mothers of the world, the mothers of the nation have always done and what many African 
women are still doing throughout…You know…Education is something that starts at 
home…we may have a school, but I’m running it like my home, because these are my 
children…I’m teaching and training from the same perspective as if they were my 

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biological children…and that even the teachers and the staff members working with 
me…I’m working with them as well, as if they are my younger…my adult children… 

 
Makini Tchameni discusses that her role as an educator is nothing new amongst African women, 
 
“the mothers of the world, the mothers of the nation have always done and what many African 
 
women are still doing”. Black women and Education are tied legacy. She states that “Education 
 
starts at home” and that she treats all her students like her “biological children”. She takes upon 
 
motherly position as a leader and uses it to her advantage to connect to her students. She 
 
continues, 
 

so I feel that the role of the woman and women in education has not really 
changed…that’s why they would say for example that children’s speak their mother’s 
tongue, which means they learn how to speak…they learn how to communicate from the 
mother…the mother is laying the foundation of the culture of the language, of their 
values in the society…so I just feel that I am doing something that’s continuing that 
legacy…nation building of educating the children, educating the village, educating the 
people…I just feel that I’m doing it here, and instead of maybe where I was born but that 
historical role continues… 

 
There is a primordial dimension added to black women and education, mothers are the first 
 
to instill culture into children. Makini Tchameni talks about the magnificent role black woman 
 
have played in African Centered Education, 
 

African women born in the diaspora and African women on the continent …one of the 
first schools that I taught at being run in Houston by a couple…and the couple, man and 
woman, very, very much engaged…but they were writing the curriculum…they were 
building their African Centered curriculum…and she was the mother, she was the person 
that the children and the parents looked to inspire and that was a very important role 
model for me going into education …at that time I was just a tutor …but, it made a very 
big impression on me… 

 

She describes that black women globally have contributed to African, and one of her most 

 
memorable experiences was teaching for an African Centered School in Houston, in which the 
 
woman was considered as “the mother…the person that the children and the parents looked to 
 
inspire” them. Even today, she provides information about some dynamic women who are 
 
creating African Centered curriculum and books, 

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You also have African women that are writing and are actually making 
literature…lessons, books, and textbooks…African Centered…one of them that come to 
mind is Dr. Freea…she written a whole series of books that we have used in our 
educational facilities…and then you have even younger people that are still 
writing…even younger women that is still writing…the one that comes to mind is …and 
we are using her books in the school is Nikala Asante…whose writing…so I feel that 
there are many…many that I haven’t even named…many that I am not aware of that are 
making contributions…I know that the Council of Independent Black Schools would 
bring together a lot of those people working on African Centered Education…and women 
are very much involved in the council… 

 
Makini Tchameni was influenced by a black women leader as well, and inspired by new and 
 
younger women who are carrying the African Centered torch. 
 
Dr. Ziphora Moichela 
 

Dr. Ziphora Moichela is very overt about her feelings concerning the disparity of South 

 
African women in leadership positions. She states, 
 

In South Africa, I don’t know about other countries, women are still finding themselves at 
the lowest ladder of leadership…whereby as a woman…you have to work triple times to 
prove yourself that you deserve that position…you have your qualification… 

 
Dr. Ziphora mentions that women have to work three times as hard to prove themselves, and still 
 
they find themselves “at the lowest ladder of leadership”. She continues, 
 

this macho male forces, of saying, you can have this or that, but at the end of the day you 
are a woman and this is your place…women have made strides, but at a very slow 
pace…they are getting there but they have not hit the glass ceiling… 

 
Even in the strides that women have made in South Africa, they continue to hit a glass ceiling 
 
that caused by “macho male forces”. These “macho male forces” are even witnessed in the 
 
current South African curriculum, 
 

A lot of standards…and gender stereotypes in…I’ll talk about the current curriculums 
whereby women in Africa in particular are still seen, unfortunately still seen along the 
lines of patriarchies …whereby a girl child, especially from rural areas is still seen as a 
girl who must abide their African course …waking up early in the morning, making sure 
everything has been tended, their siblings been taking care of, the house is clean, you’ve 

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collected wood, you’ve made fire, done this and that, and during your puberty years 
you’ll be prepared for womanhood and all that… 

 
She provides examples on how traditional male dominated discourses have infiltrated the 
 
curriculum whereby a girl from the rural area “is still seen as a girl who must abide their African 
 
course” in which a quality education is not provided, but a life of docility and domesticity. These 
 
ideas are made worse with the Western educational system,  
 
So even if you are being exposed to Western Education there is still this concept of saying at the 
end of the day you are going to be somebody else’s wife…you need to abide by the rules and 
regulation of a community…so, there is still that aspect of gender stereotype in as far as 
education to what African girl child is concerned…as compared to other communities whereby 
so far they have really moved ahead in a girl is a girl, education is education…all 
children…rather you’re a girl or you’re a woman…you are more…you are a human being first 
before you are a girl… 
 
Dr. Ziphora Moichela emphasizes the continuation of Gender Equity issues that happen in South 
 
Africa when it comes to women and leadership positions. 
 
