So it’s Women’s Day in South Africa

August 10, 2013 by 10 Comments

So it’s Women’s Day in South Africa, and we went down to hear a friend of mine speak at a local event. It was faintly cheering: we got to sing Malibongwe, which is the one struggle song white people can actually sing. There was clapping, and a bit of praying, which went down well. We then settled in for a desperately dull morning, in which we all bemoaned the general state of women in South Africa, and the wave, torrent, oh all right, tsunami of violence that is unleashed on us every day.

Yawn.

Yes, we agreed, we are dying. In fact, more than we can count, because the statistics are so unhelpful, given the level of underreporting of rape. Yes, we agreed, it’s very bad. We must fight patriarchy. We nodded our heads. Yes, indeed we must.

And speaker after speaker belaboured this, as though we had just woken up, and decided to talk about this for the first time. Lordy, it was dull. Except for one moment, one interesting electrifying moment. A woman academic, and feminist, and part of the national Commission on Gender Equality said, in one of the tightest, most frustrated voices I have ever heard, ‘We should go and stop the traffic. We should go to the nearest national road, and protest, and stop the traffic.”

And the hall of women groaned and rumbled, and it seemed like for a moment, for a flicker of time, that they would rise up as one and march, limping and dancing, out into the streets and burn things, and break things, and generally get seriously out of hand. It seemed to me that this wave of the possible reached her across the stage and she caught herself, aware of her responsibilities, and said, ‘No, not that I am suggesting violence or anything. But we must do something.’

The hall settled back down. We went to lunch. But that thought spoken aloud is still ringing in my ears.

 

(Photo Credit: http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/)

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Be a leader in your community this Women’s Day

August 9, 2013 by 4 Comments

This week’s news of the rape of a four-month-old baby and a seven-year-old boy in the same household has left the community of Ceres reeling in shock. These rapes form part of a litany of abuse and violence against women and children in South Africa that just doesn’t seem to stop.

Victims, families and communities are reaching out for support in the immediate crisis and for healing over the longer term so that they can stitch their lives back together again. While services are available in some of the bigger cities and towns across the country, in towns like Ceres there is no specialised Rape Crisis organisation. Victim support will be limited to general welfare services and lay people who volunteer at the local police station.

How can this be the case 47 years after 20 000 women marched on the Union Buildings in Pretoria in order to claim their rights to move freely in their society without harassment? Women activists and organisations have been working ever since to try and create safe spaces for women in our communities. At organisations like Rape Crisis we can truly say that survivors of rape leave our counselling programmes with a sense that they have recovered from their trauma with more confidence in themselves, with a greater sense of meaning and purpose in their lives, feeling more in control, with closer relationships and more willingness to be open to new experiences.

The extent of rape in 2013 is enormous and incidents are becoming increasingly violent in nature. In this context why is there such a dearth of services to victims? Rape Crisis was threatened with closure a year ago and was in part pulled back from the brink by the incredible support and generosity of our community of supporters who gave generously of their time and money and in part by the amazing dedication of our staff who worked alongside volunteers with no pay. Yet we are still not meeting the need in the Western Cape. In part this is because provincial government has so seriously underestimated the problem of rape in their situational analysis and have therefore failed to allocate adequate resources.

Many people feel overwhelmed and helpless. Community members are calling out for NGOs “to be everywhere”. This Women’s Day Rape Crisis will celebrate by launching a rape information portal on MXit so that wherever you are in the country you have the information you need at your fingertips if someone has raped you or someone close to you. In this way Rape Crisis is finding creative an innovative ways to extend our services to women in poor and rural areas.

At the end of the day NGOs are simply groups of concerned people that have come together to find a way to support survivors in their communities and to try and talk about violence against women in order to try and bring the voice of the victim of rape to the leaders of our country so that they will again have to listen to the demands of women and respond in a meaningful way. In order for this to happen, people have to do what they did for Rape Crisis. Step forward. Talk about the problem. Donate time. Donate resources.

