“We are not our mothers.” I have heard this phrase from many South Sudanese women and girls. I have heard it in women’s empowerment workshops, on social media, and in my circles of women when we gather to connect or catch up. What often follows is a declaration of agency: a refusal to tolerate patriarchal violence, a collective insistence on dignity, and sometimes a public show of solidarity when a woman leaves an abusive relationship or challenges abuse through the legal system.
“It suggests that our mothers chose to be cowards where we are brave, to remain silent where we are outspoken, or to be trapped where we are free.”
I’ve become increasingly uneasy as I’ve reflected more on it over the past year. To me, it suggests that our mothers chose to be cowards where we are brave, to remain silent where we are outspoken, or to be trapped where we are free. It confuses the options available to us now with the presence of courage. It also carries another quiet insult: that because our mothers did not always have the language of “feminism,” they must not have practiced feminist action, as if the word itself is the work. In this essay, I argue that many of our mothers’ so-called “endurance” was a form of feminist resistance shaped by constraint, and that our current few freedoms are, in part, the inheritance of their negotiations, their care, and their quiet refusals.
African feminist scholars such as Amina Mama, Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, Obioma Nnaemeka, Sylvia Tamale, and Ifi Amadiume have long urged us to interpret women’s lives within the historical, social, and political conditions that shape what choices are possible. Over time, reading their work helped me see that our mothers were not weak; they were navigating systems designed to diminish them and doing so with strategy. Nnaemeka’s concept of “nego-feminism,” for example, highlights negotiation as a key feminist tactic in many African contexts.[1] Oyěwùmí also reminds us how easily we misinterpret earlier generations when we impose today’s categories, especially those imported through colonial and Western gender discourses, onto lives lived under different social logics.[2]
These scholars and the movements they write from and alongside also encourage us to recognize where knowledge resides. As Amina Mama notes, African feminist knowledge has developed not only in universities but also through women’s lived experiences, political struggles, and collective organizing.[3] Sylvia Tamale’s work similarly draws attention to culture, lived experience, and everyday practices as important sites of feminist knowledge and meaning-making in African societies.[4]
They have long shown that women’s labor often plays a central role in liberation struggles, even as women’s demands are sidelined and their contributions forgotten once “victory” is declared[5]. The story of the Katiba Banat (the Girls Battalion) within the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) during the second Sudanese civil war (1983-2005) offers a powerful example.[6] These teenage girls and young women, like their male counterparts, entered a militarized political space, challenged gender expectations, contributed to the liberation movement, yet their participation rarely sits at the center of how the struggle is remembered or honored.
On the other hand, Ifi Amadiume’s work on Igbo society demonstrates that women’s authority has often been exercised through kinship relations, social roles, and collective systems of labor rather than only through formal political authority.[7] This insight resonates with what I have witnessed in many South Sudanese communities, including among the Jieng, where I come from, where women’s influence has long flowed through family networks, caregiving roles, and the collective labor that sustains everyday life.
“We have more room to move now because our mothers endured enormous burdens long enough for change to seem possible, not because they were less intelligent or less brave.”
Although none of the African feminist scholars I have read are from South Sudan, their work is African and feminist, which makes it relevant to our realities. I did not find anything they analyzed that felt unfamiliar in the South Sudanese context. They helped me understand that the women before us resisted in ways that looked different and often had fewer visible “choices.” More importantly, they showed me that we have more room to move now because our mothers endured enormous burdens long enough for change to seem possible, not because they were less intelligent or less brave.
Our mothers resisted in ways I understand better now, even if we have given their strategies new names. They composed and sang while performing their duties, caring for children, and gathering in community with one another, using song to communicate and advocate when direct speech was dangerous. The songs they used to soothe children were not just lullabies; they often carried political messages. They used spoken word before we ever called it that. They looked out for and secretly supported girls and young women to escape unwanted marriages. Many of these mothers and aunties risked severe backlash, including physical violence, for these acts. They taught us how to read between the lines, to read tone and body language, which was not silence.
“Even laughter carried significance: the way women laughed together conveyed powerful political messages.”