Gogo Dineo 
 

Gogo Dineo, the creator of the Gogo Dineo Ndlanzi school of Spiritual Healing mentions 

 
that the role of black women in leadership and education is nothing new and that historically in 
 
South Africa, African women held leadership positions in the family even with the onset of 
 
colonialism disrupted it, 
 

I think for me, my role as you know a black woman in education or in preserving…is the 
role of which a lot of woman played or underplayed it…or underplayed or unrecognized 
because…historically as well men left or they were taken away…some were forcefully 
taken away from their home and they had to come work in the city of gold and work in 
the mines and the women were left home to take care of the kids…and they had to a lot of 
education…they had to teach boys how to be men and they had to teach girls how to be in 
a relationship with a man…I mean you know like there were a lot of dynamics, I mean 
African women have carried so much…this is not new, I mean I think whats new about 
women and African Centered Education is that, we are becoming…as we challenge 
patriarchy and patriarchy is a system that feels that men are superior same as you know 
white supremacist that feels that white is superior to any other color that comes under 
it… 

 
She discusses the impactful role of women, even in the most difficult time. When South African 

139 

 

men would leave home to go work in the mines and farms, women would hold down the front, 
 
taking care of the household and raising the children. Gogo Dineo blames patriarchy, a western 
 
construct for a lot of the destruction of the women’s humanity and leadership position, 
 

also I don’t believe African culture was patriarchal…because from what I learned and 
understood about African culture and African spiritual belief systems, it is based on 
theinter -connection of the collective, that I am because you are I mean the one that is 
overly used all the time is the spirit of Ubuntu… 

 
Again, she displays the interconnected nature of men and women, the collective, there is 
 
equality, and a shared responsibility, “the spirit of Ubuntu”. She continues and show how this 
 
spirit effects women, 
 

When women are in position of preservation and you know there is nothing wrong with it 
that we also see women naturally as nurturers, and women as healers, and we see women 
as givers of life, you know we have names like Mascheba meaning mother of the nation 
…nzalabantu the one that gives birth to all of life…so that is some of the statements we 
have… in our belief systems…so in the essence of those words…already you can see that 
the role of African of women in institutions is much greater than what people want to 
believe…a lot of women still take a lot of responsibility to raise kids on their own so that 
education, the family education is also a huge component…so the women was already 
serving that role… 

 
Women have always been in leadership position, and the family atmosphere is a great example. 
 
She also explains, 
 

and for me it’s not about you know we need to be all equal or an X number of women 
have to be placed in those institutions but that’s also is important…it’s not the only 
thing…but that’s important you know as we transform and transcend understand that the 
ways of operation has been based on supremacist belief systems of who is superior over 
the other …and in this case when women are denied umm those opportunities the 
supremacist belief system around that is patriarchy because people always find it very 
difficult that women are able to do things if it’s not the man leading… 

 
The society has to get over the “supremacist belief systems” and stereotypical ideas when it 
 
comes to women and leadership. Gogo Dineo states that motherhood was a training ground for 
 
her leadership, 
 

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The gift of being a mother in this time, in this modern time…is that children are our 
greatest teacher because how they interact and engage with us, it comes from a place of 
innocent and of their true form…parents we start shaping their belief systems saying this 
is wrong and this is right and a lot of some of the things I come to believe in come from 
my experiences I had as a mother … I’ve got four kids…and they are all very different 
four kids…what that has taught me and how that contribute to my institute …you know… 
everyone is unique in this institute…embracing diversity is not trying to get people to 
conform, but to appreciate then for who they are …once that appreciation happens, 
people find a way that they can conform…and they don’t let go…they find a way in which 
they can get integrated…so that is what my kids have taught me…you know …I work with 
different personalities, I’m not just a mother to my four kids…I’m a mother to the 
initiates that come because they have to strip themselves of everything and become kids 
again so that they are able to surrender to the divinity that is within and has to be 
expressed through healing others… 

 
Being a mother showed her the beauty of diversity, flexibility, and differences. All these things 
 
help her as train initiates to become Sangomas, 
 

through them I have learned that you can’t have everyone wanting to be the same thing, 
you can’t have everyone wanting to walk the same journey…I realize that everyone 
journey is different … but in that diversity it is still important to have certain 
principles…or principles of engagement in being ourselves…in being myself I have to 
make sure that I don’t take away somebody’s sense of being…because I need to validate 
myself so that’s what it’s been… 

 
She continues, Gogo Dineo practices being a selfless leader and teacher, while being non- 
 
judgemental to characteristics that she perceives as different. She believes in diversity, 
 
acceptance, and flexibility. She provides a personal example of how one of her sons have been 
 
one of her biggest lessons in understanding the true power of acceptance, 
 

you know like I said, I mean I have a son who loves dolls…and loves long hair and loves 
doing nails and all of that and automatically based on what the world tells us or what I 
believe the box would be, well probably my son is gay or homosexual and he refuses that 
name because for him it’s something else and he doesn’t affiliate with that …so I learn a 
lot, it challenges some of my belief systems and they way I understand and I see things 
and when my kids ask me who is god and why we are not doing things this way because 
certain people are doing things this way…it really cause me to dig deeper into some of 
the things I carry…it makes me realize that I carry my own prejudices, we all have 
prejudices…cause we all grew up in systems that were trying to win over the other… 

 
Children were her biggest asset and tool that Gogo Dineo continue to use to become a better 
 

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leader in African Centered Education and African Spirituality. 
 
