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African women on the move have many other examples of female success at which to point. Angie Brooks of Liberia has served for the past year as president of the United Nations General Assembly. Annie Jiagge was Ghana's first woman lawyer, judge and finally Supreme Court justice. She headed an investigation into the corruption of the Nkrumah era that has been hailed a landmark in African political reform and justice. Sophie Lihau-Kanza is one of the four chief ministers in President Joseph Mobutu's Congolese government; and Mrs. Olyn Williams, Sierra Leone's first female Permanent Secretary, is a champion of the cause of women in politics. "Men in government spend most of their time stealing," she snaps. "That's why nothing gets done."
Letitia Obeng, a biologist, is director of Ghana's Marine Science Institute. Jacqueline Ki-Zerbo of Upper Volta is the head of a teacher-training school in a traditional Moslem society, where women are supposed to know their place. "Some accept me," she says, "and some do not. But I laugh at them. Men should help women develop."
Pink Bath Salts. While the new African woman is out to change her society, other women have risen to prominence in the traditional power structure. One of the best known of these is Honoria Bailer Caulker of Sierra Leone, who in 1961 was elected paramount chief of the Shenge district (pop. 25,000). A Junoesque woman who stands 6 ft. 1 in., Madame Honoria enjoys such baubles as a white Mercedes, an open palanquin in which she is carried by her subjects, a golden mace presented to her chieftaincy by Queen Victoria, and an elaborate bathroom in which everything from bidet to bath salts is pink. She is accompanied on her official rounds by an official elephant-horn player, who blows great blasts to announce her arrival and departure. She conducts her tribal court with dispatch and dignity. At a recent session, she quickly settled the case of a man who was accused of beating his wife because the woman did not want him to marry her sister. As both husband and wife wailed, Madame Honoria briskly dismissed the man with a warning and told the woman to accept the sister as her husband's second wife. "At least," said Honoria, "it's someone you know."
For sheer power and wealth, few African males can match the market mammy, that gigantic woman of commerce who controls much of the transport and the trade in textiles, food and hardware in both Nigeria and Ghana. In Lagos, bankers tell of one hefty woman who cannot write her own name, but can get a $560,000 letter of credit whenever she needs one. In Accra, the mammies have been wooed and feared by politicians since independence, and no government has managed to tax them effectively. "They can't read or write," says one Ghanaian journalist, "but they can damn well count."