Even within their own civic organisations feminists are constrained by the same power dynamics as in broader society, writes Theto Mahlakoana.
There’s an uncertainty that has immobilised women in South African civil society who have dedicated their lives to the service of others.
Their goal was to walk in the footsteps of those who had gone before them to great lengths to empower vulnerable communities and groups in society, so that their part too would be recorded in history.
The actions of the women who marched to the Union Buildings 60 years ago this month against the apartheid government’s cruel treatment of black people, were meant to be a springboard, they thought.
Theirs was to work on a particular struggle, be it the fight for the rights of workers through labour unions or the NGOs which fight fearlessly for justice and the realisation of human rights.
However, the structures of civil society movements, be it formal or organised on a street corner, have similar expeditious elements.
Women are made to jump through many hoops as they push unimaginable boundaries to try to make the existence of others better than their own. Yet they have found their valuable time is often wasted by embedded inconsiderations that leave them on the back foot.
Koketso Moeti is a black feminist, and a co-founder of amandla.mobi, a campaigning organisation that mobilises activism using cellphones.
“The sector in which I work has been one that is often presumed to be good. It’s a space that is often seen to be happening in isolation from society. But it’s a space in which we are reflections of our society,” she explains.
“Over the years, I have seen the very same power dynamics that happen outside, happen in our same space. Whether it's sexual harassment, distribution of labour… the kind of thing that goes on in our society.”
Moeti’s voice is one of the loudest on social media platforms, constantly garnering support for one or other cause. And so, from a distance, this free speech space in which she operates should surely pursue gender equality among its many other quests.
However, as women have reported through the ages, rarely does any existing system in society reform itself to better serve its constituencies.
In the case of farmworkers, women’s issues, meant for the top of the priority list, are still often neglected.
Henriette Abraham, general secretary of the woman-led-and-run Sikhula Sonke, says change is possible.
However, the women with whom she works in this arena first had to remove themselves from the environment that underplayed their critical concerns.
Abraham and her comrades from the Western Cape-based independent trade union, which has gained international recognition, realised the importance of standing up for non-wage needs which would ordinarily be ignored in collective bargaining processes.
With no support from men in these organisations, and sometimes not from other women either, their agendas would be thwarted, and in their place, conversation would happen at gender forum committees. These would, however, pay lip service to women and their issues.
It was their ability to connect with female constituents by virtue of being women which gave their organisation proximity to the issues, enabling them to bridge divides men leaders failed to address.
“We don’t have a sub-committee because women are at the centre of all our struggles as a society,” explains Abrahams. “When it comes to broader forums, those issues are still manipulated by men and our issues must fall under broader issues. Right from the start, we said this is a woman-led union.
“When we focus on collective bargaining, it’s always about how the woman lives.”
Their work has proven that when the barriers are removed, challenges that would previously have gone unnoticed, are treated as burning issues.
“For years, you found housing contracts were only given to men. If your husband leaves you or takes another woman, you as a woman are out.
“We fought to have it registered in both the woman and man’s name. Issues such as transport for the children have been addressed. We also toiled to have toilets on the farms where the women are working as they were forced to just go out there, exposing them to infections because of the pesticides that are in the soil and on plants,” says Abraham.
While she agreed that there was a need for all civil society organisations to band together to have a greater impact in society, that should not come at the cost of gender equality.
Moeti best encapsulates what drove Abraham and her comrades to go their own route.
“Whether we like it or not, every injustice in this country is disproportionately borne by the black woman. We are the primary caregivers in our homes. We are the primary caregivers in society in general, yet we remain underpaid and abused.”
Formations such as traditional trade unions however still forced women to battle with prioritising their own struggle. This means, from Cape Town to Makapanstad, women are still bound in a cycle of struggles.
There is certainly always conversation about the need to appoint women into positions of power in, say, unions. But the reality is, if anyone were to look at the top structures of most labour organisations, they would find women parked in non-essential positions while their male colleagues take the spotlight and make headlines.
Then, those very women “leaders” are expected to head to the grassroots thereafter, preaching hollow messages of equality, and to advocate campaigns against “private monopoly capital” which refuses to transform.
But when the noise fades, so does the spotlight on the woman “leader” as she retreats to an office environment designed to suit her male colleagues.
There is another edge on this.
“At times, we lose good quality comrades,” says Cosatu second deputy president, Zingiswa Losi.
“They would allow themselves to be employed as shop stewards but they vanish because, when the trade union work has to be done, it does not have a care: it takes you away from your family and the woman is made to choose.
“Men can do everything. And then it’s unto you to make a choice: Who are you? You must first define yourself because marriage does not define who you are.”
Losi is described as an activist, a soldier, worker and leader by the federation she leads. She has needed to take all those aspects of her being into the role she holds.
The experience of Moeti, out of a younger generation of firebrands, and that of Losi, longer in the struggle, shows just how little has changed over time for women working to revolutionise society through civic action.
“How do you centre black women in the work that you do?” asks Losi. “The various means that are used can be exclusionary. For example, evening meetings. People will call those meetings not concerned about issues around childcare. You would be using public transport, travelling with your kids. You leave early, you arrive late. Your kids need to be eating.”
She has come to discover the enemy against transformation is the dogma of men dictating the order of things within the organisations she leads.
This means women battle with age-old traps laid by men, which are, in fact, put into motion by women and entrenched by women.
“You would find moments where a woman is contesting a position against another woman. No woman will be made to contest a position that is contested by male comrades.
“Excuses will be made, even by ourselves. We will make excuses that we do not think she is ready, but of course, men will whisper this in our ears and make us find reasons that this woman is not ready.
“Men will take a back-seat because they realise the power that we have,” Losi says. “The power that we have is the power that ensured women do not carry dompasses in SA.
“It is that power that men know we have. They will whisper all these things that makes us doubt one another. Once they plant that thing, it will grow and mushroom until it has roots and it becomes so difficult.
“When a woman says we want to uproot it, she is treated as the enemy of the revolution, an enemy of the women too.”
Everyday sheroes like Tsakane Kalimba - the unlikeliest person to take charge of the social needs of children in a Soweto neighbourhood where she lives - are what Moeti describes as the backbone of social movements.
A black lesbian woman who lives in a township, a space that can be petrifying for any woman in her shoes, Kalimba has fought to be part of the community and persevered even further to ensure the children she once watched idle on street corners, found something to do while learning.
“It’s all about making sure you help out where you can so that the environment the kids grow up in, is better. We have to put aside our own biases if we want to see good things happening.”