Political moment calls for gender “discourse of dissentÀ

It is a time for reflecting on our relationship with the state. It is a time to evaluate how far the demands we made through the “Women’s Charter for Effective Equality”, crafted during the negotiations for a new South Africa, have been met. It is a great time to reflect on ourselves as South African women in terms of exposing what divides us but more importantly, what brings us together 15 years after the first elections and 53 years after women marched on Pretoria’s Union Buildings.

 

The utterances by ANC Youth League president Julius Malema that the woman who accused Jacob Zuma of rape “had a nice time” should make us ask what we mean by women’s rights and prompt us take a stand in defending our dreams.  

 

The fact that Zuma might soon be president should take us out of our gender comfort zone and make us find new methods, theories and words to describe our experiences; to  encourage and call us to a discourse of dissent; a discourse of dissonance; a discourse that frame’s and turns our words into actions that matter.

 

The Zuma era gives us a tremendous opportunity because it is a defining moment that can potentially bring alive women’s hearts, tears, hopes, and finally, victory in defending our dreams. It is a challenge because we have not worked together as a collective for a long time. We have to learn each other; examine whether the methods we are using now are effective, reliable and have the necessary impact in the current context in which we live.

 

The dominant human rights discourse speaks to the idea of citizenship related to access to health, education, to work, refuge in times of war, the right to associate with whom we wish, to articulate our aspirations and to claim our place in every sphere of life.

 

As many women grapple with obstructions in accessing these basic rights we are forced to ask “what is citizenship” for women? For we who have been dispossessed of our land, removed from our ancient abodes, invaded in our bodies and displaced in social structures -what or where are we? Are we formless people caught in a twilight world of junior or quasi citizenship that can only be fully qualified depending on our marital status, financial standing or the ability to negotiate complex social power relations?

 

The context we are in shows that the state does not always act in the interests of women. This is evident when we look at statistics on gender based violence; women’s unemployment; human trafficking, xenophobia, growing insecurities and poverties all on the rise. Indeed, based on these statistics we could well conclude that far from working in the interests of women, the state is in fact a perpetrator of violence against women.

 

I spend a lot of time listening to women across the country. There is a persistent message that even though we are not a country at war in the classical meaning of wars like Darfur, many feel we are living in violent times and experiencing new forms of violence which some are starting to term “economic terrorism.”

 

It is a time in which our communities and collective memories are dying; a time in which many dreams are turning into never-ending nightmares; a time that is collapsing the many life visions into a single cosmology; a hegemony of thought and action that are inherently discriminatory; even violent.

 

The new forms of violence in which mothers turn their daughters into sex toys in order to put food on the table need to be documented and exposed in ways that enable us to take action. The new movements present new political moments to light up those parts of ourselves we have kept hidden in fear, in shame, and in ambiguity; to hear our voices come from deep within.

 

This political moment we are in is like the South wind inviting us to depart from the linear mode of thought. It is a chance to create a gender discourse; one that will not be trapped in the dominant discourse tied as it is to a market economy, a monoculturalism and a materialistic ethic. This discourse should also not be caught in the cultural specific mode but rather one that proffers universalisms that have been born out of dialogue.

 

Working towards a political imaginary cannot have its mooring in the dominant discourse but must seek to locate itself in a discourse of dissent that comes from a deep critique of the different forms of domination and violence in our times.

 

One of the things that propels me is the yearning to leave a legacy for my children that does not place them in the confinement of stereotypes; of being called tom boys; of being thought too loud; too quiet; too aggressive; too forward; too ambitious or too anything other than themselves as God created them to be. I wish for them a world that enables them to sing their songs loudly and unapologetically, a world where they can leave the handprints of their uniqueness. 

 

The poet Audre Lordes implores and incites us to urgently challenge what is said and thought about us as women; to change the weapons of violence and exclusion; to challenge the competition between those perceived to be weaker and stronger or inferior and superior, civilised or uncivilised: to challenge male and patriarchal notions of power.

 

I would add to her call by saying that we have to interrupt the conversations that have pitted us against each other and crash into the meetings that have reached preposterous conclusions about us in our absence. We have to rewrite our stories into Herstory. We have to use this moment to reclaim ourselves.