The personal is political the connected African women voices

good morning everyone

i want people to know what influences me

and has shaped the woman that i

currently am today

for throughout history we have seen how

when a woman dares to speak her truth

and to push back against the violence

she experiences

she is often villainized she has turned

into an outcast

and at the very least no one even dares

to care

what does it mean to be a young black

woman living in post-apartheid south

africa

well i reflect on two women’s life

experiences who have both gone through

some form of systemic gender-based

violence which

has been influenced by their

socio-economic class position

their abilities and of course race and

gender

political stalwart and anti-apartheid

activist

mamawi nimati gizella mandela was born

in 1936

and lived most of her life fighting

against

the apartheid system she spent most of

her life fighting for

not only the liberation for women but

that of the broader black

south african population this system was

a system that characterized

the livelihoods of black families black

communities

to violence and subjected them to

violence and

only really to further the colonialists

selfish endeavors

because of mamma winnie’s politics and

how she rose against the system of

violence

she was labeled an instigator and a

wayward charlatan

by the men of the liberation movement

the term wayward now means somebody who

is headstrong

and is difficult to control and indeed

umami possessed these traits

mama windy fort alongside within the

liberation movement

resorted to costing her an outcast

because in their view

she was becoming too difficult to

control you see mamawini’s politics

was making her act out of place in the

man’s club

this is a woman who has literally bled

in defiance against a system that deemed

black people’s lives worthless and

powerless

this is a woman who even questioned the

liberation movement’s objectives and how

we were addressing the issue of

socioeconomic emancipation in a society

that was growing fundamentally

capitalist

umamawini was a beacon of hope to many

black communities

and a key figure who kept the fire

burning in our quest

for freedom the next story is the story

of the woman who raised me and played a

vital

vital role in the becoming of my adult

years

noma choni gloria yankee who is my

grandmother

but she but i won’t speak much about

that

and she was born in the year 1956

and spent most of her life um you know

raising me

and fainting for her family i want to

reflect

at a specific point in her life in the

1970s

just shortly after the birth of her

daughter who is my birth mother

she was arrested in berea johannesburg

which back then was

a predominantly white community now you

see back in the apartheid era

black people had to carry with them pass

books which allowed them to be

in white communities for work purposes

alone

one fateful evening umamil went to the

stores and she returned back home

and she hadn’t even she didn’t take her

past book with her

and on one fateful evening that fateful

evening she she came across

two white uh male officers who stopped

her

who asked her for her passbook which was

also called a dumpass back then

um and you know they proceeded to harass

her they arrested her and they held her

custody overnight at the hilbrow police

station

with her baby on her back for simply not

carrying

her passbook the next reflection

or the next story of course is my story

i was born

in 1997 and i was raised by my

grandmother

in renberg which is also another

predominantly white suburban community

where she proceeded to work as a

domestic worker

for nearly 38 years of her life finding

for me

finding for herself and for extended

family members

i completed my matric my metric year and

i enrolled as a first year university

student

in 2015 at rhodes university and

in the first four months of me being a

student at rhodes university

i then became a victim i felt victim to

sexual violence

or to be more specific rape i was

i was drugged on a night out by two

young adult men

they dragged me i was vi i i and and i

and i was violated and humiliated by

these men

and what was even further difficult is

the fact that i still had to continue

my journey and navigate my journey as a

student at rose

and for those who can know who can i

have been to the rhodes university

campus can attest to how small that

campus is so it is virtually impossible

to escape this reality where i had to

bump into these men almost every day

of my life i suffered unimaginable

trauma from this this ordeal

and i still do today but the reason why

i’m sharing this story is in hopes that

other

young african women who have faced and

gone through similar challenges

like mine can know that there is no

shame

in speaking out against the various or

speaking up

rather about the various ordeals that we

have survived

at the hands of toxic masculinity and

patriarchal violence

i carried this burden of being raped

with me throughout my academic career

was

trying to make sense of why this

happened to me

it almost felt like a sense of shame

that i was carrying and

i was blaming myself with you know and i

had this guilt that perhaps it was

something i could have done

better in ensuring my safety and and you

know maybe

i could have avoided being violated in

the manner that i was

on the 17th of april 2016

in my second year as a student a list of

11

names of former and current male

students at rhodes university

circulated on social media under the tag

hashtag

ru reference list this list did not

allude to anything

nor did it even state that these men

were perpetrators of any form of

violence

what it did do instead is that it

unmasked the very nature of what we

believed what we

experienced and referred to as a