Mama Charhonda 
 

Mama Charhonda is currently the principal of Timbuktu Academy of Science and 

 
Technology in Detroit, Michigan. It is one of the last African Centered Schools in the area and 
 
have stood the test time despite many of the schools closing. Some of the key points that she 
 
discussed in her leadership style is mothering and flexibility. She is also very aware of the 
 
strength of the woman like many of the other leaders on this research. Mama Charhonda states, 
 

There is a saying that the nation can rise no higher than its woman…we are the mothers, 
the teachers, and me as a black woman running an institution that caters to black 
children…I think that it’s important because you get that motherly feel… 

 
She has a deep respect for black women and acknowledges their leadership and strength, which 
 
is ultimately a “motherly feel”. She creates an intentional relationship with her students, she 
 
describes the feeling of being a leader at an African Centered Institution, she states “you get that 
 
I’m big momma…so I’m going to make sure that my babies are taking care of…”. Below she 
 
discusses the bond that she has with students, 
 

I think as a mother, you know…there is this bond between mother and children that can’t 
be broken and as the school leader here, I have formed bonds that I believe, I think are 
just unbreakable, you know…it’s the mother intuition, the nurturing that mother’s give to 
their children that you can find in this school setting…you may not be able to find in 
other school settings because at some schools you are taught not to make those intimate 
relations or interpersonal relationships…but that is one of the things that we at Timbuktu 
pride ourselves on building that relational capacity with students…I was just with a 
student just the other day, and I shared this with the staff that she is a child that is really, 
really, busy…but for her to come in sit on my lap…she instantly put her head on my 
shoulder and she was there for like 15 minutes and it was all good and she was better 
and I said you ready to go to class…and she said yep…and that just kind of worked for 
her…I think just having that mothering intuition, that nurturing, helps out with our 
students… 

 
She provides an example of how open she is with her students, caring, and unapologetically 
 
motherly. Though it is important to take care of the general administrative issues, it is also 
 
critical for her to create bonds with her students. They need to know that Mama Charhonda, the 

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principal school will allow you to go to her office and cry if necessary. This is a balanced 
 
leadership approach. She also discusses how most of the African Centered Institutions come 
 
from a black women’s lineage,  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
This lineage is discussed by many of the women. Again, the motherly familiarity approach helps 
 
her leadership position at Timbuktu Academy of Science and Technology. She also blends her 
 
motherly role at home and at the school, to her there is no distinction, 
 

So when I look at African Centered Institutions and I see the people that lead them…most 
of them are women…most of them are women …not only is it most of them women, it is a 
lineage of women…that operate these…so it is past down from mother, to daughter, to 
granddaughter, and we keep those legacies going…we keep the institutions going…Now 
not to say a lot bothers aren’t doing anything…but we definitely have backbone, even 
here at Timbuktu…although I am the school leader, I have been here for 18 years…but 
Baba Bernard has always been in the background…the backbone the person that handles 
the budget, the person that handles the building, but when people see the school leader 
they always saw Mama Malkia, before Mama Malkia, she hired principals before her 
that was woman…we did have one man that was Timbuktu principal for about three 
years, but it seems as if longevity comes with the woman in the movement so… 

I don’t have biological children…I have two children that I adopted…they were my 
nieces…and so my sister had 4 kids altogether…I became the legal guardian of two and I 
adopted the other two…so I have 4 children that I have raised as my own…but then I 
have also had 3 step children actually that I have helped to raise as well…apart of that is 
this extended family…us feeling like we have to take care of our own…and so that does 
lead to a role…you know that leads right into the school community…because although 
these babies aren’t mine…they are a part of my extended family…and so it’s just my 
nature to make sure that students are taking care of…One thing I think is that children 
are sacred …I protect them…I advocate for them…but I also expect a lot… I think that 
whole expectation of me wanting them to be the best that the can be comes from my role 
as a mother and adopting my nieces… 

 
Life truly reflects her leadership positions. However, there are challenges that arise from 
 
being a women leader, as well as like seriousness and respect given to her based on her gender, 
 

Women in general, I think are still struggling to get equal rights with men in terms of 
people in power, I mean so, I can just say this at Timbuktu …So there is myself and then 
there is Baba Bernard…So, I can say something maybe three times and he can say 
something once and it get done…even though I am the school leader, I’m the person they 
see every day… it’s a struggle also in education, because you have people not only don’t 
respect women, you have the parents and the staff they come in with there on biases 

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…and I think education is a lot different than it used to be… I’m not saying it’s better or 
worse, just different… 

 
So, even though she has created a space that is balanced, respecting both men and women, she 
 
acknowledges that she still experiences some sexism.  
 
