Jacana

Maggie Davey introduced Mmatshilo Motsei and Pregs Govender, as “authors and feminists, and revolutionaries in their own right from a long line of storytellers” today at the CTBF.

Motsei said she was responding to the sense that even in post-colonial societies patriarchy is reasserting itself without our knowing it. “It’s as if we’re back in a situation never having done anything about it.”

Her intention is to take this dialogue beyond the Cape Town Book Fair and plans are afoot to start a women’s movement for fundamental change.

She recently awoke with Lauren Hill’s ‘Freedom Time’ on her mind, which located rebellion at a personal level. She said, “Anybody who remains ‘stable’ in an unstable world must be crazy. The only response to instability seems to be to become mentally unstable.”

She issued an injunction to the women in the room to rebel and dissent. “This is a reminder that you come from a long line of rebellious women. In this atmosphere you rebel for a good cause. The intention is to get the greatest good for the greatest number of people. We can’t not rebel. We can’t not dissent.”

She said women have the answer, the knowledge, the teachings, and the wisdom. “We tend to think we have nothing to offer and sink into inertia.” When working with victims of domestic violence, she asks what their plans are. “Many women tell me, ‘I haven’t got a clue. Please pray for me.’ So I go home and pray for them, praying that she receives a good dose of rage.”

She challenged the ANC Women’s League who practise ‘Godfather politics’, those politics that keep women pleasing the men who protect them. “Perhaps it’s time for South African women to ask what kind of society do we want to see?”

Maggie Davey said that the books Love and Courage and The Kanga and the Kangaroo Court were written at considerable emotional risk to the authors. “These texts are revolutionary manifestos in their own right,” she said.

Pregs Govender started with the question of what we should be insubordinate to. “We have to be insubordinate to power of hate and greed and fear, in the world and in ourselves.”

She said these things drive wars and misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia and racism. “The challenge is to stand up against these powers that exhaust and drain people, taking them from one crisis to the next. We feel as if we’re changing nothing, taking five steps forwards and ten backwards.”

She referred to Annu Pillay who said one of the critical things to eradicating violence against women was the challenge of self-transformation. “How do we transform the world while trying to conform ourselves? It’s not a linear process.”

At the same time as Pregs and Mmatshilo were meeting, a Zimbabwean issue was being held at the Centre for the Book. “If only we could have integrated both sessions, for these things are integrated. We need to see and understand what’s happening so that we don’t merely go from crisis to crisis unable to solve the issues we confront.”

She asked how we replace power of fear and hate.

“How do we take love and courage in our actions into the world, effectively confronting the forces of war? How do we connect what’s happening with our history? There’s been a sense of people acting with impunity, of getting away with burning photographs of a rape survivor to chants of ‘Burn the bitch?’ This leads to Zulu ethnic chauvinism. How do we see the connections between this and those who argue that she ‘wanted it’ because she wore a kanga? How do we link this to Polokwane when everybody sings Umshiniwam? What message does that send when the leadership sings this song? And what is the connection when women are attacked at a taxi rank for wearing miniskirts? And young white hostel dwellers who force women to drink urine? And the killing of a sportswomen because she’s a lesbian. How do we link this to acts of xenophobia by people chanting Umshiniwam?

“It’s time to make the connections,” she said.

Quote of the hour: “On publishing Love and Courage and The Kanga and the Kangaroo Court: “We can wage revolution on many fronts and publishing these books is a revolutionary act.”
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-Maggie Davey