Gender activist Nomboniso Gasa has been on Twitter for most
of this year, although she hasn't yet memorised the social medium's first
commandment: brevity. Her tweets, as a result, are often numbered 1 to 10.
"I was always intrigued by the power attributed to
social media, the role it played in the Arab Spring, its power to report things
as they happen," she said at her home in Observatory, Johannesburg, on
why she joined Twitter. "But I have always wondered about the depth of the
platform. I didn't understand how you could communicate substantial issues in
140 characters. I still haven't mastered it. That's why I do the lists."
Once a regular presence in the press, writing about gender
and politics, Gasa has eased off. The time that she should be using to write is
spent "engaging in conversations on Twitter". But there is something
else going on – the setting in of fatigue.
"I have got to a point where I feel I am repeating
myself. That's why I write less. Part of my hesitancy about writing is ‘what
value am I adding?' What else have I said that I haven't said before? Ten years ago, I wrote about the death of
circumcision initiates. The response was: ‘That's a beautiful article'."
She proceeded to deliver a nuanced deconstruction of the
aftermath of the ritual of circumcision.
"The statistics on death are easy," she said. But
what never comes out are the individual tragic stories of people with lifelong
erectile dysfunction problems or men with mutilated penises.
"When these boys come back from the bush, they go and
have their first sexual experience with women they will never marry that they
think are less than them … to get rid of ‘dirt' in the name of culture.
"We talk about the injuries and the death but we don't
talk about a certain masculinity that they are being taught; a violent
masculinity which is different to what we think they are being taught. [Some]
even speak the language of prison gangs …"
Halfway into the interview, the conversation that had been
proceeding with a spring in its step suddenly hesitated, like feet approaching
an abyss. We had turned to talking about the mentally disabled child who was
repeatedly raped in Bram Fischerville in Soweto.
"Why are we having these manifestations of sexual
violence?" she asked. "What does rape mean now? Are the explanations
that we have given before still sufficient? When a 30-year-old man rapes a
six-month-old, should we simply call it patriarchy? These things keep happening
and editors keep asking me to write. Yet for the last 15 years I have been
writing about this."
Weary of recycling tired arguments, Gasa said: "We need
to find a language but we also need to go deeper into these issues."
She said that the Sexual Offences Act is so tough that the
courts can jail someone for life and yet daily, the horrors never cease.
Gasa tweets about the personal and the political with a
miniscule dose of the frivolous. In the past week, she has tweeted about her
husband, Raymond Suttner, who was, 35 years ago, sentenced for the first time
for his activities as an ANC underground operative. She has also ranted about a
"major bookshop" that didn't have a copy of a new book by a "an
established Mzansi writer".
She said that delving into the inner machinations of the
medium had exposed her to "the depth of South Africa's [racial]
problem".
"I am very shocked by how brazen the racism is. Twitter
puts racism right in your face," she said. "The extent of the anger
on Twitter … Give someone three minutes and they will come with an expletive.
Is our past catching up with us? Is the entire society suffering some form of
post-traumatic disorder?"
Gasa went on to pose profound questions, the answers to
which will help us to heal.
"Are we dealing with white people, in general, and
white men, in particular, who are dealing with the loss of privilege and status
as superior [beings]? Are we dealing with black people who are not quite sure
where they fit? Or are we dealing with a society that's spiritually bankrupt,
not in a religious sense but [in terms] of being?" she asked.
For the 8 000 people who follow her, Gasa poses and
addresses these and other questions. Hers is a combative and disruptive
persona, always challenging power in whatever forms it appears.
Follow her on Twitter
Fact file
Name: Papama Nomboniso Gasa
Date of birth: 12 February 1967
Place of birth: Cape Town
Profession: Researcher and analyst on gender, politics and
cultural issues
Married to: Raymond Suttner
Favourite books: There are so many, but these are always
near me. Song of Solomon and Sula by Toni Morrison; So Long, a letter by
Mariama Ba; Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga; Migritude by Shailja
Patel; Ake: The Years of Childhood by Wole Soyinka; Ways of Seeing by John
Berger; Sometimes There is a Void by Zakes Mda; A Wild Patience Has Taken Me
This Far by Adrienne Rich and many others.
Heroes/heroines: Dorothy Zihlangu – my maternal grandmother,
who was a political activist. She spent so much time in detention and under
house arrest during my childhood that I almost thought she was a figment of my
mother’s imagination because we stayed in rural Eastern Cape and hardly saw
her; Mthunzi Gasa – my paternal grandpa whom I never met, whose stories of
defiance, independence, joie de vivre and struggle to be whole inspire me
greatly. He was ahead of his time; Vulindlela Zihlangu – my maternal grandpa,
an ANC activist and volunteer for the Freedom Charter campaign, who died shortly
after his imprisonment in the 1960s, before I was born; and My uncle Melisizwe
Zihlangu, who introduced me to jazz, especially to Winston Mankunku Ngozi, John
Coltrane and Miles Davis.
Favourite drink: I can drink a cup of Earl Grey tea any
time; I also like a chilled glass of sauvignon blanc and a full-bodied cabernet
sauvignon.
Pastime: Gardening and feeling soft, moist soil on my hands.
Indulgence: Flowers
