INYATHI IBUZWA KWABA PHAMBIL

REFLECTIONS ON THE GENDER PROJECT OF THE CWGS AT MANDELA UNIVERSITY

& Herald
The
ADVERTISING
Advertising SUPPLEMENT
supplement to the Mail & Guardian
30 November
November 27 to Decenber 3 2020

All the Women’s Voices

Interim Director
Attending
institutions
Gender
of the
the Dr Joyce
at(CWGS)
Studies’ the Dr Dr
Centre
Banda
Joyce
forlecture
public
Banda
Babalwa
Women and Gender
in February
public lecture
Magoqwana,
this Studies
in West
North
(CWGS)
year, from
February.
left: theDr Babalwa
Zanele Magoqwana
Mbeki (centre)
Development Trust’swith
Lindatransdisciplinary and gender
Vilikazi, Rhodes University’s
University’s Prof Pamela Maseko and Nelson Mandela University’s Prof Nomalanga Mkhize.
Drscholars
Siphokazifrom Mandela
Magadla, University
the Centre and partner
for Women and

The CWGS aims to resuscitate
the histories of African
women from all walks of life
in an intellectual cleansing/
ukuhlambulula of her story,
aimed at healing our society
today.
The Centre for Women and Gender Studies
(CWGS) was launched at Nelson Mandela
University in October 2019. One of the CWGS’s
key academic projects is to research and fore-
ground African women’s biographies, intellec-
tual production and political histories. These
speak of women’s power and leadership in soci-
ety. The absence and erasure of these voices is
part of the sociology that contributes to gender-
based violence (GBV).
trauma that defines our society today.
The CWGS is mainstreaming these histories
in its teaching and research:
• To develop a gender corridor in the Eastern
Cape; and
• To link universities and scholars dealing with
gender questions and profiling African women’s
biographical intellectual histories.
“We are partnering with other universities in
the Eastern Cape, such as Rhodes University, in
talking about women’s liberation histories and
popularism; how women in the liberation strug-
gle were more than mothers and wives, they
were essential to the revolution,” Magoqwana
explains.
“We shouldn’t be reading about Sol Plaatje
and the history of the ANC without reading
about Charlotte Maxeke. In the same vein, we
have commissioned a thesis on Adelaide Tambo
who is often referred to as the wife of Oliver
Tambo, although she was a political force in her
own right. This is the kind of erasure of African
women’s intellectual history we are combatting.
The CWGS is also exploring what it means
to be “Queer in Africa”, based on the work of
Professor Zethu Matebeni, the Centre’s first
visiting professor, appointed in 2019, who is
based in the Department of Anthropology and
Sociology at the University of the Western Cape.
Her research focuses on gender and sexuality,
with specific attention on black lesbian lives,
LGBTQ rights and queer issues.
“To show that LGBTQ life is not foreign or
Western, it is part and parcel of our own cul-
tures, Prof Matebeni explores the local lan-
guages in the Eastern Cape and how they rep-
resent sexuality. Her research speaks directly to
what is happening in our communities and to the
growing conservatism about sexuality in Africa
that is often based on religiosity. It challenges
dogmatic and traditionalistic approaches that
dismiss sexuality as something that should not
be engaged with in an African context.”
Prof Matebeni’s films, poetry and essays have
been published in numerous journals and she
is the co-editor of Beyond the Mountain: Queer
weekly online series Reading with the author
began with a focus on health and gender, in a
conversation titled “COVID-19: Movement and
class in post-apartheid South Africa” by gen-
der activist and prominent feminist author,
Professor Pumla Gqola.
“The CWGS is committed to addressing issues
to which everyone can relate,” says Magoqwana.
“In the Department of Sociology we will be
investing in a new curriculum that foregrounds
African sociology, to nurture African-centred
gender scholars from first year who can see
themselves in the curriculum and who go on to
pursue Master’s and PhD degrees.”
GBV during
lockdown
G
ender-Based Violence (GBV) has
escalated during the COVID-19 lock-
down. While our country is working

‘W
e see it as our mandate
to r e s u s c i t a te th e s e
voices and histories: not
only the voices of intel-
lectuals, we want all
African women’s voices — workers, rural women,
women in business, politics, the arts…” says the
Interim Director of the CWGS and senior lecturer
in the Department of Sociology and Anthropol-
ogy, Dr Babalwa Magoqwana. It is the intel-
lectual cleansing/ukuhlambulula of her story,
aimed at healing the systematic and intellectual
Even in the rewriting of our country’s history,
our African brothers have generally neglected
the enormous role of women; or referred to
them as ‘the wife’ or ‘first lady’.”
The CWGS is currently working on a book on
African women’s intellectual histories co-edited
with Rhodes University’s Siphokazi Magadla
and Athambile Masola from the University of
Pretoria. Due for publication in 2021, the book
explores the voices of women in all spheres —
from pop icon and activist Brenda Fassie in
the eighties and nineties to intellectual activist
Charlotte Maxeke, going back 150 years.
Life in Africa’s Gay Capital (UNISA Press, 2019),
and Queer in Africa: LGBTQI identities, citizen-
ship and activism (Routledge 2018).
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic
and rise in GBV during lockdown, the CWGS
launched a digital platform in early April 2020 to
build a local and global online community. “We
invite people to speak on the work they have
published and we encourage students from dif-
ferent disciplines and faculties to participate,”
says Magoqwana.
As part of their aim to develop perspectives on
the effects of the COVID-19 crisis, the CWGS’s
hard on controlling the virus, very little has
happened to control GBV. Mandela Univer-
sity has responded by establishing the GBV
Command Centre for anyone in need of help
in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro. The call
centre numbers are 0800 428 428 and 0800
120 7867. The university also launched the
MEMEZA anti-GBV campaign, which raises
awareness about GBV and seeks to improve
community safety through a range of meas-
ures, including the distribution of yellow
whistles, to be blown in an emergency.
2 The Centre for Women and Gender Studies 30 November 2020 The Herald

Documenting women’s contribution to

history is key to academic project
‘Looking back enables us to recognise the continuities within the challenges faced by women today’

I
nyathi ibuzwa kwabaphambili – a Xhosa
proverb that means wisdom is learnt or
sought from the elders.
This powerful proverb was the overarch-
ing theme of the two-day virtual colloquium
hosted by the Centre for Women and Gender
Studies at Nelson Mandela University, in collabo-
ration with Rhodes University and the University of
Pretoria.
The colloquium, held on 28-29 August 2020,
served not only as a significant Women’s Month
commemoration, but was also the culmination of
the first year of the Centre’s flagship intellectual
project to recover memory and “re-member” wom-
en’s intellectual histories in Southern Africa.
Opening the colloquium, Mandela University
Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sibongile Muthwa,
said it was aptly themed, and deliberately sought
to recognise the generational continuities and dis-
continuities of the struggle and achievements by
women today.
“The discussions contribute to righting the
wrongs of excluding women’s historiographies
that have fundamentally shaped ideas of person-
hood, liberation and leadership, yet are largely left
out of history and how our common journey as
human beings is told,” Prof Muthwa said.
“Inyathi ibuzwa kwabaphambili is a call to action
for us to look back while we are building and mov-
ing forward, learning from our elders … those who
have built the institutions before us; those who
have sacrificed so much for so many of us, and
for those who are yet to be born. This connection
and recognition of the linkages of the history and
future of women enables us to recognise the con-
tinuities within the challenges faced by women
today.”
Two years ago, Prof Muthwa, during her historic
inauguration as the institution’s first black African
female Vice-Chancellor, foregrounded the revitali-
sation of the humanities as one of the University’s
key focus areas in the renewal of the academic
project.
At the time, Prof Muthwa said: “The humanities,
with open and malleable borders, are called upon
to use their innate potential to awaken African
scholarship, epistemologies and systems of
thought so as to excavate the African praxes of our
regions to write an inclusive narrative of progress.
There is a constitutive link between knowledge,
teaching and learning and institutional culture.
Much of our non-transformative, exclusionary
academic and non-academic practices and behav-
iours are closely knitted into our views of peda-
gogy, knowledge and institutional ethos.”
The Centre, which was launched in October
2019 under the interim directorship of sociologist
Dr Babalwa Magoqwana, is aimed at providing
an inclusive “gender agenda” that is informed by
the broader transformation project of Mandela
University in creating a more humane and equal
society.
Through the colloquium, the Centre wrapped
up its yearlong academic project of archiving
and showcasing the biographical histories of the
African women thinkers, infusing history and the
creative genres of arts and language to centre the
works that have been neglected from the maternal
intellectual ancestors.
Opening the colloquium, Prof Muthwa called for
the deliberate positioning of the daily struggles of
ordinary women at the centre of the conversation,
allowing recognition as intellectuals in their own
right.
“[This] will add to a broader feminist archival pro-
ject which seeks to re-member women and fight Nelson Mandela University Vice-Chancellor Professor Sibongile Muthwa.
the continued colonial and post-colonial erasure of
women’s intellectual contributions in the political Maxeke, who was a key yet often underrated fig- Musawenkosi Saurombe said: “It is therefore important it is to continue the work that has been
and cultural imaginations in Southern Africa,” said ure in South African history, is now recognised for important for us to take note of these contribu- long started.”
Prof Muthwa. the pioneering role she played in the emancipation tions that have been made and how this has been a The CMMI is working on a programme to com-
Supporting the work of the Centre is the of women and their overall contribution to society. foundation laid for those of us currently continuing memorate the 150th birthday celebrations of
Charlotte Mannya-Maxeke Institute (CMMI), which Representing CMMI at the colloquium, Dr with the mandate previously established, and how Mama uMaxeke.
was established to preserve this formidable leader
and activist’s legacy by producing the same calibre A full recording of the two-day virtual colloquium is available on Nelson Mandela University YouTube channel.
of African women.
The Herald 30 November 2020 The Centre for Women and Gender Studies 3

ooMakhulu as an Institution
of Leadership and Knowledge
The author was able to cope in life due to the
informal and unrecognised knowledge she
received from her grandmother
By Dr Babalwa Magoqwana,
Interim Director of the Centre for Women and Gender Studies

