One Needs a Strong Stomach

Siphokazi Magadla, The Con

The Texture of Shadows by Mandla Langa is set in 1989 South Africa, amid murmurs of Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and the unbanning of national liberation movements by the apartheid state. Not knowing how events will unfold in the country, a group of guerillas of the People’s Army in Angola are infiltrated as couriers carrying a trunk with highly classified contents that could potentially put the lives of those in the liberation movement in jeopardy if it were to land up in the wrong hands.

Mandla Langa speaking at the Grahamstown launch of 'The Texture of Shadows'

Eugene de Kock and the Violence of 'Nation Building and Reconciliation'

Siphokazi Magadla, SACSIS

The 27th of January 2015 marked the 70th anniversary of the ‘liberation’ of Auschwitz-Birkenau. This is the concentration camp in Poland where an estimated 1.1 million people were killed by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany during World War II. The victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau were killed in masses in gas chambers while some were beaten to death and others died of starvation, endured forced labour and suffered from infectious diseases. Speaking in front of the International Auschwitz Committee in Berlin, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel reminded the world that “crimes against humanity are not time-barred” and challenged that “we will always have the responsibility of ensuring that the knowledge about these atrocities is passed on, and of keeping the memories alive.”

Some Are Soldiers, Others ‘Straatmeide”

Siphokazi Magadla, The Con

Reports that Julius Malema, the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), called Minister of Small Business Development, Lindiwe Zulu, “a straatmeid” following a verbal exchange that came close to a physical altercation between Zulu and EFF Member of Parliament, Godrich Gardee, is a crude reminder of the sexist double-standards faced by female guerillas in the aftermath of war where they are expected to conform to dominant ideas of feminine respectability.

Mother of the Nation or Lady Macbeth?

Winnie Mandela

There is no middle ground for Winnie Madikizela-Mandela write Vashna Jagarnath and Siphokazi Magadla. The Con 

There has been something of an online furore in response to Verashni Pillay’s Mail&Guardian column, Five times Winnie Mandela has letus down. In this vicious public condemnation of her character, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela is rebuked for failing both as a political figure and as a wife – there is no separation of these categories.

The Deafening Silence of the EFF's Women Leaders

Siphokazi Magadla, SACSIS

“All we are asking is that he pay back the money, why are we getting thrown out?” was the question that came from a parliamentary member of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), who was identified in a Voice of America news report, as “Female EFF member” on 21 August, the day the EFF chanted “pay back the money”, to a humiliated and ill-looking Jacob Zuma. Right before Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, the EFF spokesperson started chanting, I hoped for a longer exchange between parliamentary speaker, Baleka Mbete, and the “Female EFF member”.

The Bloemhof incident: Affirmative action on death row

Siphokazi Magadla

Siphokazi Magadla, Al Jazeera

A water crisis in South Africa's northwestern town of Bloemhof has led to the deaths of three infants and scores of children and adults admitted to hospital for severe diarrhoea. Preliminary results indicate that the area's main reservoir was contaminated with the E. Coli bacteria which causes diarrhoea due to a sewage spillage. The town's mayor has since been fired by the ruling African National Congress (ANC), the municipal manager has resigned, and a task team composed of members of the provincial executive committee and the water and sanitation department has been set up to investigate the tragedy.

Teaching the dream curriculum in nightmare conditions

Siphokazi Magadla, Bokamoso

One of the enduring memories I have of my life in high school is of my then young brilliant Grade 10 History teacher holding the textbook warning us (paraphrased): “I will teach you this, but just remember that most of it is not history, it is lies”. At that moment I recognised the contested and political nature of the school curriculum.

The conversations about the ‘crisis in education’ often focus on the appalling environment in which teachers and learners are placed in developing and poor countries. South Africa is no different in this regard. If it is not the image of the teacher standing in front of over a hundred students in a small class room with barely any space to pace up and down to get better acquitted with the learners, it is often the lack of delivery of textbooks, chairs/desks and other important material that create an environment that allows teachers and learners to get on with engaging the curriculum offered to them. In this context, it is easy to assume that curriculum is also another aspect of the crisis. This is why I have been most surprised to see the substantive transformation of the high school curriculum which, in the midst of everything else that is not functioning well in education, is often overlooked.