Mama Zukhanye 
 

Mama Zukhanye is also a leader, teaching the younger elementary students at Timbuktu 

 
Academy of Science and Technology in Africa. She discusses how her grandmother was a very 
 
strong influence on her as it concerned her becoming an educational leader, 
 

hmmm…When I think about my educational background the first thing I think about are 
the stories that I received from my grandmother in Camilla, Georgia. And I think those 
stories were the most knowledge that I received, that have carried me throughout life and 
has helped me, determine my principles to live on… 

 
Again, her grandmother was a strong role mode, and Mama Zukhanye developed a respect and 
 
love for the knowledge that was passed down to her. Below she shares a story about racism that 
 
her grandmother told her, 
 

those stories that she shared with me were stories of her experience as a woman. And 
those stories dealing with racism, which the stories were so intense and what she shared 
with me. It was actually when I visit her in Camilla, Georgia and she was telling me 
about racism. She wasn't using the term racism, but she was telling me of all her 
experience and growing up in the south, how wonderful white folks were. And she went 
on and on about all these things that white people had given her. But in conclusion she 
said don't you ever trust them. And with that I thought about the stories and the 
experiences that other folks and my family had, which my mother, her daughter, would 
never share with me, but I got these stories through my aunts and uncles. 

 
These stories shared to her by her grandmother and other family members truly shaped her. As 
 
Her grandmother taught her stories about life, it was her neighbor Mr. Masingayle who provided 
 
her with the sense of community and how we should all teach all the children as if they were our 
 
own, 
 

I do have biological children but without a doubt all the children that I see, I take the 
responsibility that these children are mine. I remember growing up in a 

 

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time where the community raised all the children as I mentioned Mr. Masingayle he was 
as much as my father as my biological father. 

 
It was truly a representation of the idea that it takes a village to raise a child. At the same time, 
 
when it came to Mama Zukhanye’s love for African Centered Education, her mother was 
 
profound example of black women building institutions, 
 

my mother who is an ancestor now. She was a co-founder of Nsoroma Institute and she 
said we can do anything. And the question was we needed money for the institution, 
due to the fact that we're trying to get materials, pay rent, host building. And my 
mother said, my mother who picked cotton, she said we can raise money, everybody 
eats let's have a fish fry. And it was, it was amazing how much money we made. I mean 
just from organizing from, an elder who did not have what people call formal 
education. She was the foundation of raising money for Nsoroma Institute, which was 
an African centered institution that was established for maybe twenty years established 
for many twenty years. 

 
She was also a co-founder of the and elementary teacher of Nsoroma Institute in Detroit, 
 
Michigan. When it comes to the seriousness of how she takes her job, she mentions, 
 

As a black woman I describe my role as a mother, as a nurturer, as a provider and one 
Who values the offsprings that we bring. There’s an African proverb that states, and I 
will say it in English, each one teaches one. And when I see my former students as young 
adults understanding the principles that I taught them years ago I felt that I did my job 
as well as an educator. Well I recognize that my students spend probably more waking 
hours with me than they would their biological mothers. And I take that role as an 
educator very seriously, and actually it's an honor that I can influence another 
generation. 

 
Lastly, she describes the strength of a black woman, 
 

when African women unite we can do anything. It's nothing that we can't do. We 
recognize that we are the mother of civilization, we are the healers, we are providers and 
we are well educated. The time, often, when we think about the philosophy of African 
centered education we think about all the things that we have gone through and survived 
and we want the world to know that we are strong people and we always rise. 

 
As she stated, “we are the mothers of civilization, we are healers, we are providers…” 
 
Reverend Mama Sandra 
 

Mama Sandra is the creator of the Hush House Museum collective in Detroit, Michigan. 

 

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She a leader within Detroit and international, known for doing radical spiritual work in Belize as 
 
well. She also mentions within our discussions that her grandmother and other women in her life 
 
served as a great representation of what a black woman leader looks like. However, I will discuss 
 
her ability to train and teach other woman leadership qualities as the highlight of this particular 
 
section. I would like to just begin with her statement on how long she has been a mother, 
 

well I've been a mother since I was 10 you have to understand because I mothered my 
own sisters and brothers. I've never really been a child in the same way children do. But 
many black women have the story of being a mother before they knew how to be a child, 
out of necessity. And I think that this mothering as you say, this education of, you said 
how does my role as mother contribute to the teaching. I think because I was taught at 
the knees of other mothers. I was taught at the knees and top bosoms of elders on the 
morning bench in the sanctuary of gas lights, I mentioned that to you before, an acquired 
peace that travels the direct conversation. 

 
The idea that she has been mothering since the age in 10, the emphasis that many black women 
 
knew how to be a mother before they were a child is reflective of many black women stories. 
 
Though she is a mentor within the Detroit area to many women, her international missionary 
 
work in Belize was quite profound, 
 

 And I looked around at the different churches and then God just put me at one that 
  happened to be in walking distance of where I lived. And I was just so impressed by 
  one young, well two women in particular. One woman was excited to be a teacher, of 
  course I fell in love with her because she was so serious about what she was doing. 
  And then there was this wild first lady Nowella which, whose husband is pastor of the 
  church but she had all this fire. 

 

  I became councillor to many of the women there that we were already leaders, and 
women who were aspiring to be leaders. So, through them I began, so I, we had this 
workshop where we taught the teachers and we began to understand the depravation of 
teachers. 

