A women’s day, a real one; is that too much to ask of you?

However, when the event organisers mentioned that this year the Women’s Run will also carry the theme of Clean Cooking, I had an adverse reaction.

Spent the whole day feeling bent out of shape over it — how dare they chain this event to our stoves, can we just have one (expletive deleted) day when we’re not being strangled by the focus on domesticity? The intensity of my fury shook me a little, so I had to call myself in for a chat about it.

I made myself take a beat and a cup of tea and asked my Self why I was having such big feelings this year? What was really going on?

And my Self honoured the request, drank the tea, had a nap and eventually told me: Because the corporations are doing their thing again and co-opting a deeply necessary political response to injustice for their own purposes.

Because it is not okay to reduce a women’s run to “cook clean” even if the intention is a good one: This particular intersection re-enforces the “mwanamke jiko!” problem in my stubbornly patriarchal society.

Because it took us this long to be able to exercise in public in Dar es Salaam without being pummelled to death by unsolicited comments from the sexists: these public walks are where people cheer athleticism in women!

So many “becauses” but the main one was the co-optation.

My Self told me that the anger had been brewing for a while. She has seen what happens to movements that get co-opted: it is just death, usually by Capitalism.

I asked my Self: Baby Girl, you have spent a lifetime studying the ways of Power as a social force, surely you can do better than throwing a tantrum at having your Special Day taken over by a couple of “well-intended” thugs?

My Self refused to speak to me any further as She had plans for the weekend that revolved around rejuvenation. She told me that “self-care is an act of Love, and Love is radical in 2025!” My dramatic Self has a habit of capitalising certain words for emphasis.

In due time, my Self grabbed a tampon to soak up the tears so that She could re-engage. If corporations, politicians and other actors are able to co-opt Women’s Day for their own profane uses, it is because nobody calls them out about it regularly, she said.

You used to relish being considered dangerous because you are a Feminist, she said. Maybe writing about it can start a conversation, she said. So here we are.

I am no longer split in two with agitation over Women’s Month 2025, I will be enjoying it in peace as I plot on how to co-opt or otherwise corrupt cynical and profiteering attempts to pink-wash products and services.

Besides, my Self and I are laughing in relief that at least we were not “gifted” a kanga with the President’s face on it for Women’s Day 2025. Can you imagine? Tcha!