In past Women’s Days we looked for leaders to step up and respond with purpose and resolve. This Women’s Day we are calling on ordinary men and women to become the extraordinary leaders that the women of 1956 were in their day and ask them to do what they can, where they are, with what they have.

(This was originally posted at the Rape Crisis Cape Town Blog. Thanks to Kathleen Dey and all the workers at the Rape Crisis Cape Town Trust. Do consider joining their 1000Hearts Campaign and donate now.)

(Photo Credit: Daily Maverick)

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(Daddy) Why is everyone standing

July 28, 2013 by 1 Comment


(Daddy) Why is everyone standing

(Daddy) Why is everyone standing
a young one asks of dad
he struggle-grey of head
like more than most about
(they weathered the storms)

Everyone is standing
over the road
at a monument
to an incident
we remember

(Others remember too
when reminded
perchance election-time
will occasion a sound-byte)

Over the road
everyone else
on their way
to whatever

Over the road
Robbie and Coline
standing tall
as did so many

(so many unknown
and even unheralded
as the past is reassembled
for the sake of the present)

Over the road
for all to see
and bear witness

(though under the radar
more often than not
as we turn the other cheek)

Everyone standing
reminding the world
how they got here
and why in the first place

Grey-heads, mostly, congregate, as they have done before, at the memorial tribute to slain Umkhonto we Sizwe freedom fighters Coline Williams and Robert Waterwitch, over the road from the Athlone Magistrate’s Court, 24 years on, 27 July 2013.

(Image Credit: South African History Online)

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So we were sitting around

July 24, 2013 by 1 Comment

So we were sitting around, chatting about stuff, and the conversation turned to crime, as it does, and my colleague mentioned a rape involving a number of policemen which had apparently taken place recently. She couldn’t recall how many policemen had been involved so I googled for more information, as one does, using “policeman rape za” as my search terms.

Well, I had to read quite a bit to get to the one my colleague meant, as the search threw up several news media links, hours or days old. There was one article on timeslive.co.za by journalist Philani Nombembe, which usefully summarized the most current cases – a 28-year-old constable based at Touwsriver police station was charged with rape 3 days ago. Last week a 41-year-old policeman appeared in the Paarl Magistrate’s Court charged with raping a 14-year-old girl on a number of occasions in April. The warrant officer is said to be a priest.In Gauteng, a 30-year-old constable was arrested in Vereeniging for allegedly kidnapping and raping a 13-year-old girl on July 2.A 46-year-old police captain appeared in the Worcester Magistrate’s Court charged with raping a woman in a police vehicle in June.Another policeman appeared yesterday in the Randburg Regional Court, in Johannesburg, to be charge for a string of crimes, including 14 of rape.In addition to the reports in the timeslive article, a former Melkbos police station commander was found guilty a month ago of raping a woman and sexually assaulting another while both were in custody.

Did I miss something? Was there some kind of order that was misconstrued? Has the police force lost its collective mind? Did some important politician say something about rape being ok? (OK, never mind that one.) Do their communications people not realize that after Marikana the SAPS have what might be termed ‘reputational issues’? Which can only be exacerbated by the apparent silence of the cops on this phenomenon?

The SAPS Twitter feed is silent on the issue for the last three days, and doesn’t mention these cases either in that time. An oversight? In terms of media releases, the Minister did commend the police for catching a rape suspect in KZN two days ago, who is described as someone ‘who has been committing various murder and rape crimes around the Tongaat area.’ I assume the suspect isn’t a cop, as nothing is mentioned about this plague of biblical proportions which has hit our police services. Can someone comment on these startling events? Or is my worst suspicion true – there’s no comment because it isn’t news, just business as usual?

 

(Photo Credit: Gallo Images / Thinkstock /Times)

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Auriol Cloete, the Tiresias of Hangberg

July 22, 2013 by 5 Comments

Auriol Cloete

Sometimes a dune is a dune is a dune (thank you, Gertrude Stein). And sometimes … it’s not.