EFF and the return of the warrior citizen

by Siphokazi Magadla, Thought Leader

The advent of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has gained much attention as the first clear reconfiguration of youth politics in post-apartheid South Africa. Much has been discussed about the policies proposed by “Commander-in-Chief” Julius Malema and his commissars, especially those regarding nationalisation and the appropriation of land. While there has been some discussion about the significance of the red beret, there has been little discussion about the significance of the military nature of the language used by the EFF. This language is important in the South African context because it demonstrates the extent to which “peace” in South Africa is evidently militarised peace.

Simphiwe Dana is nobody’s darling

By Siphokazi Magadla, Thought Leader, 23 September 2013 

“Part of what makes Simphiwe Dana so compelling for me, part of why I had to write this book, is that she is almost impossible to govern,” writes Professor Pumla Dineo Gqola in her latest book, A renegade called Simphiwe. This book is a “creative-intellectual portrait” of the public (and private) life of the musician. In this country where our imagination of political liberation has largely focused on the soap-opera like manoeuvres of politicians, Gqola carefully recasts our eyes by showing us the intersection between the creative and the political. While we have been accustomed to colourful politically focused book titles fit for Hollywood blockbusters fromEight Days in September to Mangaung: Kings and Kingmakers, Gqola dares and goes against the grain in this book.

Forget the skirt, arrest the fashion police!

Thought Leader

If Lindiwe Mazibuko and Angie Motshekga appear poles apart politically, there is one reality they have shared socially — being subjected to public sexist insults.

Mazibuko’s case is only the latest in a number of public incidents where women are dismissed on the basis of body, age and dress — that age old language of reminding women that even when we have earned our right to leadership, we are not truly to be taken seriously in the public sphere.

This kind of belittling manifests itself even more aggressively in public spaces outside the plush carpets of Parliament. Too often these scenes play out in our taxi ranks where black women are punished for owning their bodies.

Why I no longer tell my brother to wear his pants properly

By Siphokazi Magadla, Thought Leader

Saggy pants is a popular form of displaying rebellion to teenage respectability by young men who wear their trousers far down their waists, often times generously exposing their underwear. Saggy pants are mostly associated with black male masculinity, which has been highlighted by the imagery often associated with mainstream hip-hop culture. Of course today this phenomenon is no longer the privilege of young black lads as many white boys in my classrooms and elsewhere subscribe to the ”sagging” pants phenomenon. Yet, nevertheless, sagging pants are historically linked to black male adolescence. Like many black sisters and mothers I had been particularly averse to my two brothers engaging in these displays as I unconsciously saw them as yet another easy way black men attract negative attention (read racism and police brutality) to themselves. I have however shifted in this view.

Simply having a female president will not rescue the ANC

Siphokazi Magadla

By Siphokazi Magadla, City Press

A recent edition of City Press carried an article “The time is nigh for the ANC to have a woman president” (City Press, October 7) by Thenjiwe Mtintso, the veteran ANC leader and Umkhonto weSizwe commander who now occupies the position of South African ambassador to Italy.

In her article, she asked: “Has there never been a politically astute, capable, competent woman of integrity ready and willing to lead the ANC in one hundred years?” Mtintso is the right person to be asking this question at a particularly apt time in terms of the ANC’s electoral calendar.

The problem with independent women

By Siphokazi Magadla, Thought Leader

Many women who identify as feminist know that August is the one month they’re always asked how the feminist movement is transforming patriarchy.

This year has been no different. Among the inquiries I received, a student journalist asked me to answer in 80 words whether I thought the feminist movement had succeeded in achieving equality for women? Why I thought it was easier to be sexist than racist? What issues I thought the feminist movement still needed to address? And the most interesting question: Do I think “men are victimised by feminism”? All this in exactly 80 words!

On Thinking Africa: the perpetual question

by Siphokazi Magadla, Address at the opening night of the Frantz Fanon Fifty Years Later Colloquium

 

It was in our first Fanon reading group in preparation for this launch that I learnt that Frantz Fanon dictated most of his books to his wife Josie Fanon who was doing the typing. Richard Pithouse explained that it is perhaps because of this that much of his work is so declarative compared to usual strict academic language. Immediately I could picture this man pacing up and down his living room wondering loudly questions that would haunt us today in our own living rooms, “what does man want? What does a black man want?” Indeed Fanon continues to dictate us “towards a new humanism” as he puts it in Black Skin White Masks.