They resisted through community and collective care. Growing up, I watched women support each other at births, funerals, and community gatherings, bringing food, labor, and presence. These acts are still largely practiced by women across several communities in South Sudan today. They created spaces for singing and dancing that cultivated resilience and a sense of safety, as well as spaces where women could speak freely without fear of being policed. Even laughter carried significance: the way women laughed together conveyed powerful political messages.
For example, däny is one of my favourite women’s dance performances among the Jiëng counties across Jonglei State. It begins with the steady percussion of palms meeting in rhythm. Once the beat settles, the women begin singing, their voices rising together as the circle sways, with ululation weaving through the song and lifting the dance’s energy. Women in the inner circle clap and sing, while those in the outer circle dance löör in slow motion, rising in measured jumps, feet softly meeting in the air before landing again, their arms spreading and folding like wings in sync with the song, moving around the inner circle in one direction. No one calls the transitions; the circle simply opens and closes repeatedly with a seamless swaying and swapping of women between the circles, holding the dancers, the song, and the laughter that rises between songs.
“Spaces like däny remind us that long before many of us had the language of feminism, our mothers were already practicing it.”
Through däny songs, women celebrated each other, praised generosity and community pride, and called out abusive or neglectful men. The lyrics could tease, advise, or express grievances that might be hard to voice directly or be punished if spoken plainly. Däny was more than entertainment; it was a space where women commented on relationships, men’s behavior, and the community’s life, affirmed each other, and advocated for their needs. Spaces like däny remind us that long before many of us had the language of feminism, our mothers were already practicing it.
While many of these songs were composed for däny, they did not remain only within the dance circle. Women carried them home, singing them while performing their domestic chores or tending to children, using them as quiet forms of communication within their households. In this way, the songs travelled with women, turning everyday spaces of care and labor into places where they could still speak, critique, and be heard. Ogundipe-Leslie noted that such everyday spaces often become sites where women exercise agency within the constraints of their social worlds.[8]
All the choices our generation has today are built on this foundation. Our ability to attend school, work beyond mere survival and domestic roles, name abuse, openly speak out, and leave harmful relationships was made possible, at least in part, by generations of South Sudanese women who endured what they couldn’t safely refuse. Many of us grew up watching our mothers tolerate things we didn’t yet have the words to understand. It’s no surprise that we sometimes interpret their choices as silence or surrender. I’ve come to understand the limitations our mothers faced: economic hardships, family and community expectations, and the lack of laws or systems to protect them. Many of us learned what we wouldn’t accept by witnessing what our mothers or women we care about were forced to endure. The courage we claim today didn’t appear out of nowhere. It was shaped by observing and listening to them. Even the clarity with which we oppose certain harms is owed to the silent lessons they taught us.
I think about that statement often as a mother now. I know I will not see the full rewards of my feminist work. If, decades from now, my daughters move through South Sudan with more rights and fewer negotiations, that will not mean I lacked courage because I struggled where they now move freely. It would mean I could not move as freely or as fast because I was busy clearing the way for them to. I cannot imagine the heartbreak of doing this work, making sacrifices, carrying the backlash, staying in the struggle, only to be remembered by my daughter’s generation as someone who “did not choose better.” I would feel betrayed.
“The freedoms I claim today did not start with me.”
That is why I look back to my mother and the women of her generation. The freedoms I claim today did not start with me. They were shaped by the lives they lived, the negotiations they endured, and the quiet ways they insisted that their daughters should live differently. The act of my mother and other girls (the Katiba Banat) who joined the SPLM/A during the second Sudanese civil war taught me more about courage than any written feminist text ever could. My feminism, like that of many South Sudanese women of my generation, was not born in isolation. It was nurtured in the homes of women who may not have had the language of feminism, but who were already teaching us what standing up looked like. My daughters, in turn, will inherit the ground we are clearing now. If one day they move more easily than I ever could, I hope they will understand that their freedom didn’t begin with them either. It is part of a long and unfinished journey carried across generations, from the women who raised us to the women we are becoming, and to the girls who will one day walk farther than we could ever dream.