T
he Inyathi Ibuzwa Kwabaphambili (wisdom is learnt/sought from the elders) of our Afri-
can Women’s Intellectual Histories conference seeks to centre the intergenerational
conversations and recognitions of interdependence of one generation to the other.
When we themed the conference, we were deliberate about drawing on our elders in
the critical conception of “What is considered knowledge?”, “How do we know what we
know?” and “Who is the producer of knowledge?”
It is through our grandmothers (ooMakhulu), our aunts (oo ragadi, Oo Makhadzi), and our mothers
that we have shaped our intellectual foundations of knowledge.
It is fitting to acknowledge these maternal contributions from our elders, the status that all of us
cannot escape (sonke sizakubadala).
The Centre for Women and Gender Studies at Nelson Mandela University has prioritised the archival
project of women’s histories to conscientise our society and reveal the maternal legacies that brought
us here today. As the younger women, we carry our mothers’ histories, victories and traumas.
In my own life, it is my late maternal grandmother uMakhulu Magoqwana who inspired me. When I
was a child growing up in the rural Eastern Cape she taught me all the vowels, she taught me about my
clan names and about the local history and geography of the land.
She told me our stories and folk tales, none of which I received in the education system — such was
the gap between what I learnt at home and in the formal education system, where, if you are not certi-
fied, you are not recognised for your knowledge and you don’t become a knowledge producer.
Yet we survived and coped with life because of the knowledge we received from people who are not
recognised in the system, in our schools and our universities. It propelled me to pursue a scholarship
that is healing for all of us, a scholarship that restores the recognition of ooMakhulu, given that recog-
nition is part of dignity and healing.
The Eastern Cape is fortunate to have a rich matriarchal history, yet this is not reflected in the mas-
culinised political culture of contemporary South Africa — where women continue to be marginalised.
Structurally, power is constituted as a very masculine affair with women positioned as “the weaker
sex”, as perpetual kids whose vulnerability is constantly emphasised, hence we have a Ministry of
Women and Children.
This is not how it always was. My grandmother was far more in control than many women in our
society today. The leadership of ooMakhulu in the economy and the household was central to the
sociology of pre-colonial African society. Women kept their clan names, they did not take the man’s
surname — this is a colonial inheritance.
Colonial patriarchal structures, religion and neo-traditionalism concealed as “African culture” sys-
tematically erased African women’s role and contribution in African societies. In pre-colonial African
societies throughout Africa women shared the work, roles and duties at all levels and they owned
land. Colonialism dispossessed women of their land and introduced a genderisation of labour.
We have to challenge how these histories have been written and re-establish women as co-part-
ners and co-producers in society and the economy. Until this happens, until we educate our children
differently and restore the dignity of women in our public cultures, and restore the reverence for Interim Director of the CWGS and senior lecturer in Nelson Mandela University’s
ooMakhulu, the violence that we see today will continue. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Dr Babalwa Magoqwana.

Nelson Mandela University’s march against GBV in 2019. On the far right is the university’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Sibongile Muthwa.
4 The Centre for Women and Gender Studies 30 November 2020 The Herald

Do not live above your

people, live with them
There is no time to waste in
the emancipation of women:
the time for change is now