 
Africana women leader teach and train other women to be leaders as well. In addition, she 
 
discusses the how the word “Mama” signify authority, 
 

I wrote something on that, it started off miss, ma'am, sister, professor, reverend. And then 
when the community members began calling me Mama. It took me a while to process that 
I was an elder in a different way. And I have had the deep blessing to be received by 

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elders in the community, in my church, in my family as an elder. It blew, it used to freak 
me out when my elders would call me Mama. But I received it as a deep blessing and 
honor because they weren't addressing the woman in front of them they were addressing 
the spiritual woman inside of me. 

 
It is a word that is a sign of endearment, leadership, and ancestral recognition. Lastly, she 
 
mention the power that Africana woman, 
 

But a black woman, a woman is who centered within her own self, she can turn anything 
into an African centered institution. I turned Wayne State into an African centered 
institution every time I walk into the classroom. When my students walk into the room 
and they saw me with this head wrap on my head and these clothes and this talk and this 
way of seeing, what's going on you understand. And then when we began to teach and 
we began to yeah we going to use the material that the white folks have. I used tell my 
student, I said sweetheart don't even worry about buying that book but you're going to 
buy this one because they say we have to have it. And then I would go through that and I 
would pull out thesis that I would use, but I always had another, we always had other 
materials to use. 

 
According to Mama Sandra Simmons, Black women had that magic. 
 
Conclusion 
 

Africana women leaders teach and train other women to be leaders. All students 

 
are treated as a part of an extended family no matter how old or young. Education is a legacy in 
 
black womanhood that is passed down from one generation to the next. Black mothers are the 1st 
 
to instill in their children a sense of culture. Grandmothers and mothers teach leadership and 
 
black women learn how to be leaders through oral traditions, stories and experiences that are  
 
passed down from generation to generation. The longevity of the African Centered Movement  
 
comes from women and the institutions or highly populated by black women who are teachers  
 
and administrators. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

147 

 

 

CONCLUSION 

A Portraiture of Africana Women in African Centered Education 

 
And I was taught the mysteries of life in mothering…Mama/Reverend Sandra Simmons 

 
Introduction 
 

Black women globally have contributed to the development and sustainability of 

 
educational institutions. This research focuses on their educational leadership roles in African 

Centered Institutions, specifically in South Africa and Detroit, Michigan. This creates a diasporic 

and transnational dialogue amongst these women that illustrates a Pan-African solidarity in 

relation to African Centered Education and institutions. The gendered approach allows one to 

understand these women’s holistic perspective, while integrating their multiple roles as mothers, 

wives, community leaders, spiritual beacons, and soul encouragers and its impact on African 

Centered Educational Leadership. 

Overview 

African Centered Education (ACE) is an alternative pedagogical approach for students of 

African descent, centering the child’s culture and well-being. It is still a fairly new area of 

research. Though there are studies about the history, principles, theory, and pedagogy – there is 

a lack of discussion surrounding women’s leadership roles in these institution, specifically as 

leaders, and the transnational reach of these institutions, not only in the United States – but in 

Africa as well. It should be noted that research on black women and their leadership roles in 

African Centered Education is scarce. The articles and books about women’s leadership roles in 

these specific educational institutions are limited and hidden under a narrative of race, without 

the acknowledgement of gender roles. This phenomenon makes it difficult to find studies that 

speak directly to the roles of black women in leadership positions, specifically, in institutions 

148 

 

that practice African Centered Education. Therefore, in the expansion of the work concerning 

ACE, this research brings new and original information concerning women’s leadership roles 

and their capacity to expand in different countries – while maintaining similar goals of 

decolonizing a student’s mind, nourishing their spirit, supporting their cultural foundation, and 

aiding in their pride to be African and holistic leaders. By expanding on the canon of African 

Centered Education, this research adds new information concerning women’s leadership roles 

and their capacity to expand in different countries, specifically in South Africa. It also provides 

more information on African Centered Educational Leadership. 

Education constantly changes, therefore knowing the change-agents and contributors 

becomes integral, and black women’s voices are left out. Though research on Black women 

educators has increased with authors like Audrey Thomas McCluskey writing about black 

women educators in the Jim Crow and Dr. Venus Evans Winters publishing continuously on 

black women educators and feminism; literature concerning the experiences of African Centered 

Educators and black women has not been well documented. In addition to amplifying black 

women’s voices in education and leadership, my study specifically discusses women roles in the 

development and sustainability of African Centered Education, adding to the diversity of the 

literature. 

The women of my research include Dr. Ziphora Moichela, who researches indigenous 

knowledge systems. She works at the University of South Africa in Pretoria, a South African 

establishment since 1873. It is one of the largest universities in South Africa, and has the biggest 

research library in Africa. UNISA prides itself on being Africa’s University. Makini Tchameni 

is co-founder of the African Centered Educational Foundation (ACE) and principal of ACE 

schools, like the African Union International School in South Africa. In 1998, Tchameni 

149 

 

established her first ACE school, the African American Academy in Cameroon. Twenty years 

later, she has African Centered Schools in three African countries including South Africa and 

Burkina Faso.  Gogo Dineo Ndlanzi created the Gogo Ndlanzi School of Spiritual Healing in 

Cosmo City – a residential area in Johannesburg, South Africa. She has been a Sangoma for the 

last 10 years and her school has been in existence for about four years. Gogo Dineo has  

pioneered African Spirituality to a mainstream audience through media in South Africa. Her 

institution teaches and preserves indigenous knowledge systems in South Africa as it pertains to 