The Cape Times reports: “The city council has created a Frankenstein’s monster by planting grass on the Hout Bay dunes to stabilise them.” Here’s the story, in a nutshell. Until the 1940s, the winds between Hout Bay and Sandy Bay created a mobile sand dune. Then, people built houses. Then, homeowners demanded the dunes be stopped. And so the City started grassing the dunes. Now, Sandy Beach is just about disappeared, and Hout Bay has a second dune that is literally devouring roads, houses, and more. And there’s more to come. It’s the urban development eggplant that ate … Hout Bay.

This would be a laughable parable of urban `development’ if it weren’t for other recent Hout Bay news: toilets. A little while ago, 14 new toilets were installed in the Hangberg informal settlement. In 2010, Hangberg was the site of ferocious engagements, as the City Council, the same one that has created the second dune, did its best, or worst, to pound the location into smithereens. That resulted in the uprising of Hangberg.

Since the Hangberg Peace Accord, according to Auriol Cloete, the number of folks living in Hangberg has tripled. Who’s Auriol Cloete? Here’s a report from 2010: “Hangberg resident Auriol Cloete made breakfast for her children, saw two of them off to school and felt proud as she sat in the house she had built for them. Hours later the mother of four was partially blind, cowering on her bed, bleeding from the left eye, and screaming at her children to keep lying flat on the floor as police and residents clashed outside…. She was injured…when violence broke out between residents and police who had entered the settlement to escort workers contracted by the City of Cape Town to demolish about 20 unoccupied dwellings erected illegally on a firebreak. Residents threw rocks and petrol bombs and fired distress flares at officers who used rubber bullets in retaliation. A rubber bullet hit Cloete in the left eye… Cloete ran back into her house as it was too dangerous to try to get to an ambulance… Later, she was taken to hospital with another resident, who was apparently also shot in the left eye, and who is now unable to see because his right eye has become infected… Cloete, who worked whenever she could secure a job, has lived in Hangberg all her life and had spent more than R60 000 on a home for her children.”

Auriol Cloete is the Tiresias of Hangberg, and what she sees today are 14 toilets that, after three years and untold injuries, somehow signify welcome.

Here’s what Cloete might see in the future. Sometimes a dune is a dune. And sometimes a toilet is a toilet. And sometimes, urban development isn’t development at all. When nature and populations are seen as problems to be controlled, when – in the name of well being and prosperity – the histories of shifting sands and populations on the move are ignored or worse, expect the worst.

 

(Photo Credit: Thomas Holder / Independent Newspapers)

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I read the news today

June 25, 2013 by 4 Comments

I read the news today

I read the news today
our press is gloomy
sending the world
a pessimistic image

A pessimistic image
no-one has as yet won
the war on poverty
(R500b leaves Africa yearly)

I read the news today
foot-in-jaw politicians
puckering up for elections
(a ‘people-orientated leader’
denies a R100,000 kickback)

I read the news today
rarely do we hear of
active democracies
hale and hearty citizens
who can read and write

(perhaps it is in parenthesis
secreted inside of digressions
by the enemies of the nation
awaiting the reputed rainy day)

And violence against women
is on a high especially in Africa
(1 in 3 women victims of partners)
(did our Finance chief get that)

But that is just
a little bit on the side
in the grander scheme of things

Gender-based violence makes the SAFM radio’s Weekend PMLive programme, in an interview with a Medical Research Council doctor,Sunday evening 23 June 2013 (see “One in three women victims of partners”, Cape Times, June 21 2013); whilst “Gordhan scorches ‘gloomy’ SA press” (Cape Times Business Report, June 20 2013).

“Africa loses R500 billion a year to illicit outflows – Mbeki”, and “Minister denies R100 000 game farm kickback claim” (both in the Cape Times, June 18 2013).  By the by the line “I read the news today” comes from the Beatles’ ditty “A day in the life”.

(Photo Credit: David Harrison / Mail & Guardian)

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Prison is bad for pregnant women and other living things

June 11, 2013 by 2 Comments

 

A report entitled Expecting Change: the case for ending the immigration detention of pregnant women was released today. It describes the nightmare that is Yarl’s Wood. The report bristles in its portrait of a system built of violence, planned inefficiencies and incompetence, and general disregard for women. You should read this report.