D
r Brigalia Bam was born in the East-
ern Cape and is a prominent gen-
der activist and passionate devel-
oper of young women.
She is currently a member of the
International Elections Advisory Council, and a
former Chairperson of the Independent Electoral
Commission and former General Secretary of
the South African Council of Churches. She has
been awarded numerous international awards,
including the Mahatma Gandhi International
Award for Peace and Reconciliation; OR Tambo
Lifetime Achiever; Ubuntu Award, the Order
of the Baobab (Silver) for uplifting women
and promoting democracy, and many other
recognitions.
She has received numerous honorary doc-
torates and served as the Chancellor of the
University of Port Elizabeth (now Nelson
Mandela University) and Walter Sisulu University.
She is the author of Democracy: More Than Just
Elections (2015).
Dr Bam delivered the following keynote
address for the African Women’s Intellectual
Histories webinar hosted by Nelson Mandela
University on 9 August 2020:
It is 65 years since the Women’s March on the
Union Building, and I have lived in this world for
more than eight decades, with more than six of
those being involved in women’s emancipation
struggles.
I have been both a participant and a witness
in this history, and I have seen failures and suc-
cesses in equal measure. It is with this cumu-
lative experience that I would like to share
some thoughts, based on the proverb selected
as the motto for this seminar, Inyathi Ibuzwa
Kwabaphambili (Wisdom is learnt from the
elders).
I would like to emphasise that inter-university
collaboration ought to be a model for intergen-
erational collaboration and increased trans-
disciplinary efforts across institutional bounda-
ries, with the collective mission to emancipate Gender activist Dr Brigalia Bam.
women. We cannot afford to individualistically
compete with each other when we have greater
impact complementing each other in collabo- society today, despite enlightened policies and ences give us the most realistic picture of what tions for the economic and social emancipation
ration. When we compete we are often unable programmes. The journey of this great doyen of most women go through. It is in mining this of women in order to break the backbone of
to complete our mission of emancipating all the women’s liberation struggle still continues intellectual history that we will come closer to patriarchy. The life of Charlotte Maxeke is tes-
women; I have lived long enough to know this as today, hence the need for deep reflection, action comprehending and apprehending the organic timony of a leader who was organically embed-
a fact. research and action to address the issues of our experiences of women, thus being able to come ded in the communities she represented and for
In South Africa we have no time to waste as time. up with future research agenda and focal points w h o m s h e w o r ke d . A n d t h e r e a r e m a ny o t h e r
the scale, gruesomeness and impact of gender- As women and scholars of this generation seek for our intellectual endeavours on the subject of women leaders who do the same. It is the aliena-
based violence (GBV) is unprecedented, even answers, it is essential that the research agenda women and gender studies. tion of our leaders and public intellectuals today
though on paper we are supposed to have some and programmes for interventions have the bru- In the current era, we need to closely exam- that has created a social distance between them
of the most progressive laws and constitution. tally honest and difficult conversation informed ine the mega trends shaping the world and how and ordinary women. There must be an articula-
Rampant corruption, a rapidly declining econ- by the following questions: Why have some of this affects ordinary women in our communities. tion between the two if we are to have a catalytic
omy, growing inequalities, intergenerational our interventions to emancipate women failed? Globalisation, the rapid advancement of comput- impact.
poverty, unemployment, human trafficking and What questions have we failed to ask? What have ing technologies and the fourth industrial revolu- As we ponder how to ground our research
many other social ills are afflicting women with been our blind spots in the embrace of main- tion have fundamentally changed the way we live agenda in the real challenges of today, I invoke
devastating intensity. It places the responsibility stream literature on women’s issues? With a and do things, and it has had an impact on the Charlotte Maxeke’s famous and yet pointed
on us as agents of change for social justice. fast changing societal and global context, what condition of women and gender relations. But quote: “This work is not for yourselves — kill that
In this respect a great African scholar and s h o u l d b e o u r n e w r e s p o n s i v e r e s e a r c h a ge n d a ? have we fully grasped what these are and what spirit of self — and do not live above your people,
activist, Frantz Fanon, said something so pro- The role played by our many pioneering women their implications are in a world of inequalities live with them. If you can rise, bring someone
found and yet simple in his book, The Wretched leaders and legends is profound and ought to be and digital divides? How do these impact on a with you.”
of the Earth, when he proclaimed that “each our reference point, as should the pre-colonial young girl and an old woman, for a village woman This is my appeal to all women academics: to
generation must, out of relative obscurity, dis- and colonial epoch of our history, where women and an urban woman? rise above narrow academic career aspirations
cover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it”. We have played a decisive role that is often not docu- It is my submission that if we put together our into activist scholars embedded within the com-
an extraordinary legacy of women in this country mented in our mainstream literature. In exam- efforts to achieve the economic emancipation of munities on which you reflect. People and activ-
who have fulfilled their mission. If we head back ining women’s intellectual histories we need to women through contextually relevant education, ist women of my generation have traversed this
to the close of the 19th century and the early make sure that while exploring the celebrated technology, agriculture and rural development road and played our part within the confines of
decades of the 20th century we meet Charlotte figures in history we don’t forget the vast wealth and the rebuilding of communities with women our historical moments. We now hand over the
Mannya Maxeke, who took a stand to fulfil her of intellectual histories of ordinary women in our playing a central role, we will go a long way in baton to current and future generations to con-
mission and become a pioneer and pathfinder families and communities who play a profound ensuring sustained social justice for women. It tinue with the struggle, knowing that for as long
for women’s emancipation when it was almost role in our formative years. is the how, and with what resources and social as women are denied social justice, humanity
unthinkable, and when the odds were massively Our examination of women’s intellectual histo- interventions that our research agenda should cannot fully realise its potential. You are the
against the very concept of social justice for ries should be revisited to give voice to grand- resolve. leaders you have been looking for: if not you,
women. mothers, mothers, aunts, sisters and women And so, while we confront the urgent crisis who will do it? If not now, when will it be done?
The context may have been vastly different community leaders who shaped us in our forma- of Gender Based Violence we must at the same If not here, where will it be done? Zemk’iinkomo
then, but the underlying issues still permeate our tive years, and whose average real life experi- time focus on sustainable strategies and solu- magwala ndini!!
The Herald 30 November 2020
From left: Rhodes University’s Dr Siphokazi Magadla, Nelson Mandela University’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Sibongile Muthwa; former Malawian president Dr Joyce Banda; VOKAL
(Valuing Our Knowledge At Last) founder and director Advocate Eve Thompson. The occasion was the public lecture delivered by Dr Banda at Nelson Mandela University in February
2020.
Centering Women’s Studies in
Femicide Country
By Dr Siphokazi Magadla, senior
lecturer, Political and International
Studies, Rhodes University
T
h e c o l l a b o r a t i o n b e t we e n my
department at Rhodes University’s
Political and International Stud-
ies, and the Centre for Women and
Gender Studies (CWGS) at Nelson
Mandela University, has brought students and
academics across generations, disciplines, insti-
tutions and continents together.
It has reminded us of the strength and beauty
of these community-building partnerships in the
midst of a global pandemic. Together we cre-
ated an online space that gave us an illusion of
something “normal”, including a routine seminar
space, where we have drawn on our various dis-
ciplinary knowledges to contribute to the multi-
ple and urgent questions of women and gender,
health, youth, liberation and heritage.
The founding of the CWGS in October 2019
was a result of the activism and vision of women,
queer and non-binary academics and students
fighting against a patriarchal institutional culture
that erases these knowledge makers and an eve-
ryday reality of sexist humiliation, rape culture
and violence.
In her review of Women’s Studies and Studies
of Women in Africa During the 1990s, Professor
of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Amina
Mama reminds us that, “the almost worldwide
emergence of women’s studies as a field of
research, teaching and study is generally viewed
as resulting from the impact of the international
women’s movement on the academic establish-
ment”. The existence and the call for women and
gender studies is a reminder that this kind of
The Centre for Women and Gender Studies 5
What do liberal claims to citizenship mean
to women, queers and non-binary people
who face the everyday reality of death?
work is full-time work. At my university, we had
the Women’s Academic Solidarity Association
(WASA), which was founded in 2004 when
Rhodes University was turning a hundred years
old.
The women who gathered at the home of Dr
Darlene Miller at the time recognised that they
could not challenge the white and masculine cul-
ture at Rhodes in their individual disciplines. They
needed a different kind of leadership, a rotational
leadership style, including sociologist Miller
and mathematician Dr Phethiwe Matutu as the
respective chairpersons of WASA — an organisa-
tion built on an interdisciplinary future for wom-
en’s liberation.
We hoped for a future where conversations
on women and gender would not happen just in
WASA-like spaces, but would form part of our
core curriculum. We hoped for a future where a
centre for women and gender studies and depart-
ments from different disciplines would focus on
the issues that shape women’s lives, and reflect
them in their everyday cultures, teaching and
research. It is no coincidence that Miller was
the Master’s thesis supervisor to Dr Babalwa Girl learners from Nelson Mandela Bay at the Dr Banda public lecture.
Magoqwana, the founding director of the CWGS.
I consider it a WASA victory that the politics
department at Rhodes University and the English and theorisation “from the spaces from which we women, queers and non-binary people who face
department at the University of Pretoria are col- are dying”. an everyday reality of death? Political science,
laborating in seminars, colloquiums and book It is this urgent reality that should fuel African whose history is to privilege male elites, does not
projects with the CWGS. women’s studies that emerge from the “collective offer us the tools to answer those questions.
Mama asks: “What are the conditions that concerns and interests of African women”, says Our inheritance is an African women’s move-
bestow distinctive characteristics on African Mama. Therefore, as much as it’s important for ment that brought together activists, creatives
women’s studies?” The answer, according to political science in South Africa to be grappling and thinkers to fight against what our elders
Professor of Leadership, Peace and conflict with the politics of capture, our energies ought to called the “triple oppressions of race, class and
at King’s College London, and Extraordinary be focused on making sense and ending femicide gender”. This spirit of intersectional collaboration
Professor at the University of Pretoria, Funmi in South Africa. underlies our intellectualism that is at the service
Olonisakin, is that we must begin our activism What do liberal claims to citizenship mean to of liberation.
6 The Centre for Women and Gender Studies 30 November 2020 The Herald

The Desire For Black People

Is To Be Fully Human
It is through the unpacking
of sexuality and diverse
sexualities that we start to
see the origins and history of
violence against the ‘other’

‘I
t’s odd that in a country like South
Africa, higher education hasn’t priori-
tised centres focused on women and
gender studies,” says Professor Zethu
Matebeni. “Yes, there are a range of gen-
der studies programmes as well as the African Gen-
der Institute at the University of Cape Town, but it’s
exciting that Nelson Mandela University is investing
in the first Centre of this kind. This is an important
initiative, particularly in the Eastern Cape, as it opens
a lot of opportunities for developing scholarship and
creating new knowledge. It is a political project that
comes at a very crucial time in our democracy when
gender-based violence is increasingly spoken about,
yet continues to rise.”
Matebeni explains that the CWGS unpacks the
notion of “gender” and “sexuality”, “which many peo-
ple tend to think about in terms of the relationship
between men and women — a relationship embed-
ded in issues of violence, because the foundation
of the heteronormative idea assumes an automatic
gender imbalance where men are superior and there-
fore women are violated in a range of different ways”.
The CWGS is broadening the gender conversa-
tion and unpacking it in ways that seek not to be Prof Zethu Matebeni, In December 2019, the Centre officially appointed Professor Zethu Matebeni as its first Visiting Professor. Prof
comfortable. “My framework is through an African Matebeni is a sociologist, activist, writer, documentary filmmaker, and one of the leading African queer theorists on the continent. She is
queer and gender lens that seeks to understand the currently based at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). Her CWGS role at Nelson Mandela University includes teaching, developing
intersections of race, class, sexuality, ethnicity and short learning courses and supervising postgraduate students.
the nation in terms of understanding violence,” says
Matebeni.
Her interest as someone trained in sociology is
to look at concepts of sexuality and the construc- South Africa has always been obsessed with sexu-
tion of gender in the African context, because it was ality — we had legislation about who you could have
as a result of the colonial legacy and Western gaze sexual or intimate relations with; and control and
that indigenous forms of sexuality in African culture censorship of what we could see and could not see,
became taboo. “The effect of this is that sexuality — to the point that people were excited to see breasts.
which is something that African people have always The same legislation also banned political material
prided ourselves about — was turned into something — anything that would excite political thought. How
that made African people feel ‘othered’ and objecti- sexuality and political imagination are connected is
fied,” she explains. “It was a case of ‘your body looks very interesting.
like this’ and so through the colonial and Western “I locate black women in the conversation on sexu-
gaze it came to be seen in a particular way — includ- ality and gender because of the legacies that black
ing through the imaginations of white women and women have lived through, and the dire consequence
men with their ‘taboo’ desire for black women and of the colonial encounter on black women and black
men. Or the much cited example of how in colonial women’s sexualities. I look at what the world would
times Sarah Baartman became an object and ‘not a look like if our gaze started with black women’s per-
person’.” spectives instead of men’s perspectives.

