Vera Chirwa Fearless Fighter - Why don't more people know her story?

I've just finished reading the incredible auto biography of Vera Chirwa, who was; instrumental in overthrowing the British Colonial rule of Malawi, a founding member of the Malawi Congress Party, founder of the League of Malawi Women, Malawi's first female lawyer, survivor of detention by both the colonial powers and the corrupt dictatorship formed after Malawi gained independence, Director of the Malawian Legal Resource Centre for Human Rights, organiser of the Constitutional Symposium, founder of Women's Voice, Founder of Malawi CARER (Centre for Advice, Research and Education and Rights, elected African Human Rights Commissioner responsible for Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Swaziland, and Special Rapporteur for Prisons across all of Africa. While achieving all this, she married and raised a family, and survived multiple brutal attempts on her life, including after the overthrow of the Banda dictatorship and her release from 12 years of incarceration.   This is an impressive life of activism, resilience and compassion by anyone's standards. After reading her book, I couldn’t help but think why don't more people know the name Vera Chirwa as we know Nelson Mandela? They worked for similar causes, at similar times and both changed how their respective countries evolved as nations, but most people will have heard of Manela, and most won’t have heard of Chirwa. Sexism and the historic malinement of women's contributions to revolutions is part of the answer, but it is inevitably more complex than that.    Part of the answer lies in the differing history of colonisation in Malawi and South Africa. After the Second World War, Africans who had fought for European countries were even more aware that they were still living under colonial powers when the countries they were fighting for were celebrating freedom from oppression, and began to push more significantly for their own freedom in their home countries. European powers still attempted to hold on to their control of African nations, but as their military resources were depleted after the Second World War, and African citizens began to work together to put pressure on colonial powers to grant independence. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan gave a speech at the whites- only South African parliament that the winds of change were sweeping through Africa and Britain had decided to move with it rather than stand against it. This policy change was also made in order to try to install new governments who would be sympathetic to the Western Powers instead of siding with the Communists, which would be strategically important during the Cold War.   Both South Africa and Malawi gained independence from Imperial Britain in the mid 1960's but a crucial difference is that the figurehead for independence in Malawi, Hastings Bunda, was a black Malawian national, so the power did technically transfer to the Malawian people, but was still influenced by Western powers. In South Africa however, there was a much more significant white Afrikaans settler population, who had their roots in the Dutch colonisation of South Africa and were the ones already in power in parliament. The Dutch lost South Africa to Britain during the Boer War, with the black South Africans caught very much in the brutal crossfire. This meant that instead of a transfer of power to a black African independent governance backed by Britain, it was the white settler Afrikaans population who declared themselves independent and continued to rule as they had done, but with more power for themselves. South Africa effectively had two colonisers to overthrow instead of one.   Both Nelson Mandela and Vera Chirwa had support from Amnesty International during their incarcerations, Vera for both her detention under the colonial government and then the Bunda dictatorship. But because the political party that Vera founded with Bunda became the first independent government of Malawi, to a great extent her incarceration by Bunda was dismissed as an example of Africans struggling to govern as a democracy, and party political power struggles. As media changed drastically between the 60's and the 90's, many more people were aware of global issues in general, and the news media was able to disseminate information more effectively, however prejudiced it was. This meant that Mandela's continued incarceration by an all-white Afrikaans government immediately appeared to modern Westerners as a relic from the days of Imperialism. We wanted to believe that we lived in a world where institutionalised white dominance and the repression of black people were behind us, that we knew better now, and this provided the most undeniable example that racism was very much still a present day injustice. The more complex and nuanced white Western influence over Malawi, where a black Malawian dictator was supported by Western powers so that Soviet powers did not gain influence, was much less easy to report in a two minute news segment.   The relative importance of each country to the West also made a huge difference in the incentive of Western powers and the UN to become visibly involved in South Africa, but try to quietly maintain influence in Malawi. Geographically, South Africa was still part of an important trade and military route to the East, with use of their ports essential to the success of any shipping arrangements. Malawi, however is significantly smaller, and landlocked. South Africa as a trading partner itself has valuable mineral wealth and fuels, whereas Malawis main trade is in tobacco. Malawi is also far enough away from other nations with valuable natural resources, like the DRC, to mean it has less strategic importance to Western or Eastern powers than directly neighbouring countries. All this is not to say that it is right that less people know about Vera Chirwa, it isn't. It is to point out that the global heroes we admire are highlighted often because it benefits Western powers to do so, alongside their genuinely incredible achievements.    There are gendered aspects to why Vera Chirwa is not as well known as Nelson Mandela, despite the parallels that can be drawn between their influence, suffering and commitments to human rights over a similar time period. Vera Chirwa chose not to run for president after her release from prison in 1993; she could have run for president, she was asked by the UDF and AFORD to join them, and would have had a very good chance of becoming president, but she chose to continue her work as a grassroots human rights activist instead. Political achievements and power on the international stage obviously do mean that a person is more likely to be known globally. But how many world leaders can we actually name? As of right now, how many presidents, prime ministers, monarchs and nation leaders can you name immediately? Of the ones that you can name, it's likely that you can because their nation and policy behaviour is pivotal to the government of the country you live in. Political power is also gendered in that we hold it in higher esteem than grassroots activism, despite grassroots activism potentially being more immediately influential when it comes to culture changes like the discussion of human rights. The status afforded to a prime minister is one that is associated with traditionally masculine pursuits such as the military, economics and technology, areas of work which women have not been able to access until very recently, and even then are still hugely under-represented. Grassroots activism is fundamentally social and emotional labour, requiring creativity, carers, storytellers and an empathetic and collaborative approach to working, all of which are traditionally feminine forms of (often unpaid) labour. Her work is likely to be perceived as less important not because it is less effective, but because her power lies in communication and co-operation, instead of the potential for brute force.   This all means that although Vera Chirwa has been under appreciated internationally because she is a woman (as many other similar African freedom fighters have also been), it is not only because she is a woman. Women in general are certainly under-represented and under-appreciated in global politics, but the nuances of each case are important to understand to get a comprehensive view of how geo-politics effects human rights, and how we can better amplify the voices of those who are fighting for them, including women. https://qz.com/africa/1574284/africas-women-have-been-forgotten-from-its-independence-history/