At the same time, a question haunts the report. So much of it is commonsensical that one feels compelled to wonder about the groundwork and horizons of social justice research. Here’s an example: “Asylum seeking women have poorer maternity outcomes than the general population. Many women in the sample were victims of rape, torture and trafficking.” The vast majority of women asylum seekers are fleeing sexual and other forms of violence, and so it comes as no surprise that they have poorer maternity outcomes than the general population. They also have poorer health outcomes generally, including mental and emotional health. They are asylum seekers.

On the one hand, we could discuss `the system’. We could talk about the planning that goes into systematically “failing to recognize” and “failing to appreciate” the particularities of women prisoners’ lives and situations. We could talk about the political economy of that planned failure, about who benefits and howbut we’ve done that already.

Instead, let’s imagine. Imagine what we could be researching and developing if we weren’t constantly working to undo over three decades of intensive, systematic and, for a very few, profitable mass incarceration.

Here’s where we are today. We have to conduct a multi-year study to prove that pregnant women asylum seekers shouldn’t be in prison.

We have to conduct other studies to prove that prison is an inappropriate place for children seeking asylum. We have to conduct another series of studies to suggest that maybe prison isn’t the best place for children, and that adult prison might be an even worse option. We need another multi-year study to `prove’ that sexual violence against children in juvenile prisons is epidemic. We need that same study to `demonstrate’ that the majority of acts of violence against those children, our children, were perpetrated by adult staff members.

We need another study to prove that the reason that self-harm and hunger strikes are so common, so everyday, in immigrant prisons is that the conditions are inhuman and dire. Prisoners have given up hope as they refuse to give up hope. We need many studies to demonstrate adequately that LGBT immigrants suffer inordinately in immigration prisons, and we need many more studies to demonstrate that the same is true for immigrants who live with disabilities. And then of course we’ll need more studies to prove that immigrant prisoners living with HIV have a tough time behind bars. We’ll need studies to prove that the prisons for immigrants and migrants and asylum seekers are extraordinarily cruel, and then we’ll need other studies to prove that the cruelty of those prisons is actually quite normal, and quite like the cruelty of all the other prisons.

We’ll need studies to prove that immigration prisons embody the architecture of xenophobia, and we’ll need other studies to prove that the asylum system is “flawed”. We’ll need other studies to understand that the xenophobia and the flaws are gendered. And then we’ll need meta-studies that will analyze the curious phenomenon of the complete lack of improvement. These studies will note, with compassion, that after decades of detailed research, the prisons are still hell.

I am grateful for the work scholars have performed. It’s often impossible work, and yet individuals and groups, such as those at Medical Justice who produced today’s study, do that work, and do it with grace. At the same time, imagine. Imagine what we could be researching and learning if we weren’t still drowning in our own Hundred Years’ War of Mass Incarceration. Imagine.

 

(Image Credit: Medical Justice)

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A tale of two (billion) women farmers

June 5, 2013 by 5 Comments

 

Mwajuma Hussein

In two days, in Jakarta, Indonesia women farmers from all over the world will gather under the banner slogan, “Sowing the seeds of action and hope, for feminism and food sovereignty!”

Close to 2 billion women, out of a global population of around 7 billion, depend on agriculture for their livelihood. For those women, these are the best of times, these are the worst of times. Herein is one tale of two women farmers in these times.

Mwajuma Hussein is a 75-year-old woman farmer in the Geita Region of Tanzania. In 2007, she and all the residents of her small rural farming community, Mine Mpya, were evicted from their homes and lands to make way for the Geita Gold Mine, operated by AngloGold Ashanti, a South African mining corporation. They were forced out and have lived since, for close to seven years, in a “cluster of makeshift tents constructed from plastic sheeting and bits of wood and metal.” As Mwajuma Hussein remembers, “[One day in 2007] I was attacked by police at 5am.  They arrested three people and beat them, and then they dumped us here.” In the bitterest of ironies, the residents sometimes call their “cluster” Sophiatown, and other times they call it Darfur as well.