LGBTQ+ includes all of these

communities: “Through my research and teaching I address the
desire of black lesbians and all LBGTQ+ people to be
violence against the ‘other’.“There is a wonderful
body of work that looks at diverse African sexuali-

L
esbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, 2/Two-Spirit, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, fully human. I have therefore put the black lesbian
Asexual, Ally, Pansexual, Agender, Gender Queer, Bigender and black queer women at the centre of my CWGS
Gender Variant, Pangender. research. I deliberately take this group as a place
from where we can view the world, to reveal a com-
pletely different worldview. There have been dozens
ties,” says Matebeni. “Diverse sexualities are not a
colonial import or un-African. A number of scholars
have offered examples from Africa through the cen-
turies, including intimate male embraces in ancient
rock paintings and all kinds of same-sex relations

P
rof Matebeni studied Sociology at the Nelson Mandela University, completed her Master’s of brutal murders of mostly black lesbians in South
in Sociology at the University of Pretoria, and an interdisciplinary PhD at the Wits Institute Africa. These brutal murders added to the exces-
for Social and Economic Research (WISER). sive violations and rapes towards black lesbians — to
Previous appointments include senior researcher at the Institute for Humanities in Africa at make them feel less than human.”
the University of Cape Town (UCT). She has been a visiting Professor at Yale University and has Matebeni says all women in South African society
received a number of research fellowships, including those from the African Humanities Program, are vulnerable to sexual violence. Black lesbians,
Ford Foundation, the Fogarty International Centre and the National Research Foundation. at the same time, occupy a different space in soci-
ety — challenging and often openly rejecting sexual,
gender, and other cultural norms. While sexual vio-
Books lence towards women is generally aimed at abusing
power over female bodies, we also understand that
Co-edited with B Camminga, Beyond the Mountain: Queer life in ‘Africa’s gay capital’ (UNISA Press, the added vulnerability of rejecting black heteronor-
2019) mativity carried a heavy, and often deadly, penalty on
Co-edited with Surya Monro and Vasu Reddy, Queer in Africa: LGBTQI Identities, Citizenship, and black female bodies.
Activism (Routledge, 2018) “The desire for black people is to be fully human,
Curated Reclaiming Afrikan: queer perspectives on sexual and gender identities. (Modjaji books, and in this reclaiming of humanness the Centre for
2014) Women and Gender Studies needs to place women
Black lesbian sexualities and identity in South Africa: an ethnography of black lesbian urban life. and women’s sexuality at the core, for it is through
(LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing, 2012) the unpacking of sexuality and diverse sexuali-
ties that we start to see the origins and history of
between women, including same-sex marriages.
“We challenge people to look at the most powerful
women in their lives and to see how they compare
to the lesser role that has been imposed on most
women in our society. Therefore in our lives and in
our research and in our reading of existing texts we
need to start thinking about gender in radically differ-
ent ways. To start actually addressing gender-based
violence in our society; we need to understand its
origins and start reshaping our view of the world.
We need a new game entirely. In women and gen-
der studies we need to be uncomfortable with the
binary established between masculine and feminine;
we need to break down binaries such as male and
female; we need new cultural definitions of sexuality
in flux. We need to take our cue from activists, cul-
tural producers and many artists who are propelling
a different conversation about sexual and gender
diversity.
The Herald 30 November 2020 The Centre for Women and Gender Studies 7

#Activist S
tudents and postgraduates at Nelson Mandela University played a central role in the cre-
ation of the CWGS to advocate for the advancement of gender equality and anti-gender-
based violence in higher education and society.

The Centre was launched as a result of several years of activism and discussion

Connexions
among Nelson Mandela University staff and students (though the social activist platform #Activist
Connexions) who are concerned about the women and gender-related matters not being main-
streamed sufficiently in higher education. One of the early engagements was the Gender Forum 2014,
facilitated by the university’s Centre for Non-Racialism and Democracy (CANRAD).

The CWGS works across all faculties, contributing to pro-active advocacy programmes to build a
community that values co-existence and Ubuntu. The primary aim for establishing the Centre is to

in the CWGS
contribute to attitudinal and social transformation through the promotion of women empowerment,
gender equality and equity by way of rigorous critical analysis of the role of economic, religious and
political institutions in legitimising and institutionalising gender, sex and sexuality disparities.

Three of the student drivers in the CWGS are featured here.

Nangamso Nxumalo not feeling good enough about myself. It was through scholar-
ship — reading, researching and constant conversations — and
experience sharing where I got to really understand the debili-
Final year BCom Law, Nelson Mandela tating effects of patriarchy.
University What also deeply concerns me is how different classes of
people get treated differently. For instance, I see how “classed”
or “privileged” women get treated differently to other women

I
am interested in the economics of gender, in particular (because of their “Model C” accent or because they are per-
women and class. I draw on economic and legal tools of ceived to be more educated or from a richer middle class back-
analysis to research how women in the informal sector ground, or because they are conventionally attractive according
organise themselves; and how the developmental objectives to the marketing, advertising and Western idea of beauty that
of urban and rural women in the Eastern Cape, and across the we get fed).
African continent, differ in terms of the communities in which Even among black women activists, the effect is that many
they live. Ultimately, I want to use my degree(s) to contribute to women in this “class” tend to start consciously or unconsciously
policy that is appropriate to the informal sector, as this is where exceptionalising themselves and seeing women from other
the majority of people in our country are situated. backgrounds — such as poorer or “underprivileged” women
Activism is familiar to me given the history of my family. When and rural women — as “the other”. This sense of exceptionalism
I got to university I resonated with the gender movement and usually results in a watered-down execution of our politics, and
then my own activism was activated. My understanding of gen- that’s a problem. Nobody should be pushed to the fore as the
der has developed over time and it is still developing. voice of “the group” because of a perceived accent or appear-
I came to understand how pervasive sexism and patriarchy is ance. We need to value women from all walks of life and encour-
from general observations, ranging from women having to put age people to be themselves so we can ultimately work together
up with catcalls and comments when walking down the street to a s e q u a l s f i g h t i n g a ga i n st c o m m o n st r u c t u r a l i s s u e s .

Nomtha Menye Nobubele Phuza

Sociology Master’s student, Nelson Mandela University Sociology PhD student, Nelson Mandela University