African Spirituality. In Detroit, Michigan, Char-Rhonda Edgerson, known as Mama Char-

honda, is the principal of Timbuktu Academy. The school is one of the last African Centered 

schools in Detroit, Michigan named after the great city in Mali. It began in 1997 primarily by 

African American women named Mama Malkia and Baba Bernard who wanted to contribute 

positive change towards their black community. Mama Malkia later left Timbuktu Academy to 

pursue her highest dream of opening an African Centered school in Ghana. Now that she has 

passed away, her daughter runs the school in Ghana. Timbuktu Academy continues to be run 

and led by black women. Zukhanye Nondabula, known as Mama Zukhanye, is a teacher and 

leader at Timbuktu Academy as well. She has roots in other African Centered Institutions like 

Aisha Shule and was the co-founder of Nsoroma Institute, another African Centered School 

Detroit that closed down. Reverend Mama Sandra Simmons is the co-founder of the Hush 

House Community Museum and Leadership Training Institute in Detroit. The community 

organization has multiple educational programs targeted to the black and global community, 

including an exhibit that toured with the Smithsonian on African American history and culture. 

 

Through my research, the definition of mothering deepened and contemporary black 

women explore their processes of leading African Centered Institutions in South Africa and 

150 

 

Detroit, Michigan. None of these women have ever met; I am the common denominator 

bringing their stories together in a single portraiture, creating an Aesthetic Whole. The main 

goal within a portraiture methodology is to create an aesthetic whole by blending the empirical 

with the narrative, which will, “inform and inspire...document and transform...speak to the head 

and to the heart” (Lightfoot, 243). The aesthetic whole is the gestalt described as a quilt with 

many pieces put together strategically to make a beautiful art piece (Lightfoot, 244). By 

analyzing my data, highlighting emergent themes, weaving my findings together – I am able to 

create a scholarly and artistic work that is reflective of these women collective lives (Lightfoot, 

247). Together the women voices created a Southern quilt, not a seamless mono-colored 

blanket, but a whimsical piece full of bright colors, customized patches, and a variety of stitches 

sewed all together to make one piece. Mothering as a leadership tool was the common 

denominator with the women that I studied. The leadership style was further explored in the 

three emergent themes. They were 1. Mothering and Nation building 2. Mothering the Spirit or 

Consciousness 3. Mothering in Educational Leadership. These were the branches of their 

leadership style. At times, some women connected more to one or two of the emergent themes, 

and not all. This was helpful, it also added to the learning process. There were also some 

interesting results concerning some of some of the theories I used to help identify the women 

and describe their story. For example, after I interviewed the women and spent some time 

observing the work at their African Centered Institution – most of them said they did not 

affiliate with any ‘ism’, unless it was Pan-Africanism, unity, and collectivity. When it came to 

identifying as a womanist, Pan-Africanist was the closest to their lifestyle. Though womanism 

did help me to explain their story, it left me with more questions, for example do we always 

151 

 

have to categorize black women? Can we just let black women be and self-define themselves 

without putting them in a box? Or is it time to create a new word or phrase for these women 

who believe they do not necessarily identify with contemporary feminism or other “isms”? 

Concerning their ability to juggle familial, societal, and personal obligations with their careers 

as leaders in African Centered Education, most of the women blurred the lines of all their 

responsibilities because mothering was presence in all areas of their lives. 

 

My research creates a diasporic and transnational dialogue amongst these women that 

illustrates a Pan-African solidarity in relation to African Centered Education. The gendered 

approach allows one to understand these women’s holistic perspective, while integrating their 

multiple roles as mothers, wives, community leaders, spiritual beacons, and soul encouragers. 

I used the concept of “Mothering” as a theoretical platform of race and gender to analyze 

Black women’s leadership experiences. “Mothering” as praxis is mentioned throughout the 

experiences of black women educators (Baylor)(Oka)(Msila)( Karenga) (Hill-Brisbane) 

(Johnson)(Johnson)(Collins). The theory of Mothering essentially “involves valuing others, and 

of itself a commitment to the survival and thriving of other bodies” (Oka, 52). The role of 

mother includes the ability to nurture, teach, mold, to be a bearer of culture and conduit for the 

spiritual regeneration of the ancestors (Karenga) (Dove, 520) (Godono). These activities are 

extended to “emancipatory organizations, institutions and social movements as is reflected in the 

history of the mothers of the freedom movements in this country and throughout the pan-African 

world” (Karenga). 

Drawing from “Mothering” theories as a dimension of African-centered education, the 

current dissertation study examines six portraits of black women leaders in African Centered 

Education (ACE) in South Africa and Detroit. My study uses Pan-Africanism, Womanism, 

152 

 

Mothering, and African Centered Educational Theory as scholastic frameworks. The theories 

work together to create an in-depth understanding of these women’s stories. While, 

portraiture methodology creates a seamlessly woven narrative of these women’s stories 

focusing on emergent themes that display commonality, but it does not exclude their 

differences adding to the authenticity of the narrative. 

Synopsis of Findings 
 

Though the literature concerning black women leaders in ACIs is scarce, we are able to 

see some trends in the scholarship about black women educators as it concerns nation building. 