Women make up a large and increasing part of the agricultural work force of Tanzania. On the one hand, men are leaving to work in the cities or in the mines. On the other hand, women play an integral role in agricultural production and ensuring household food security. Women are in charge of farm labor, especially subsistence crops; child care; food preparation; water retrieval; household maintenance; caring for the sick; building and holding community together. Women run the farms … up to a point. Women do not have formal decision-making authority over land use and earned income, and they have at best tenuous land rights. For widows, the situation is even more precarious.

What happens to the women farmers of Mine Mpya now? They become day laborers. Where life was difficult before, especially for women, it is now reduced to the hardship, and practical impossibility, of purchase-based survival. Where before, women ensured that the household had enough food to live, enough water to function, and enough social connections to weather almost any storm, now that’s all gone.

Phindile Nkosi is also a woman farmer, in the Mpumalanga Province of South Africa. She has a share of Elukwatini Farm, in an arrangement with the upscale mega-market Woolworths. Woolworths set up Elukwatini Farm this way: 13 farmers farm 1 hectare each. Those who succeed get more hectares. The others are out. Phindile Nkosi now farms 3 hectares, and employs five full-time workers. It’s good for her, for her children, for the region.

As Phindile Nkosi explains, “There have been no jobs in the area since the mines closed down 15 years ago. But Woolworths has helped us to help ourselves and the community. When my neighbours saw how poor I was, living in a mud house to what I am now, they too want to start farming. For my children as well it’s been good.”

Phindile Nkosi is a single mother of four. With the profits from selling tomatoes to Woolworths, she has managed to build a home and to send her eldest through university.

Are “Sophiatown” and Elukwatini signatures for the worst of times and the best of times? Yes and no. In both Geita Region and Mpumalanga Province, women farmers are responsible for sustaining food production and reducing household food insecurity. The hand that rocks the cradle tills the fields. In both Geita Region and Mpumalanga Province, the mining industry devastated the agricultural sector at large and the political economy of women’s lives.

Most critically, both stories point to the utter refusal of the State to address women farmers. Mwajuma Hussein was not removed from her home by mining security guards.  Police removed her. Phindile Nkosi did not live in a wasteland created by the mine’s closure. She lived in a wasteland created by State policies of “non-intervention”. A little over ten years ago a study reported that rural women in South Africa were “isolated, confined and marginalized through the non-interactive government policies on rural areas.” Since then, rural women in South Africa have become more active and engaged in farming and in farm work, no thanks to any `interaction’ from the State.

In Tanzania and in South Africa, the rural zones are treated by the State as empty space, and, for the State, the women who inhabit that empty space don’t exist. If they’re lucky, a `beneficent’ corporation will come to their empowering rescue. If they’re not, they end up in Sophiatown – Darfur. Either way, where is the State?

Phindile Nkosi

(Photo Credit 1: IRIN / Zahra Moloo) (Photo Credit 2: Business Day)

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Welcome Irene Kainda as a neighbor, not as a stranger

May 7, 2013 by 10 Comments

Irene Kainda

What are the borders of being-a-refugee? When does one stop being a stranger and become simply a neighbor? Irene Kainda wants to know.

Irene Kainda is 21 years old. She lives in Cape Town. She has lived in Cape Town continuously since 1998. She used to live with her mother and her brother, Felipe, who is two years younger than Irene. In 2006, Irene and Felipe’s mother abandoned them. The two children spent three years in a homeless shelter, and then were taken in by some good people. Now Irene is in college and so is her brother, thanks to Irene’s hard work. In many ways, this is, or could be, a tale of great promise, a tale of a young woman who keeps on keeping on.

Irene and Felipe came to South Africa as refugees, and there’s the rub. The civil war in Angola is officially at an end, and the situation is both improved and improving: “Angola is a nation of bright minds, brilliant writers, exceptional musicians, and a civil society that, almost 11 years after war’s end, is ready to have its voice heard.” Of course, there’s much room for improvement, but that’s true everywhere.