M I
y Master’s thesis is
grounded in exploring the
spiritual significance of
water amongst the amaXhosa.
I was born and bred in the
Eastern Cape province, and at
least once a year we used seawa-
ter and sacred rivers such as the
Isinuka springs in Port St Johns
as sites of Intlambuluko (spiritu-
ally cleansing). South African his-
torian, academic and educator Dr
Nomathansanqa Tisani explains in
her work how this process is per-
formed with the intention of heal-
ing the body and making the inner
person whole. Ubuntu is achieved
through respecting the body as a
spiritual being and not its physical
appearance.
I believe the traumatic experi-
ences of women in this country
need interventions like this that go
beyond theories. We need practi-
cal interventions that are grounded
in the ethnographic study of the
Eastern Cape girl child. Research
must start at home with the people
at home.
This research is of importance
to me personally, as I come from
a family of successful independ-
ent women. These women are not
exempt from patriarchy and misogynistic men. It is the constant navigating around such behaviours
that makes gender activism so tiring. I also grew up seeing women who never objected against gen-
der-based violence (GBV). It concerned me, and it was only when I became an activist and faced
misogyny head on that I understood we cannot all be activists. It takes a different kind of being Iscaka
(servant) to partake in this gender war that seems endless. Studying sociology and being part of
organisations such as the CANRAD at Nelson Mandela University — which plays a fundamental role in
excavating archives of women who have achieved the unimaginable in their time — gives us strength.
We find strength in all the women who have gone before us. The archives provide platforms for aca-
demic cleansing and making the inner person whole. These are the kinds of spaces of Intlambuluko I
speak about in my research; spaces that critique the erasure of women in histor y.
These platforms also provide thinking and engagements hubs for students. Many students, past and
present — our #Activist Connexions — were part of the formation of CWGS. Therefore, the launch of
the CWGS on 3 October 2019 symbolised the cutting of the ribbon of our collective efforts.
My aspirations for the CWGS are centred on challenging the ideas women once took as truths, tak-
ing into consideration that the biggest challenge is not the decolonising theory, it is taking the theory
into realistic praxis. Re-imagining a space of seeing bodies as spiritual beings and not their physical
appearance. A space of Intlambuluko.
star ted my PhD this year
after graduating with a Mas-
ter’s in Sociology on gender
in sport. I looked at the mean-
ing of “emphasised femininity”
and the expected or conventional
attributes for sportswomen. My
research focuses on netball, which
has reflected and reinforced ideas
of culturally valued femininity.
Netball is socially accepted as an
“appropriate” sport for women,
evidenced by its promotion for
girls in schools, the number of
teams, clubs and leagues in exist-
ence and the invisibility of men’s
netball in the media and society.
I hope the research will help to
(re)centre women in discussion
of gender and sport and add to
the conversation around gender
socialisation by problematising
the taken-for-granted cultural
practices that we engage in every
day.
My doctoral study focuses on
the mechanism and architecture of
protests related to gender and sex-
ual justice in South African univer-
sities. It traces the divergence of
#RUReferenceList, #RapeAtAzania
and #IAmOneInThree, as the
most notable components of the
#EndRapeCulture campaign, from the historical Silent Protest, motherist movements and androcen-
tric #FeesMustFall movement. I will be satisfied if the study invites broader understandings of libera-
tory politics and theories of our time that bring feminised resistance from the periphery to the centre
of scholarly and political debate. To be clear, I want women’s resistance to be taken seriously, on the
ground and in the academic field.
Like every other woman, I always feel suffocated by the requirements of conformity to socially
acceptable femininity. I am glad to have spaces like the sports field which allow me to walk that line
of athleticism which is neither masculine nor feminine. It would be great to have that feeling spill
over into everyday life.
I suppose I’d be more satisfied if gender functioned like a T-shirt: on one day I might dress in a con-
ventionally more masculine way, on another day I wear my netball outfit with its embedded feminin-
ity, voluntarily buying into everything society means when it says “woman”. I’d fluidly move between
the two, but at the same time I am keenly aware that making those transgressions can make South
Africa a very unsafe place for me as a woman. As women we have to think about our own safety all
the time, because the reality is that we are not safe. As women we need to be constantly manoeu-
vring through and around the complexities of agency and GBV. I’m looking forward to a time when
things aren’t like this anymore.
8 The Centre for Women and Gender Studies
Professor Gqola has just been announced as the holder of a new
NRF SARCHI Research Chair to boost academic research on
gender issues
Professor Pumla Dineo Gqola was appointed
to the Centre for Women and Gender Studies
(CWGS) in May 2020. She is a Professor of
Literature, with specific focus on African femi -
nism, African literature, postcolonial litera -
ture, and slave memory.
She has just been announced as the holder
of the National Research Foundation (NRF)
SARCHI Research Chair on African Feminist
Imaginations awarded to Nelson Mandela
University in November 2020. The Chair comes
at a time when the country is seeking answers
and solutions to the gender-based violence
(GBV) crisis. The chair serves as direct institu -
tional response and intention to ending gender
inequalities and boosting transdisciplinary
academic research on gender issues. It will
attract top postgraduate students from across
the continent and build an African research
feminist hub in the Eastern Cape.
G
Miriam Tlali – Writing Freedom
qola’s book on South African novel-
ist, short story writer and essayist,
Miriam Tlali (1933 – 2017), Miriam
Tlali, Writing freedom is in press
with HSRC Press. In 1975, Tlali
became the first black woman in South Africa to
publish a novel in English, titled Muriel at Metro-
politan.
This is an excerpt by Gqola from her presentation
on Tlali during the colloquium hosted by the CWGS
in August 2020 on African Women’s Intellectual
Histories/Inyathi Ibuzwa Kwabaphambili.
In an interview shortly after the publication of
Tlali’s fourth book Footprints in the quag (David
Philips, 1989), author Cecily Lockett asks Tlali:
“Would you call yourself a feminist writer?” This is
a question that confronted Tlali many times, one
she answers with clarity in the affirmative. She
underlines hers as a feminism highly cognisant
of how race and other indices of power work and
impact it: her feminism is not about the primacy
of gender or the attitudinal sexism as per the “nar-
row Western feminism”, but about patriarchy as
structural and perpetually collaborating with other
institutional systems of power. Importantly, her
feminism is not just a South African feminism, but
is part of a body of radical black women’s writing
from all over the world, similarly concerned about
the interlocking forms of oppression. Here she
mentions Flora Nwapa, the first woman novelist in
Nigeria.
Whereas other feminists in the Black
Consciousness tradition, like Mamphela
Ramphele, have argued that men were blind to
their misogyny, Tlali sees patriarchal investment as
deliberate and conscious. Rather than a romanti-
cisation of mothering or even mother-son relation-
ships, which is everywhere evident in the magazine
Staffrider at the expense of the figures of mother-
ing characters, Tlali positions the subordination of
women as a wilful act by men.
Tlali is widely known for her novels, but far less
attention is paid to her non-fictional work in the
form of her substantial body of essays and her col-
umn “Soweto Speaking” in Staffrider magazine,
particularly in the first five years of Staffrider, from
1979.
In Staffrider, political transgression, coded as
heroism, named as “ staffrider s”, is written as
exclusively masculine terrain in Staffrider fiction,
while women are habitually and theoretically writ-
ten out of heroism, through violence — as raped
30 November 2020 The Herald
African
Feminist
Imaginations
bodies — and through silence — as stoic suffering
wives and mothers — thus ensuring that they can-
not be staffriders.
Tlali’s position at Staffrider is a complicated one.
She is one of the founders of the magazine, yet she
“disrupts” the central masculinised tenets of the
magazine through her painstaking attention, not
to heroic masculinity but to “the ordinar y”. This
carved for her an intellectual space that enabled
her to critique dominant ideologies of Afrikaner
nationalism and white supremacy through ordinary
people’s stories and life experiences.
Tlali’s columns are far more than a record of
black life, as they are often read. She reveals the
anxieties produced under apartheid, she reveals
the complexity and paradox of relationships in the
shadow of apartheid and unmasks the stories of
male characters who are both hero and villain.
In 1988, Tlali said in a paper delivered in
Amsterdam before the Committee Against
Censorship: “To the Philistines, the banners of
books, the critics ... We black South African writers
who are faced with the task of conscientising our
people and ourselves, are writing for those whom
we know are the relevant audience. We are not
going to write in order to qualify into your definition
of what you describe as ‘true art’.... Our duty is to
write for our people and about them.”
In Staffrider Vol 2, no 3 (July/August 1979), Tlali
narrates Mrs Flora Mooketsane’s story about the
difficulty of accessing her late husband’s pension.
Titled “The Soweto ‘not-so-merry-go-round’: An
Interview”, Mooketsane’s tells us that her hus-
band died on 17 November 1976 and how she
was pushed from pillar to post — from the Bantu
Commissioner’s office in Braamfontein to the West
Rand Administration Board (WRAB) offices for her
late husband’s cards — to the Labour office and
eventually being handed a cheque:
They filled the cards, and at the same time, gave
me a cheque for R16.00 which, they said, was my
husband’s pay for the week they had not paid him
for AND his holiday pay which was due at the time
of his death. Professor Pumla Dineo Gqola.
‘Is this all I must get?’
‘Yes.’
‘How can it be? My husband has been working all
along. His ‘unemployment’ (U.I.F.) has been with- Major and Van Eck a driver stationed in Marshall long, arduous and heroic journey of twenty days
drawn from his pay all these years; he has never Square (now known as John Vorster Square). through the desert, in the midst of which Shawa
drawn it.’ He related how later, as war prisoners in the resolved to take a different direction, and he wan-
‘It’s your fault. You said your husband was a hands of the Germans, they parted because Van dered alone. Finally, exhausted, hungry and thirsty,
Botswana person.’ Eck would not attempt to escape. Being the dar- but as determined as ever, Sgt. Moloi stumbled
‘I never said that. How can I say that? My hus- ing soldier he was, Sgt. Moloi decided to adhere into El Alamein and the safe hands of the Allied
band was born in Zeerust in the Transvaal. He only to the instructions he had received while undergo- Forces. As a trained spy, his expert knowledge and
changed his pass and took a Botswana passport. ing training as a spy in his country to ‘always try wide experience in the desert led to the successful
He has been working here all along and he lived to escape’. He and a friend named Shawa took the destruction of enemy camps in the desert and to
here all along.’ plunge and succeeded. Then began Sgt. Moloi’s the sinking of ships.
‘There’s nothing we can do for you.’
She keeps fighting and going back. Her anger is
palpable. She elicits the help of her brother-in-law
About Professor Gqola
P
to no avail, and eventually decides at the end of the rofessor Gqola holds a DPhil in Post-Colonial Studies from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
column to approach the Black Sash for assistance. München in Germany, and MA degrees from the Universities of Warwick and Cape Town.
In Staffrider Vol 2, no 4 (November/December Gqola is a product of the deep intellectual histories of the Eastern Cape, growing up in a family of
1979), Tlali speaks to policeman Sergeant Moloi intellectuals from the University of Fort Hare, Alice campus. She became the Dean of Research in the same
in his “comfortable home” that he shares with university in 2018, following a decade in the School of Literature, Language and Media at the University of the
his children and grandchildren in Rockville. He is Witwatersrand between 2007-2017, where she rose from associate to full professor. She has previously been
a veteran of the Second World War and describes Chief Research Specialist at the Human Sciences Research Council, and taught at the Department of English
himself as a “good” soldier; he has travelled and Classical Culture, at the University of the Free State from 1997-2005.
across the globe, and was a prisoner of war in Professor Gqola is the author of five books, including the pioneering study What is slavery to me?
Egypt about which he related how he was united Postcolonial/slave memory in post-apartheid South Africa, and Rape: A South African Nightmare, awarded
with a white former colleague of his whom he had the 2016 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award for Non-Fiction. In 2019, she was appointed to the DHET Ministerial
not seen since they were municipality policemen Task Team to advice on matters relating to sexual harassment and gender-based violence (GBV) in public
“arresting Africans for passes” in the streets of universities in South Africa.
Johannesburg. Sergeant Moloi was then a Sergeant
The Herald 30 November 2020
Radical ecofeminist Professor Patricia McFadden.
A
webinar in October 2020, hosted
by the CWGS in collaboration
with the Trade Collective think
tank led by the activist scholar
and researcher Lebohang Pheko,
explored ‘The Memory and Unmemory of Women
in Liberation Struggles’ and the tensions and
hostilities that many women still experience
