Who Is Subjugating Whom?

To understand this question, you must first understand the history of slavery. 

Malcolm X once described two kinds of enslaved people: the House Negro and the Field Negro. The House Negro defended the master’s interests, even restraining the Field Negro whenever he resisted. That dynamic did not end in 1863. It simply evolved.

Power, Subjugation, and Illusion

A simple truth stands untouched across eras:

Anyone who lacks the power to truly empower you also lacks the power to truly subjugate you.
What we see today is nothing but indirect empowerment and indirect subjugation.
Enslaved men could not empower enslaved women. Nor could they “enslave” women who were already enslaved.
And in 2025, a person can be wealthy and still live under a system that puppeteers every major decision of their life. Likewise, the poor live at the mercy of those who enforce their poverty, often “rich slaves” themselves.

This is why many conversations about patriarchy in Africa sound painfully disconnected from the actual structure of power created by neo-colonialism.

A Hard Pill to Swallow

When some women and feminists claim that African men or African patriarchy are the primary forces sidelining women, it reveals a misunderstanding of Africa’s deeper political reality.

How can men who are themselves controlled by global elites be the ones “subjugating” anybody?

Are African women insisting that their husbands’ men struggling under the thumb of neo-colonial structures are the true oppressors?

If so, it’s time to wake up.

African men do not possess the structural power to fully empower African women, just as they lack the power to subjugate them independently of the system under, they both live.

And African women gaining visibility or success Okonjo-Iweala, Chimamanda, and many others, do not become “free” simply by rising within the limited spaces allowed by global powers. That is the highest level of freedom many can attain within neo-colonial boundaries.

The Illusion of Patriarchy

What people call “African patriarchy” is often nothing more than African men scrambling for crumbs that fall from the tables of global powers.

The power structure is global, not local. Scriptures show this repeatedly: earthly hierarchies are puppets under larger empires.

African men appear to subjugate African women simply because pride prevents most men from admitting an uncomfortable truth:

They too are struggling for the approval of their neo-colonisers.

Even the so-called powerful men, politicians, billionaires, and “made men” follow foreign instructions to survive. They never show this dependency to the masses or to women. Instead, they become the visible face of enforcement, punishing powerless African men and being labelled as the ones subjugating African women.

The House Negro vs. the Field Negro, 2025 Edition

Many African women say, “I’m not my mother,” without realising that their fathers never had the power to fully empower or subjugate their mothers. It was always a dynamic between house slaves and field slaves, do not masters and free people.

African women live inside the reality of neo-colonialism, yet often act as if they are outside it.

You breathe it. Eat it. Sleep in it.

Look at the natural resources in your backyard:

How many poor African men control them?

And even among elite African men, how many truly extract or own what is theirs?

The global elite weaponise Africans against one another. That is the real structure.

Women's Empowerment? Or Something Else?

Much of “women's empowerment” in Africa is a money-laundering scheme disguised as progress, an instrument used by neo-colonial powers to pit African women against African men.

It is the classic transformation of Field Negroes into House Negroes.

House Negroes always believe they are free, wealthy, and empowered compared to the Field Negroes.

This is one of Africa’s major illusions in 2025.

So when you hear African feminists arguing loudly for empowerment, understand:

It is Field Negroes fighting for the privilege of becoming House Negroes.

Your father, working a 9-to-5, owning no resources in his own backyard, is not the one subjugating you.

Foreign investment in Africa is often nothing more than colonizers upgrading Field Negroes to House Negroes. Feminism and empowerment campaigns function as Field Negro women lobbying for entry into the house.

Matriarchy or Misdiagnosis?

Talk of “African matriarchy” becomes another misdirection, blaming powerless African men for keeping women in bondage, when in truth both men and women are negotiating favour from the real masters.

It is Field Negroes asking House Negroes to bring them inside, not liberation.