Simamkele
Dlakavu, The Star
Johannesburg
- It was one of those student protests, the kind of protests at our
universities that have become a norm again in this country.
I
don’t remember the exact issue of contestation that day, because they are so
many. We might have been protesting against the financial exclusion of hundreds
of students; or it might have been a protest against the dehumanising treatment
of our outsourced mothers and fathers. Or it could have been another protest
where we sought to be reflected in a curriculum that is still centered on
colonial thinking.
We
sang, in defiance, “uMandela uth’ ayihlome, uSobukwe uth’a yihlome…siyaya”
As
we continued to sing and remember our fallen struggle heroes “Chris Hani, OR
Tambo, Steve Biko...”, I waited and waited.
I
waited for us to continue to sing the names of “uWinnie Madikizela, uLilian
Ngoyi...”
While
waiting in anticipation, we moved on to another song.
This
song, that moment, was a reminder to me of how the politics of memory and our
political discourse in post-apartheid South Africa, and in wider post-colonial
Africa, wears a male face.
I
felt the same sentiment this past weekend while watching the ANC Youth League’s
national congress. As the top five elected leaders of the party raised their
hands in celebration, with only one woman - Thandi Moraka - at the table, I
thought to myself that “we are continuing the Big Men in politics syndrome”.
I
acknowledge that liberation from white supremacy’s systematically violent ways,
is an ongoing journey and we are still on that journey today. I believe that
South Africans, today, are living in a historical moment that is challenging
white supremacy. This historical moment is one that calls for Economic Freedom
for black people, (The Department of Trade and Industry recently released
statistics that indicate that only “3% of South Africa’s economy is
black-owned”) and a project that calls for “decolonization” which is mainly
driven by university students.
The
problem with both these historical projects is that they are not centering
gender in real and meaningful ways. They are falling into the same trap that
Africa and other sites of anti-colonial struggles have fallen into, where
women’s issues have been sidelined because we have “prioritized and gave voice
to a specific Black experience of oppression,” as stated by Professor Pumla
Gqola.
An
example of this failure to centre gender issues has been reflected in my recent
experience, at my university - Wits. I was a part of a group of Political Studies
post-grad students who contributed to a memo that was sent to our department,
and university management, calling for transformation. Due to pressure from
students, three new courses were introduced, including one on post-colonialism
centred on Frantz Fanon’s ideas on decolonization. In a fury of excitement and
pride I signed up for the course. However, in this new course, there is no
engagement with Fanon from a gender lens and no Black Feminist critics were
included. A simple Google search would have directed both the male lecturers
teaching the course to some Black Feminist literature on Fanon and
post-colonial theory.
Sadly,
there was no will to do so. As much as it has been fulfilling reading and
reflecting on texts by Léopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire, it has been an
exclusionary process, for me as a black woman.
This
process for me has proved a point made by Feminist scholar Judith Fetterley,
who wrote: “As readers and teachers and scholars, women are taught to think as
men, to identify with a male point of view, and to accept as normal and
legitimate a male system of values, one of those central principles of
misogyny”.
Fetterley
pointed out that “…..by the end of her freshman year, a woman student would
have learned something about intellectual neutrality; she would be learning, in
fact, how to think like a man”.
We
do not take enough time and resources to (en)gendering academia in our
political discourses in significant ways. The implications of this on women are
not only material-in the socio-economic sense- but can also lead to
“self-doubt” .
I
witnessed the self doubt of young female political activists while facilitating
a discussion on the Decolonilizing Wits project .
At
that discussion I was joined by a female and male leader of one of the student
political parties at Wits. What struck me was that during the Question and
Answer session, the audience members of the party constantly made reference to
the points that the male leader had made.
We
heard “as Mandla* said” continuously from both male and female audience
members. One female member of the party was making a point and she said
“Mandla* puts it better than I do….” in which I responded by affirming to her
that “no you are being clear”.
Privilege
comes with arrogance; we have seen this all over the world and with white South
Africans here at home. Black male privilege exists and it is equally arrogant.
It
often seeks to delegitimize black women’s oppression or tokenizes “women
empowerment” without really committing to ending patriarchy.
It’s
this male privilege that makes “Black Conscious” men and political activists
write that “Intersectionality is a cover up for White Supremacy and a fortress
of house negros of all shades”.
Intersectionality,
a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw (a black woman), denotes “the various ways
in which race and gender interact to shape the multiple dimensions of Black
women’s […] experiences.”
Crenshaw’s
objective was to highlight how Black women’s experiences “are not subsumed
within the traditional boundaries of race or gender discrimination…”.
Sadly,
black women political activists such as Khanyisile Litchfield Tshabalala, whose
talk I attended, agree with black men that in achieving “economic freedom,
gender freedom will follow” and that gender “is a sub-struggle.” She believes
that anything to do with feminism is “a white man’s theory,” thus ignoring
Black Feminist and African Feminist theories
We
cannot continue to promote the single reality/identity of the struggle for
liberation. Black women, black queer women and black transwomen need to be
prepared to have the tough conversations with their male comrades. We need to
be prepared to be called “divisive” towards the movement. Because who can
answer this call for true liberation but us black women? Who can fulfill this
task but us? We need to be our own liberators, because ultimately by being
liberated as black women, we will be liberating our entire society.
*Names have
been changed.