from the states for whom they fought. Pheko ini -
tiated the partnership with the CWGS which set
out to determine historical truths through the
excavated memory of black women. This mem-
ory is very different to the male version of the
role of black women in the liberation struggle;
one in which women are reduced to “motherism”
and referred to as ‘‘the mothers of the nation”,
which effectively and conveniently positions
women as “adjacent” to the liberation struggle
and not the full participants that they were and
still are.
Herstories have been santised and packaged
by men. The notion of a National Women’s Day
highlights how the state has co-opted who and
what women should be, and identified itself as
the representative of women, not only in our
daily lives but, very importantly, in the historical
archives.
Professor Patricia McFadden was the keynote
speaker for this webinar. She is a radical ecologi-
cal feminist or ecofeminist who lives a vegan life-
style at her home on a piece of land in the moun-
tains of eastern Eswatini, where she grows most
of her food organically. She has been a feminist
“Black women are the most
erased and evicted of all people
from the historical archives
and official narratives of nation
building, freedom fighting,
colonialism, imperialism and
officialdom. National liberation
movements have introduced a
toxic nationalism into our daily
lives where women are often
differentiated and excluded from
a system that is, in effect, nothing
more than a continuation of
colonialism.” — Professor Patricia
McFadden
The Centre for Women and Gender Studies
Nationalism and neoliberalism have muffled and
activist and writer for the past 40 years, and has
published extensively on African States, African
liberation struggles and radical feminist theory.
This is an excerpt by Professor
McFadden from her presentation:
I have spent many years in the resistance circle
of life and participated in the struggle in South
Africa and our continent in all kinds of ways as
a human living in a black female body. I have
evolved into a radical ecofeminist because I feel
the natural environment is the most important
centre of activism for women that there is.
It offers us a door that we need to fling wide
open, a door that will enable us to imagine
and reimagine and recalibrate ourselves and
our voices as we are today and who we are
becoming.
There are so few spaces where we can be
the beautiful women we are and that we dream
of being. The natural environment is a vehicle
through which we can create the space we need
to flourish, and there is no more important space
for us to occupy than the natural environment,
on which all life depends. It is a space where
women do not need to request men to recognise
our roles and rights, but where we do this for
ourselves and assert our rights from this criti-
cally important platform.
Why this conversation is so important is
because it challenges neoliberalism and
nationalism as discourses that function in very
particular ways to silence women and all dis-
senting voices that challenge the status quo.
Neoliberalism is driven by misogyny and waste-
fulness or what I call “wastism”; it is a system in
which women’s voices and agencies have been
muffled and erased, particularly when we cri-
tique the ideology of neoliberalism, nationalism
and state power. As women, we need to recog-
nise the deeply disabling impact of nationalism.
Most of us draw our entire identity from nation-
alism, despite the fact that what nationalism has
done is to reinvent feudalism, often at women’s
expense.
Memory as it has been assembled thus far,
and packaged as “history” is a political resource
where history masquerades as “our story” and
enables those who rule to claim a history of
valour and foresight, and therefore to claim the
right to exercise absolute power. When working
people question the plunder of our resources
they are reminded by the rulers that “we freed
9
The
Unmemory
and Memory
of Women in
Liberation
Struggles
extinguished women’s voices and agencies
you and we have returned to rule you in an doorway into a new and alternative way. We must
authentically African way, some of us are the not be silenced against the terror that continues
sons and daughters of chiefs”; and if they are to rage across our society. These moments serve
not the sons or daughters of chiefs, they install to remind women that we are fierce, and when
themselves as such, as if this is a legitimate we do this, we return to ourselves.
system, when it is largely a system of terror and I am happy to be able to say that I now live
oppression of women. authentically in my own space, with myself as my
The legendary 1996 autonomy. On my lit-
Z i m b a b w e a n m ov i e tle piece of land I have
Flame was banned in “The manner in which the found ways of max-
Zimbabwe because global system colonises all imising who Patricia
it reflected the brutal forms of life, including all forms is, what feeds me and
truth of women’s expe- of biodiversity, by placing our- what I can become. It’s
rience in the liberation selves above our life source time to create these
struggle in Zimbabwe. — the natural environment — is new worlds of free-
The state used its a replication of how men colo- dom for ourselves and
power to enforce sani- nise women in a hierarchical for those with whom
tisation on the pro- manner, and how white people w e w a n t to s h a r e
ducers, directors and colonise black people. This is our futures. Systems
actors. Yet this was not a global issue and the Covid-19 of class, power and
an invention that crazy pandemic is a real and true and wealth have trapped
women conjured; it indication of just how far away too many women into
was the reality that we the human species has moved establishing them-
know, that we experi- away from the natural envi- selves as participants
enced in our liberation ronment on which we depend, in the state. This is
movements. The film as one of many species living landmine territory and
is designed to recover on this amazing planet.” — we cannot be radical
and reinterpret history, Professor Patricia McFadden in the state, it is a site,
and to remind us that not of freedom, but of
there is no one history, male-dominated, ruling
there is herstory. class power, and we need to deeply understand
By claiming our own story, we change the this. From here, we need to grow the new femi-
meaning of memory and we awaken our radi- nist skin. I am still struggling from the bad habits
cal consciousness, in a similar way to what Biko of having been a feminist nationalist for most of
achieved with black consciousness. The major- my life.
ity of men are not interested in reading our work Ecological feminism offers us the opportunity
because they cannot truly recognise us and to change; to evolve the relationship between
what we bring. Many men, including politicians ourselves and the natural resources that sus-
and intellectuals, also try to speak about us, and tain us, the powers of nature, the Earth’s kanga,
it’s boring what men say about us: mostly they which we wrap around our planet with its multi-
refer to us as some exotic additive, instead of tude of possibilities.
as incredible contributors to the shift that came Today, every single day is a special gift that
about as a result of liberation struggles, for my life is giving to me and a pathway to free-
which we still carry the violations in our bodies. dom in this life. As an activist I have spent my
We owe it to ourselves to unmask patriarchy life in search of freedom; I was always search-
and misogyny on our own terms. We have to ing for the source of it, and when I found it in
disrupt the notion of liberation movements as the relationship with nature, I gravitated towards
being a place of belonging for everyone. The sig- it. It offered us the opportunity to return to the
nificance of this moment is that it gives us the self, and there was no turning back. It was an
opportunity to unmemory the patriarchal ver- embrace of the future and it is all around us if we
sion of ourselves, and retrieve and reinvigorate simply turn to the extraordinary origins, memo-
our own memories. This is a taking back of our- ries, gifts and sensibilities that we as women
selves, beyond the reach of male narration; it is a have.
10 The Centre for Women and Gender Studies
Dr Nomathamsanqa Tisani
The Enigmatic Nosuthu Jotelo
It can safely be stated that Nosuthu is the progenitor of the Soga Missionary and Intellectual Dynasty
T
his is an excerpt from the pres-
entation by Dr Nomathamsanqa
Tisani during the colloquium on
African Women’s Intellectual His-
tories in August 2020.
The proverbial search for a needle in a hay-
stack in the form of indigenous women in history
is an agenda to be pursued relentlessly because
banqabe njengezinyo lenkukhu.
This search is not just an exercise within
what Meg Samuelson (University of Adelaide,
Australia) refers to as ”the feminist idiom of
global sisterhood”, nor is it within the black and
white Western binary dance. What we are about
is toppling the European medieval Great Chain
of Being which located indigenous women at the
lowest rung of the ladder, just above the chim-
panzees and gorillas. Human history is all the
poorer without the great histories of indigenous
women.
Here in southern Africa we have heroines
about whom we vaguely have knowledge, such
as Nzinga, MaNtantisi, Nandi, Mnkabayi, Suthu
and many others. We are about the great resto-
ration for which now is the time, Sekunjalo. A
moment when we bring MamTshawe Nosuthu
Jotelo — a 19th century isiXhosa speaking
woman — back into human history and that of
southern Africa. She deserves that honour, as
you will hear.
Revisiting the life of an 19th century African
woman necessitates a call to who she is even
before exploring what transpired. Makhulu
Nosuthu is MamTshawe of the Ntinde House,
of Kote, of Tshatshu, of Ngconde of Malangana.
Her socio-political profile is equally important
and we can reconstruct it from her iziduko and
those of amaJwara, the family she married into.
MamTshawe, the royal princess, held a rela-
tively senior position as she was married into
amaJwara, Jotelo, Mtika, ndinganibizi ndingani-
landanga. This clan is one of the old family lines
within the social system of isiXhosa speaking
people.
This is one part of Nosuthu’s history. The
other part is that her name first appeared in the
missionary records during the 1830s as one of
the women converts at Tyhume Mission Station
of the Glasgow Mission Church. In addition to
accepting the Christian faith Nosuthu embraced
formal learning, going against prevailing norms
and practices. Her eldest son, Festiri, attended
school long enough for him to return and build
a school with the help of Nosuthu. He, in turn,
taught his mother and siblings, reading and writ-
i ng — hom esch ool i ng i nde ed!
Nosuthu’s people have also been linked to
Bethelsdorp, a London Missionary Society mis-
sion station from 1804 when Kote Tshatshu,
inkosi of the amaNtinde took his young son to
be educated by the missionaries. This Ntinde
prince was given the name Jan or Dyani. Jan
Tshatshu was baptised and steeped in Christian
religion. Thus, Tshatshu, over a number of dec-
ades, is a prominent indigenous figure who
appears in missionary, travellers and military
journals. He was one of the best informed peo-
ple at the time on both the African world as well
as the fledgling European presence in southeast
Africa. It is fair to consider Tshatshu as an early
30 November 2020 The Herald
Artist’s impression of Bethelsdorp - the site
of the oldest London Missionary Society
(LMS) station in South Africa - which
today forms part of Port Elizabeth. In 1804
Bethelsdorp included Xhosa and Gonaqua
(people of Khoikhoi and Xhosa descent)
converts to Christianity.
Tiyo Soga - African nationalist politician of
the Cape Colony
African intellectual. a prominent writer for Indaba newspaper, pub-
In all likelihood, through her family, Nosuthu lished between 1862 and 1865 at Lovedale.
had been initiated into Christian teachings and Soga was a pioneering literary figure in southern
issues related to formal learning by the time Africa and its most important missionary until
she married her husband. She would have his death in 1871. Indaba contributors were the
brought novel thinking to her marital family as vanguard of an “educated elite”.
is expected of a bride — to come and imbue the It can safely be stated that Nosuthu is the pro-
children she would bear and the wider commu- genitor of the Soga Missionary and Intellectual
nity with new ideas. Dynasty. The concept of ukufukama comes in
Nosuthu was thus a conduit through which here. While the verb ukufukama is associated
both formal learning and Christianity were con- with a chicken sitting on eggs, when it is applied
ferred to the Soga children and their children’s to humans, then it covers the notion of nurtur-
children, and the rest of South Africa. At the end ing, guiding, protecting and, above all, creating
of the 19th century the renowned Soga family and brooding novel ideas. Nosuthu’s historical
dynasty was one of the most influential in the narrative is part of the rich tapestry of South
Eastern Cape. One of the sons, Tiyo Soga, was African history.
About Dr Nomathansanqa Tisani
Dr Nomathansanqa Tisani is an historian and educator who has served in this capacity for 50 years,
straddling secondary and higher education. Over the past five years Dr Tisani has been a visiting
lecturer at Nelson Mandela University and her research has broken new ground on the history of
African women during the 19th and 20th centuries. This has included work on outstanding figures
such as Queen Mother Suthu, Sarah Baartman, MamTshawe Nosuthu Jotelo, Charlotte Maxeke,
N o n te t h a N k w e n k w e a n d L a u r e t t a N g c o b o .
In her work as a historian, she is a “keeper of memory”, much in the same breath as imbongi
and wearing the mantle of uMakhulu and sharing stories of the family and clan. She is a mem-
ber of the clans of amaTshawe and amaZotsho. She founded Eyethu Imbali, a history programme
focused on the excavation and preservation of oral histories and stimulation of community history
consciousness.
She cites the Church of the Province as a vital institution in her formation and Black
Consciousness and Africanist thinking as key influences in her work. She is passionate about
holistically supporting and mentoring girls and young adults in life generally and in their academic
careers specifically.
The Herald 30 November 2020 The Centre for Women and Gender Studies 11