Recently, the South African government decided to `encourage’ Angolan refugees to return `home’. The `invitation’ to `apply for repatriation’ is universal. Everyone has to `apply’. Hundreds of thousands of people, call them Angolans who have sought refugee status, live in South Africa. Many of them have lived there for twenty years. For many of them, South Africa is the only home they really know. Irene Kainda notes, “I came to South Africa when I was seven. I don’t remember Angola, I don’t know where I am from and who or where my family there is.”

What are the borders of being-a-refugee, and how does gender inflect those borders? Women and girl refugees haunt the world. According to the most recent UNHCR Global Trends Report, at the end of 2011, 42.5 million people were displaced. Of them, 15.2 million were refugees. Women and girls made up 49 per cent of persons “of concern to UNHCR.” According to the UNHCR, 48 percent of refugees are women and girls. Further, “in 2011, UNHCR submitted some 92,000 refugees for resettlement. Ten per cent of all submissions were for women and girls at risk, the highest percentage of the last six years.” The next UNHCR report comes out in a month.

The civil war in Angola saw massive, programmatic and widely acknowledged violence against women and girls, and yet the processes and structures concerning demobilization altogether avoided women and girls as a distinct group. Thus, no resources were dedicated to their specific needs. And now it looks like South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs will do the same, avoid any recognition of the specific situations of Angolan-born women and girls living in South Africa.

Meanwhile, more than one study has noted that xenophobia is the dark side of the new supposedly democratic South Africa: “Intolerance is extremely pervasive and growing in intensity and seriousness. Abuse of migrants and refugees has intensified and there is little support for the idea of migrant rights.” Sometimes the abuse was directed specifically at Angolan refugees in Cape Town: “The City of Cape Town, like many other cities, has seen a number of xenophobic attacks on foreigners…The most well-publicised conflicts have been those in Danoon, Doornbach in 2001 and in Joe Slovo Park in 2002. Perhaps the most publicised incident was in Joe Slovo Park, where four people were killed in clashes between Angolan refugees and South Africans.”

Irene Kainda is an Angolan-born young woman who has lived and grown up, and raised her younger brother, in Cape Town in a very particular historical period. She has labored through abandonment, homelessness, xenophobia, violence against women, and more. At every step of the way, she was supposed to fail, and take her younger brother down with her. Instead, she succeeded, and took her younger brother up with her. And her reward, if the South African government has its way, is to be shipped to a `homeland’ she doesn’t know?

That cannot be. The State cannot punish Irene Kainda who has spent almost all her life engaged in Cape Town in performing the labor of survival with dignity, hope, and humor. Rather than deport Irene Kainda, reform the State. Institute a statute of limitations on being-a-refugee. Take responsibility for being a haven. Stop treating Irene Kainda as a stranger and welcome her as a neighbor.

(Photo Credit:Mail & Guardian)

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Love thy neighbour (or not)

May 5, 2013 by 1 Comment

Love thy neighbour (or not)

Love thy neighbour (or not)
Zambia’s vice-president
sheds his load about us
we who are the bees-knees
(or so we too oft imagine)

Love thy neighbour (or not)
right next door to you
here partners keep killing
the women in their lives

(where fire, rain and global warming
put our poor at risk first)

Children too at risk
in the early grades
reading not fostered
too few reading books
in classes and even
fewer school libraries

Backward we are
so much trouble
we have caused
in this southern neck
(we now the new imperialists
the old wolf dressed up
in democracy’s clothing)

Not yet decolonized
we think we are special
effortlessly emulating
our previously-advantaged elites
at the sushi-feeding trough

Love thy neighbour (or not)
turn your other cheeks
in the name of Africa
and that elusive African unity
(patriotic hand on your own)

Love thy neighbour (or not)
you watch behind your back
and we’ll look after those
who scratch ours

“Teachers not fostering reading in the early grades” and “Partners keep killing women in their lives”. And we hear that ‘South Africans are backward’ (all in the Argus, May 3 2013).

 

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