O Shahinda, tell us your story,
With your desolate voice,
With your eyes as green as expansive fields in which gallops the steed
How is Al-Qanater Prison?
How are the jailors?
How are your comrades in prison?
O you as pleasant as the light on meadows
(Ahmed Fouad Negm)

O Shahinda, tell us your story,
With your desolate voice,
With your eyes as green as expansive fields in which gallops the steed
How is Al-Qanater Prison?
How are the jailors?
How are your comrades in prison?
O you as pleasant as the light on meadows
(Ahmed Fouad Negm)

Shahinda Maklad died on 2 June, leaving behind many people who extol her unrelenting struggle for the rights of farmers. But she has not only been eulogized, some have also critcized her attitudes after the 30 July revolution and her support of the new political system headed by President Fatah al-Sisi even after the features of the new policy that stood against the demands of the glorious January revolution materialized.

Critics not only demanded that she reconsider her positions but also disavowed her role in the anti-feudal struggle with Kamshish village farmers.

Her critics as well as her supporters share a similar concept about what an activist should be like and the radical attitude they are presumed to adopt.

Early struggle

Shahinda Maklad’s early life is associated with Wadad Matri, a leftist female activist. Maklad grew up in a family affiliated with the Wafid party. Her father struggled against the abolition of the Constitution of 1936 and the youth of the family resisted the occupation of Palestine. She joined the resistance in Port Said against the tripartite aggression. She had an early life of struggle, which originated besides the family affiliations in the colossal developments Egypt experienced at the time including the tripartite aggression, the Nasser era characterized by political tension between Nasser and the communists and Al-Sadat era with its associated uprisings the most notable of which was the bread uprising of 1977.

Maklad’s attachment to Wadad Mitri and her marriage to the communist activist Salah Hussain in addition to her leftist affiliation could be a suitable approach for studying and understanding Maklad’s history and her critics’ subsequent accusations of fomenting discord in Kamshish village. That was due to her communist beliefs which were described by those critics as having been forced on Kamshish inhabitants, an accusation that is of course strongly welcomed by the Islamists or the bourgeois remnants of Kamshish feudal families. According to them, an iconic character of struggle should not belong to leftist activists who they believe are ill-omened elements and callers for stripping off the power of feudal class over the farmers and ending the class struggle.

Kamshish village: focal point of class struggle

The book entitled ‘Papers from the Life of Shahinda Maklad’ by Shirin Abu al-Naga, and Shahinda Maklad’s interviews about the Kamshish events, especially her interview with Al-Jazeera, revealed that the struggle in Kamshish was primarily a class struggle. Fourteen years after the July Revolution, i.e. in 1966, feudalism and class struggle featured prominently at Kamshish village in Menoufia. It was a struggle in which Shahinda Maklad had contributed to the rejection and subsequent disintegration of feudalism, led by her father, husband and the village farmers. It later developed into an armed conflict which led to the death of many farmers and in which her own husband later died.

The struggle ended with the redistribution of the land that was stolen by the village feudal lords among the village farmers. However, some held Shahinda responsible for the framers’ deaths although her husband Salah Hussain himself was among those killed in the confrontations. She was also held accountable for the arrests that occurred in the village following her husband’s death and was accused of remaining silent against the torture of the arrested farmers under Nasser’s regime, given the alleged close relationship between her and the existing political system. Although these accusations are not based on evidences, they are still strongly resonating and aim to destroy the iconic image of her struggle.

One may refer to the visit made by Guevara and Abdel-Nasser to Kamshish village and Shahinda Maklad’s detailed account of her unplanned meeting with them to deliver the peasants’ demands in which one of the president’s guards tried to prevent her from meeting President Nasser. Nasser promised to look into those demands. Does that event imply that there was a personal relationship between Shahinda and Abdel-Nasser and his family? If such a relationship ever existed, she would not have bothered to make her way through the gathered crowds to submit the farmers’ demands to Nasser and would have submitted them at his office without seeking others’ permission.

Revolutionary in January and gagged in the presidential palace confrontations

Shahinda Maklad did not only participate in the January revolution but was also keen to remain close to the youth. She mingled with them and considered them a source of inspiration in the struggle that she started. She described the revolution as ‘the new beginning of a never-ending revolution’.  Shahinda Maklad was inspired by the January revolution that brimmed over with enthusiasm, given the large women participation including in particular housewives and female farmers. However, the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power signaled a momentous turn of events, according to Shahinda, especially when she was gagged by a Muslim Brotherhood activist while she chanted anti-Muslim Brotherhood slogans in front of the presidential palace.

The Nasserite affiliations and el-Sisi predicament

In one of her video-recorded interviews with Al-Bawaba News, Shahinda Maklad said: “Because I am Nasserite, I support al-Sisi.”. This support emanates from the belief by many Nasserites that there is a link between the personalities of Abdel-Nasser and el-Sisi. It is a strange analogy motivated perhaps by the strong yearning of Egyptian Nasserites to replicate the Abdel-Nasser model. It is an emotion-charged yearning which was evident in Shahinda Maklad’s crying during her interview with Mona el-Shazly back in 2013 in which she described the atmosphere that followed el-Sisi’s inaugural speech as one of joy and happiness.

Several critics overestimate their criticism of Shahinda Maklad because of her remarks in 2013, but many do not realize that her two-year absence from the political scene for at least the past two years was because of liver cancer. Had she been able to follow up the developments in Egypt during the two years that distanced her from the political scene, she might have changed much of her previous views, or not.