Gender, Arts and Heritage:

Contemporary Intellectual Histories
‘Mam’ uWinnie, for me, has always represented that woman who bows to no one and doesn’t follow the
rules, but makes her own’

T
hey have made their mark in the
S o u t h A f r i c a n e n te r t a i n m e n t
industry, entrenching their “wom-
anism” through their artistic tal-
ent. They acknowledge, loudly and
proudly so, the influence of various ordinary and
extraordinary women — their grandmothers,
mothers, aunts, sisters and fellow artists and
peers — on their expressions of gender through
the arts.
Actress and comedienne Celeste Ntuli and
internationally renowned musician Thandiswa
Mazwai shared their experiences as women in
male-dominated spaces during their respec-
tive conversations with the Centre for Women
and Gender Studies (CWGS) at Nelson Mandela
University, in celebration of Heritage Month and
the Centre’s first anniversary respectively.
Arts, culture and heritage were the focus
of the Centre’s programme in September and
October, as it continued its work to explore ways
of thinking about how gender matters across dif-
ferent aspects of our lives.
“I grew up with the word ‘womanist’, and there
was something about that particular framing
that gave me the impetus to exist in the world
without the baggage of gender. So, when I came
into the Kwaito world, I came in as a young per-
son who had lost the most valuable part of my
life — my mother. So when I came into those
spaces, I didn’t think that they were acting a
particular way towards me, but that it was the
way that things were,” said Mazwai, in conver-
sation with Professor Pumla Dineo Gqola during
the first anniversary virtual celebrations.
Mazwai is known for lauding influential
women, such as the late Winnie Madikizela-
Mandela, Lebo Mathosa, Brenda Fassie and her TOP: South African musician, Thandiswa
own maternal lineage — who have shaped who Mazwai, who is known for lauding women
she is today. who have shaped the woman that she is,
“Mam’ uWinnie, for me, has always repre- during one of her performances.
sented that woman who bows to no one and
doesn’t follow the rules, but makes her own. A RIGHT: Actress and comedienne, Celeste
woman who thrives, who fights, who is a cel- Ntuli, has made her mark in the largely
ebration, who is dangerous and who is just male dominated comedy space, using
naughty, beautiful, sexy and everything all in the stage to advance an African feminist
one. So, I was never going to let go of my lauding agenda.
of Mam’ uWinnie Mandela because as I lauded
her, I lauded every kind of woman that I was. She
allowed me to say ‘I am what you say I am’,” said
Mazwai.
Ntuli acknowledges her mother and aunts
among the forces that shaped the woman she
is, navigating the largely male-dominated South
African comedy space with boldness.
“I am a woman, but first and foremost I’m a
human being. My mom and aunts were dope
people … they taught me that the definition of
being a woman is non-defined — just be,” she
said.
“As society, if we say that we are equal, then
let us not box people. Let us let them be.”
The Centre, concerned with looking to the
past for illumination on ways to better under-
stand the present conditions of women, sought
to explore, through intergenerational dialogues,
how gender shapes what is remembered and
recognised, and what this means for the intel-
lectual, creative and activist energies of African
women.
With the deliberate focus on gender, arts and
heritage, and through these conversations, the
Centre sought to take time to study the work “To confine her legacy solely to her music is to
of prominent figures in popular contemporary censor her significant contribution to the libera-
arts, such as Mazwai and Ntuli, who explore tion struggle and her indelible mark in the crea-
women’s gender diversities through their artis- tive and cultural heritage of the African conti-
tic expressions. nent,” said Xaluva, who presented a paper titled
Other women performing artists, whose con- Zenzile Miriam Makeba: A Legacy Hiding in Plain
tribution to history and contemporary discourse Sight.
was shared through presentations during the Lebo Mathosa and her awareness of the
two-day Inyathi ibuzwa kwabaphambili: African gendered norms within the various genres she
Women’s Intellectual Histories colloquium incorporated in her art.
hosted by the Centre at the end of August, “The aim for my paper [was] to explore how
include: genre influences Mathosa’s performance of gen-
Zenzile Miriam Makeba, whose life and work der and how she expresses her sexual agency
reflects, according to jazz vocalist and scholar visually, musically and lyrically,” said Thulisile
Nomfundo Xaluva, the profound complexity of a Msezane in Lebo Mathosa: Genre as a Compass
black woman’s journey and place in the world. for Gender Performance.
12 The Centre for Women and Gender Studies 30 November 2020 The Herald

Resisting the erasure of black women’s

intellectual tradition
Without the voices of women as part of our understanding of early African nationalism in South Africa, we have an incomplete
picture of the contestations of that time

By Dr Athambile Masola side Maxeke’s open letter published on 12 June

1920, we see that Maxeke was not merely an
Writer, researcher and teacher at the attendee at the SANNC’s inaugural meeting, but