perpetual rape

culture crisis on the campus and it

broke the silence that we were subjected

to as the survivors

of gender-based violence for the first

time ever

i found myself being able to speak out

and to own my story and my truth

that hashtag i referenced the social

media post

sparked a movement that erupted across

the university campus for the weeks that

followed you see what happened was that

the women

and also members of the lgbtqi community

at rhodes

stood together in solidarity and we rose

against

the system and we fought back against

the system of of of

institutionalized patriarchal violence

and

really this violence put us in a

position where we were we were exposed

to further re-victimization

those 11 names of those 11 men rather

were men who already known within our

community as students

who had been accused of being

perpetrators of gender-based violence

but they weren’t the only ones and it

wasn’t just the 11 men that we were

protesting against

we were standing up in defiance against

a whole system of patriarchal dominance

and its lack of care and regard for the

livelihood

for the women on the campus as well as

you know

the allies as well i was heavily

involved in this movement

to a point where i was identified by the

university’s management

as being a leader of the protest action

i don’t think i was a leader

i think and i believe that i was just a

survivor

who was fighting in her personal

capacity for some form of justice

and for my story to be heard in 2017 and

my third year

the university then leveled various

charges against me

and a disciplinary hearing was

instituted

to punish me for my alleged involvement

in the protest action

in november 2017 in the middle of my

final year exams

where i would have graduated and been

the first person

in my family to attain a university

degree

i was given a lifetime exclusion from

rhodes university

and further labeled an instigator by a

an instigator who led what the

university calls a vigilante movement

all of this because we just simply said

no

and we’re pushing back against the

violence and it’s interesting to mention

that in contrast to what i’ve gone

through what had happened is that

those men and the men even after my stay

at the institution have proceeded to

graduate

um and you know become people who have

been

who are now employed in the system my

chances at ever returning at

higher education have been made small

and my dreams as a black woman have been

deterred because

i am a woman who dared to challenge the

status quo

it’s because of the norms the beliefs

and the various institutions that have a

strong hold in our society

patriarchy um has influence you know the

stronghold in us

in our society that women’s experiences

have been deemed unimportant and

virtually impossible to believe

because patriarchy decides for us on the

justice we deserve

for being raped for being murdered

abused and even economically excluded

all these experiences are not personal

they are very much political

and they shape what black african women

continue to experience

as systemic violence to be a black woman

living in south africa means you are at

risk at experiencing violence that is

racialized that is sexist and all

because it’s become so engraved

within our ways of being there’s a huge

desensitization that exists to the lived

experiences that we go

through and the daily violations of our

constitutional

rights i am fighting back and hopefully

my story

can set a precedent for other young

african women’s experiences to be heard

and given justice having been

influenced by all that is around me and

the history that i’ve encountered

i’ve come to learn the value in speaking

out and speaking up

about my journey and how rather we

should as women

use our experiences as instruments of

change

in our society we need to join the women

that have come before us

who have influenced our contribution to

society in our lives as we know it

in the legacy of resistance to fight and

push back against systemic patriarchal

violence

in all of the spaces we occupy as

painful as it is

reflecting on my journey as a former

student at rhodes

and even on the lives of the two women

umami mati guzela mandela

who was a was the first black woman a

social worker turned political activist

and leader

who had her legacy towards her last

years her life

tarnished because black men and just men

in general could not allow a woman

to bask in the power that she is and

donation

who arrived in johannesburg as a rural

young woman

turned domestic worker to offend not

only for

her her family but for myself at the

mercy of

white people is to show you that the

personal lived experience cannot be

separated from

the political and one citizenship and

that it is important for us to

understand the dynamics of our society

that contribute and expose black women

african women

to the various violations we go through

now i cannot be afraid nor can i and i

cannot be afraid to speak my truth and

to own it

nor can i be afraid to hold the system

accountable and to demand

for beta i believe that by owning our

stories

archiving them in whatever way is

possible and passing down this knowledge

pertaining to better understanding what

shapes our experiences as african women

is very integral to shaping the just

equitable and violent free society that

we envision and desire and deserve

i would like other young women to join

me as we share our experiences and ideas

with the world because they do matter

our stories beyond the statistics beyond

the data

are powerful political tools and

instruments of change

that should be used towards fostering

the socio-economic change and the

political change

that we want not only for ourselves but

for future young generations of women

and girls to follow thank you