Lady H. Augusta D. Mahoney
Daughter
of Sir John Mahoney, she was a nurse who actively participated in
political life. She was a strong advocate of Women’s Rights and created
in 1962, The Women’s Contemporary Society. She was married and became
the first wife to Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara, first president of Republic
of The Gambia in 1955. They will be separated in 1967. She wrote
several plays among which Rebellion published in 1968 and The African King, which she later presented, in 1966, at the Black Arts Festival of Dakar.
Rebellion is
a play of three acts written under the pseudonym of Ramatoulie Kinteh.
It describes the struggle of a young woman, Nysata, against retrograde
traditions in a patriarchal society : the fight for girls’ education,
the right to choose a husband, the establishment of a new parent-child
relationship, etc. Nysata ended up obtaining her father’s consent to
let her go to Great Britain to pursue medical studies. Interestingly,
Lady Jawara used quite frequently words in the local languages
especially mandinka, such as: daba-kruto, dundiko, fonto laro, fano etc.