Black women leaders in educations have a clear commitment to their task to teach and uplift 

their community locally and globally. They treat their students like their children affectionately, 

teaching from a place of love. Black women leaders also have an embedded desire to help 

transform the black community that is due to their cultural memory. These ideas are expressed in 

the connection to nation building and mothering and the idea of caring for their extended family 

or community. 

Most of the women are educators because they had a spiritual calling and or a strong 

black consciousness to educate their community. Dr. Ziphora Moichela was the only woman 

who became an educator due to economic advancement, however by the end of her PhD career 

UNISA she was politically aware of the importance of her research on indigenous knowledge 

systems in South Africa. Many of the women identified as not only spiritually connected to their 

work, but as Pan-Africanist or some type of collective being working for their community. The 

women did not particularly describe to isms, agreeing that feminism and womanism were terms 

they were unfamiliar with or that it did not describe what they were doing or represent them 

culturally. 

153 

 

Prior to systems like patriarchy, “a gendered power system, a network of social, political 

and economic relationships through which men dominate and control female labor, 

reproduction, and sexuality, as well as define women’s status, privileges and rights in a society”, 

women reign (Kalabamu, 2004). African women have held many leadership roles throughout 

history. African women leaders teach and train other women to be leaders as well. All students 

are treated as a part of an extended family no matter how old or young. Education is a legacy in 

black womanhood that is passed down from one generation to the next. Black mothers are the 1st 

to instill in their children a sense of culture. Grandmothers and mothers teach leadership and 

black women learn how to be leaders through oral traditions, stories and experiences passed 

down from generation to generation. The longevity of the African Centered Movement comes 

from women and the institutions or highly populated by black women who are teachers and 

administrators. Mothering used as a leadership tool is sometimes seen as a challenge by others 

due the leadership style being overly nurturing and protective at times. Male dominated forces 

like patriarchy still give women leaders challenges as well as other supremacist belief systems. 

Teaching black students is seen as a sacred space and is taking very seriously. 

 

Sacrifice was also something mentioned amongst the women and their work. All these 

women were creative in their approach to education mixing traditional structures with new 

ones that is inclusive of the digital world for example. They all questioned the epistemology 

and cosmology of education, which led to their development of African Centered Institutions or 

them studying aspects of indigenous knowledge systems to get answers. The women defined 

themselves using a variety of adjectives – spiritualist, Big Momma, Mama, Watcher Seer, 

Reverend, Healer and more. 

 
 

 

154 

 

The Co-Existence of the Male/Female Leadership Relationship 
 

It should be noted that most of the women who owned their African Centered Institution, 

managed and operated it with their husband and or significant male partner. Makini Tchameni, 

Gogo Dineo, and Mama Sandra Simmons husbands each play a significant role in their African 

Centered institutions. Mama Zukhankye and Mama Cha-Rhonda both mentioned the importance 

of the male counterparts at Timbuktu Academy of Science and Technology and in their lives. 

Dr. Ziphora Moichela was the only women who did not speak much about the influences of men 

in her position at UNISA, she spoke primarily against the patriarchy in higher education and the 

difficulty of South African girls to attend school due to sexist belief system that believe the 

primary role of a woman is to be married and have kids. 

Though this study is not about the relationship per se with male counterparts, it should be 

noted that they all have fairly positive things to say about the black men in their lives. Also, it 

would be an interesting study to explore shared leadership between black men and women in 

African Centered Institutions. About 50% of my subjects created their institutions with their 

husbands, and that is pretty significant and it should be researched more. I will just provide just 

a few examples of how these women described their relationship with men. Gogo Dineo states, 

 

 

Oh my men play a huge role…men in my life are very important …I think I do a lot of 
my work…my work you know is very busy…and I don’t think I would be able to do 
it, if I didn’t have very supportive man… I don’t see men as the protector , but I see men 
as a co-creator and so I don’t see like his there watching my back, but he is…and he 
has been a very strong support system…we have four kids and to have somebody who 
allows you to be yourself and be ok with it and challenges his own belief systems about 
what it means being a man in a family system…I’m the man, I’m the one who has to be 
the one that’s busy…so that’s…men in my life are important…so my uncles are very 
important…in African culture as well, both roles are important because men have 
particular role, your uncle and aunt have a particular role as you transition through your 
life…and you know, do what we call rites of passage ceremonies, both of those genders 
are very important…so I cannot disregard my relationship with my father, that’s another 
because my father is also a healer and I also know when I can’t step forward to do have 
people…I have to take caring family community …and what I learned is that my role in 

155 

 

the family has been to really leverage the relationships that my grandfather…cause my 
grandfather is the man that taught me the core thing about family being important and 
pulling together and that we are all equal in his eyes planted to seeds for me and that’s 
why I am able to do what I do today… 

 
Gogo Dineo provides a very nuanced perspective of her relationship with black men. She states 
 
that they support, uplift, and take care of her. She, like the other women also have been 
 
positively influenced by their grandfather. She also talks about her leadership within the 
 
relationships, she looks at the man as the co-creator, not the creator. She intentionally engages in 
 
healthy relationships with men, not that their always perfect. 
 