“
University of Pretoria (nGAP lecturer)
Ukuzilanda refers to a practice of fetch-
ing oneself in order to connect the past
to the present … [It] echoes the proverb
‘inyathi ibuzwa kwabaphambili’ (wis-
dom is learned from the elders). The
important word in this proverb for me is ibuzwa
— the practice of interrogation, which is also at
the heart of ukuzilanda and requires us to ask
questions in order to get the answers we need
about the ways in which erasure happens.” Dr
Athambile Masola
Growing up, umama insisted I know isiXhosa,
my mother tongue. She ensured I was exposed
to isiXhosa, through radio and the stories of
Gcina Mhlophe, to sermons and Bible readings in
church.
With my mother having prepared the soil for
me to take black tradition seriously, my friends
introduced me to a practice of sharing books and
introducing me to feminist writers and research-
ers. My friends and mentors have been the stew-
ards of my intellectual journey, as they shared
writings of black women whose feminist imagina-
tion challenged me to understand the effects of
the Eurocentric education I had received for 12
years at a prestigious girls’ school.
This practice of sharing exposed me to Noni
Jabavu’s memoirs. Reading The Ochre People
and Drawn in Colour together with Sisonke
Msimang’s Always Another Country led me to the
idea of ukuzilanda, which I incorporated into my
doctoral research. Ukuzilanda refers to a prac-
tice of fetching oneself in order to connect the
past to the present. An example of this among
some cultures is the recitation of family names
(ukuzithutha) for ritual purposes and to connect
to the past. In a sense, ukuzilanda echoes the
Writer, researcher and teacher at the University of Pretoria (nGAP lecturer), Dr Athambile
Masola.
proverb “Inyathi ibuzwa kwabaphambili”; wisdom
is learned from the elders. The important word
in this proverb for me is ibuzwa: the practice of
interrogation, which is also at the heart of uku-
zilanda and requires us to ask questions in order
to get the answers we need about the ways in
which erasure happens.
The importance of ukuzilanda becomes appar-
ent when we read the ways in which history has
been constructed. One of the ways in which
South Africa’s African nationalism movement
has been constructed is through the emergence
of the South African Native National Congress
(SANNC) in 1912. Charlotte Maxeke was the
only woman in attendance at the meeting in
Bloemfontein. What has often been omitted was
the response of the women’s organisation, which
had already begun with pass protests in 1903.
An example of this can be found in the poetry of
Nontsizi Mgqwetho and the newspaper archive,
which tells a different story about women’s work
in the early 20th century.
In 1918 Maxeke established the Bantu
Women’s League (BWL), which has recently been
co-opted as the precursor to the ANC Women’s
League without a thorough examination of the
evidence which exists, suggesting a different
narrative. When I read Mgqwetho’s poetry along-
rather someone who lambasted the Congress
for the fractures they had in their organisation,
which had consequences for the BWL. I read and
analysed her letter alongside Mgqwetho’s poem
Uqhekeko lweCongress (The split of Congress),
which echoes Maxeke’s concerns. Without the
voices of these women as part of our under-
standing of African nationalism in South Africa,
we have an incomplete picture of the contesta-
tions during their time, which have implications
for how we understand politics today.
This work of rereading history while look-
ing for the names of women is a long tradition
firmly established by African feminists. Together
with Maxeke and Mgqwetho’s writing in the
early newspapers, the publication of the Women
Writing Africa series is a response to the eras-
ure of women’s writing across the continent.
This series of anthologies is the most extensive
archive available because of the thorough work
of African feminists from all regions of the con-
tinent—southern, northern, eastern and western
and Sahel — which has evidence of women’s writ-
ing translated into English dating as far back as
6th century BC in Egypt.
This anthology series answers the questions
Boitumelo Mofokeng posed in 1989 —“where are
the women?” — in response to Staffrider maga-
zine’s commemorative issue, published in 1988
to celebrate 10 years of its existence. The issue
only included three writers, thus leaving out
many of the women who had contributed poetry
to the magazine from as early as 1979. This ques-
tion continues to find resonance, as it challenges
the ways in which we think about the representa-
tion of black women in the public sphere, and the
ways in which their intellectual contributions are
included.

A Doctor Displaced: Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s Time in Exile (1976-1990)

Cornell’s MA research took her many years, but was dismissed by her thesis markers as ‘insufficient for original research’

I
n November 2015, Nica Cornell chose Dr
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as the subject
of her final submission for an honours
course. Dr Dlamini-Zuma’s name had been
tossed around in the media as a possible
presidential candidate. At the time, she was the
Chairperson of the African Union Commission —
the first woman to hold this post.
“I quite vividly remember going to the library,
with the naïve assumption that there would be a
few books I could use. There weren’t any. That
void sent me on a five-year journey — from South
Africa to England, and back to the archives at the
University of Fort Hare,” said Cornell, giving her
presentation at the Inyathi Ibizwa kwabaphambili
coloquium.
In her presentation, titled “A Doctor Displaced:
Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s Time in Exile 1976-
1990”, Cornell said she had made it her mas-
ter’s mission to generate “the first detailed and
substantiated timeline of the 14 years that Dr
Dlamini-Zuma spent in exile”.
“This was a deeply formative time in Dr
Dlamini-Zuma’s political life. But, I also believe
it offers something specifically useful for root-
ing any thorough analysis of Dr Dlamini-Zuma
that is conducted in today’s South Africa, where
she has now been framed in deeply gendered
and racialised terms in relation to three different
South African presidents in a zero-sum game;
including, but by no means only, her ex-husband.
It is in this period that we can come closest to
encountering her on her own terms,” she said.
Some of the key elements of
Cornell’s research into Dr Dlamini-
Zuma’s timeline include:
• In March 1977, the Souther n African
Committee in New York published an article on mission and travelled to Tanzania (Frederikse study different aspects of paediatrics.
Dr Dlamini-Zuma, which was an excerpt of an 1986:3). From there, she travelled the world, • In 1988, 10 years since being elected to her
interview she gave ANC journal Sechaba, head- speaking about her experiences of student first position of leadership within the ANC,
lined “Soweto Student Speaks Out”: repression. she was elected as Chairperson of the RPC for
“I just found myself getting on with my politi- • In 1977, Dr Dlamini-Zuma returned to student Great Britain (Pityana 1988: 1); a member of
cal work. I knew that if it came to the crux, I life when she was admitted to Bristol Medical the Health Committee and the New Members
would have to leave the country. But there School. She graduated the following year. Committee (Ginwala 1988: 1); and, in 1988,
was no point in leaving what I had started, • She was posted to Swaziland at the end of she founded the Health and Refugee Trust
just for a degree. 19 8 0 , w h i c h i s (HEART).
Even if I passed where she met and • From October 1989 Dr Dlamini-Zuma was
the degree, I married her former redeployed to the ANC Health Department in
would still suf- “I think because history has husband, Jacob Lusaka, Zambia (Minutes of the ANC Health
fer the same Zuma, in 1982. She Committee UK 1989: 2). She remained active
oppression.”
not been written by us, who rarely spoke about as Director of HEART (Dlamini-Zuma 1991:
• Her activities as were in that struggle, who this relationship, 1) and was part of drafting the ANC’s future
a member of the were in that movement … it but, when asked health policies.
ANC underground about insecurities • In 1991, she was one of the first South African
— to which she’d is written by outsiders, who she had as a young exiles to go home.
been recruited sometimes don’t even try woman during a Reflecting the misunderstanding of both the
the previous year media interview last paucity of proper data on African women lead-
— had brought the
to get the facts right … they year, Dr Dlamini- ers and the implications thereof, Cornell’s work
police to her door. think they can interpret things Zuma said, “I always to establish this timeline was dismissed by
In a 1986 interview, and whatever interpretation have this feeling her thesis markers as “insufficient for original
she said: that marriage was research”.
“The police were they put to it is right. That’s a worry to me yet There have been some positive changes since
after me, so it the problem. I mean, until we it was important to she first began to research Dr Dlamini-Zuma.
meant that I society, but I felt “There are now three books, none of which
couldn’t stay
write our own history.” — Dr insecure about how offer the level of detail merited by the subject.
a n d b e a c t i ve Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. I would manage in The analysis is just beginning but it is my hope
and I would have marriage ... I never that with this data, I can help to create the foun-
been arrested, really managed to dation for that work,” she said.
but what I feared come to grips with
most was that they might try and turn me into marriage” (ANA Reporter 2019). About Nica Cornell
a state nurse, which I would have hated more • Late in 1985, Dr Dlamini-Zuma returned Nica Cornell is a South African writer with her
than being charged, so I decided that … it to Britain. She completed a postgradu- Master’s in African Studies, whose work has
would be better if I left.” ate Diploma in Tropical Child Health at the been published in numerous online and physi-
• Having crossed the border into Botswana, Dr University of Liverpool in 1986 and then was cal publications. She lives in London with her
Dlamini-Zuma immediately went to the ANC on a World Health Organisation fellowship to husband.