On the other hand, Reverend Mama Sandra Simmons provided a more diverse 

 
perspective when it came to the men in her life. She discussed issues of abuse and neglect 
 
experienced by black men, but she also balanced it with the wonderful love that she received 
 
from her grandfather, 
 

So, on the one hand I had the brutality, on the other hand I had this man showing me the 
finer qualities of life and what I should expect from a man and how men should cover 
me. I never got involved with anybody else until they understood, well, do you know how 
to cover a sister? 

 
Mama Zukhanye mentions the admiration that black men have for black women, 
 

And you know, and I'm going to quote a black man, an African man born in America. He 
said it's nothing like a sister, as simple as that. 

 
These perspectives are important to know, it helps us to understand the women spirit of 
 
community and shared responsibility. 
 
Self-Care 
 

Because too many times we take in somebody's brokenness. People teach their 
brokenness from one generation to another, they teach their hurt from one generation to 
another. So, I said that we have to have conversations about that and recognize that. Are 
you in pain?... Reverend Mama Sandra Simmons… 

 

156 

 

Within their interviews, no one really discussed the importance of self-care. The only one who 

mentioned something about protecting your space and self was Reverend Mama Sandra 

Simmons. In the quote above, she stated that in addition to leadership skills being passed from 

one generation to the next, “brokenness” is also passed. She warned that we as a people should 

be careful with receiving “somebody’s brokenness”. Outwardly, Reverend Mama Sandra 

Simmons has a regal representation. She always dresses in beautiful African garb, with 

customized jewelry to match and her hair is always wrapped in the silkiest scarf. However, just 

like the rest of the women in my study, she has endured physical, mental, and 

spiritual stress from the heavy work she does in the community. She even mentioned that she 

tried to leave the “Calling”, but she knew God wanted her to be there. Gogo Dineo takes a warm 

bath every day and meditates. She is very health conscious about the food that she eats and 

exercise, however her role requires a lot of endurance and sleepless nights. So, even though she 

has created a wonderful health regime, there is no way of escaping the daily compounded stress 

of being a spiritual leader, mother, wife, educator, mediator, and African Spiritualist in high 

demand. Though no one talked about, a consistent balance was very difficult to keep up with at 

times, one of the multiple roles that these women were playing end up suffering. Perhaps, the 

children do not get enough time, or mental strains cause occasional breakdowns, or the 

relationships that they worked so hard to preserve with their significant other is momentarily 

damaged. It left me thinking as I listened too and observed these women over the last three years, 

Is the strength of the black woman overrated? That is why I emphasize the importance of 
 
self-care amongst black women leaders in African Centered Institutions, they are prone to illness 
 
just like anyone else and should be more vigilant about taking care of themselves.  A holistic 

157 

 

definition of Africana woman is the following, 
 

An Africana woman is committed to cultural preservation in Africa and the African 
Diaspora. She knows that self-preservation comes first, including physical, mental and 
spiritual renewal, therefore, she takes time to restore her energy so that she can continue 
to change the world, resting and retreating when necessary. 
 

Conclusion 
 
The Circle Continues 
 

Women gather in different ways now, with today’s technology, the online community has 

 
been a great way to see women gather. Even this dissertation is a space where African women 
 
gather, and sacredness exudes from the spirit of these Africana women, 
 

We would all, all the women would come and we would stand around the stove, summer 
or winter when she roasted yams and had her feet up in the oven door. And they talked 
about being mothers, about being women and how we did it and how we didn't do it 
and why we didn't. And you learn mothering when you hitched up the back of your skirt 
and you heated your butt at the fire. And I was taught the mysteries of life in mothering. 
Now this complex experience of being taught by women how to mother created a womb, 
you see when women gather together, when we encircle ourselves we create yet another 
womb…Reverend Mama Sandra 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

158 

 

 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

APPENDIX 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

159 

 

 

APPENDIX 

MOTHERING IN AFRICAN CENTERED EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP 

AFRICANA WOMEN STORIES:  

 

Questionnaire  
 

1.  Where are you from? 
2.   How do you identify yourself?  
3.  What is your educational background?  
4.  Why did you choose a career in education?  
5.  What type of positions have you held in education?  
6.  What is the name of your current African Centered Institution?  
7.  What is African Centered Education?  
8.  What is Africanizing the Curriculum?  
9.  Is African Centered Education different and or comparable to Africanizing the 

Curriculum? 

10.  How would you describe your role as a black woman in education?  
11. How does your role as a mother and or mothering’ contribute to your leadership identity 

and role in your African Centered Institution?  

12. What is nation building, and is it an important element of your African Centered 

Institution? 

13.  Do you have a women’s philosophy (i.e. feminism, womanism, Africana womanism) 

you stand by?  

14. How are black women educators contributing to the development of African Centered 

Education?  

15. How does men play a role in your life? 
16.  How does Pan-African political identities contribute to the development of African 

Centered Schools?  

17. Is there anything else you would like to talk about being a woman in education in Africa 

and or the US?  

18. How does your personal spiritual practice contribute to your success? What is your 

spiritual practice?  

19. How is your spiritual practice engrained in your school practice? 

 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 

 
 
 

160 

 

 
 
 

 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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161 

 

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