On Navel- Gazing Arm Chair Critics

 

I am one who is all for constructive criticism and the whole notion of interrogating even those ideas, institutions or beliefs that we hold firmly. It is also vital to scrutinize programs and campaigns that fall into the area of activism, social justice, human rights and development because there have been many abuses documented over years and years, by organizations purporting to “help” vulnerable people. These abuses have led many, particularly in the developing world- in places like Africa- to become skeptical of those who hail from western countries in the name of “development”. I have blogged about the issue before and some of the reasons surrounding the skeptism particularly where women and girls are concerned. The post is here. The issue of what motivates an individual or an organization to leave their homeland with its unsolved problems and head to “help out” in the developing world is one many intellectuals, scholars, feminists, students, economists and politicians have discussed ad nauseam. In many cases unfortunately there are ulterior motives tied to donor funding and development agencies which go to developing countries and spend years working on an issue with no tangible results to show for it.

Therefore the skepticism around One Billion Rising as a campaign comes as no surprise at all, and it seems to me to be a good thing. Many legitimate questions have been raised thanks to this campaign: many have questioned whether it makes a mockery of those who have been raped and abused because of its central modus operandus which is dance. Others have questioned how effective such a campaign might be, given that it is a one day affair. These questions need asking and they also need answers.

Certainly the OBR campaign is by no means a be all and end all to domestic violence and rape. In fact that is not the mission of this campaign. The mission is to create a heightened awareness, such as the world has never seen in order that rape and VAW become a front and center issue rather than a marginalized “women’s issue”. The increasingly brutal forms of violence such as rape and post-rape mutilation of females and the regular use of rape as a weapon of war indicate a rapid move towards the normalization of violence against women and as such a more radical approach to campaigning against this tidal wave of violence that threatens to cause irrevocable damage to societies that in many ways are already broken is urgently needed. Dance is used in this campaign because it is a radical form of protest. Its radicalism lies in the fact that dancing requires that an individual takes control of their body and channels their inner energy into moving that body as they choose or as the music moves them to. This is radical because for the majority of women their bodies belong to someone else, either through cultural rituals and practices or through societal pressures and conditioning. Women’s bodies are rarely allowed to exist for their own purpose. They are either reproductive machines, owned by the men in their lives as beast of burden or sex machines or psychologically enslaved through brainwashing media which reinforces certain standards that define women’s bodies as beautiful or ugly. Dance is one occasion that women can fully own their bodies and dance illicits joy and initiates healing.

What I describe here about OBR is not new. Therefore it is quite disingenuous when women like Marelise Van Der Mewe decide to vent their personal issues with Eve Ensler by rubbishing a campaign that she herself could not, with all her narrow mindedness and smug privilege, have envisioned. She begins her “vapid” piece thus: ‘It’s a celebrity-endorsed attempt to get a billion activists worldwide to take part in a choreographed dance to end rape. The trouble is, it’s got bugger-all to do with rape at all. And it’s unlikely to achieve anything, either.’ This statement alone is fallacy because OBR is not about getting people to dance to a choreographed piece at all. In fact in her own home country, there are communities that will not be doing the OBR dance or reading any of the poems that have been suggested. She is wrong again on the issue of OBR not achieving anything. She is unaware of the conversations and ideas that have been borne as people gathered to get ready for the event on the 14^th. The event is a culmination of months of sharing talking, and looking for practical solutions to make a difference in people’s lives. Men are getting together to form community based groups to push for progressive masculinities. Yes men are taking an active part in this issue and this includes educating their children about respect not only for women but for life in general. In another community, activists are working with the police for the creation of victim- sensitive police units to deal with victims of rape, from writing a statement, submitting evidence and identification of victims as a way to make it easier for women to report rape. I could go on, however I think the post OBR era will have numerous examples of just what this campaign has ignited in terms of real and lasting change.

Less advocacy more action!

Van der Mewe’s concerns may have been legitimate, were it not for her bellicose rants against Ensler and V-Day. What is quite shocking to me is that her dislike for Ensler is so deep that she does not bother to do much research about what V-day has done for the last 15 years with the money that the organization has raised. A simple Google search would have given her some insight into the work with women in the Congo, work with women and girls facing female genital mutilation and work with girls in South Africa. However in her volatile emotional state she quickly jots down some hogwash about no one knowing what V-day does with its money. Get real! She fails to conceal her ire , stating that only 56 people have registered for the event in the whole of South Africa! Look who is totally out of touch with reality. If she had her finger to the pulse of South Africa she would have noted that there are thousands who have been working tirelessly in communities across the country in order to have this event. She is clueless as to what victims of VAW and rape need or feel or think about this campaign, because if she were not, she would have realized that those who are mobilizing are the ones whose communities are most badly affected by poverty and violence. many of them have been raped or experienced domestic violence. Of course she would not know this, and if she did I doubt she would care. Her rather patronizing prescription- do as I do, blah blah blah- as she reels of a list of "things one can do about the issue of rape" as though she has done something amazing, is quite laughable. This, from the woman who has just railed against armchair activism. She openly states that she dislikes Eve Ensler and anything she touches. In other words: whether OBR has its merits or not, it doesn't matter because she chooses not to see them. How mature. show us the records that indicate a "lack of transparency" where V-Day and its funding is concerned. Her diatribe can be found here.  A well researched article written by Gillian Schutte on Eve Ensler and the work that V-Day has done can be found   here.

 

City of Joy, DRC.

What might interest her is that in the Congo and elsewhere, women who have been gang raped beaten, lost family members and should in her books be lying in some corner waiting to die are DANCING!!! Yes they are going to dance and enjoy themselves because in that joy lies freedom to be themselves finally despite all the trauma they have faced. Merilene might like to try dancing. It is liberating, and maybe she will befriend her vagina and finally be able to disclose to the world her sexual orientation. Ensler does not reduce women to their vaginas but rather uses the vagina as a way to disempower reductionist patriarchy in which women matter only in so far as they have a functional vagina. By having women get in touch with their bodies and reclaim their sexuality, Ensler has been able to change many women’s view of their sexual and reproductive health and their overall health also.

The bottom line is this: Women who take cheap underhanded pot shots at other women who are actually doing something in this world to better our lot, really suck. Former United states secretary of State, Madeline Albright, once said there is a special kind of hell awaiting this kind of woman. I really hope so, because it is women like this who set us back in our efforts to dismantle patriarchal structures that keep us all in chains. What is even worse are those women who themselves are doing absolutely nothing practical to further the cause, other than complain and whine about existential/ ideological/ personal issues they have with  OBR and or Eve Ensler. Women who personalize issues rather than be objective and analytical in their assessment before passing judgment are nothing more than a nuisance and a distraction. Please go away quietly and let those of us who understand OBR and who are truly passionate about getting rid of VAW do so in peace.

By the way this piece is not in defence of Eve Ensler, but it is in defense to a record of a body of work that has benefited thousands of women, me included. If Marelise Van der Mewe can show us a record of her work,any work, then I might be impressed. As its stands I think her poorly articulated “issues” with OBR are just a personal rant full of baseless claims which leave her looking like nothing more than a mean spirited individual with serious issues vis-a-vis her vagina or 'women's bits' as she calls it. “Sour grapes” Marelise!

 

When we blame the victim

 

I have to get something off my chest today. Having spent the last 4 months working on the One Billion Rising Campaign, and having seen some things and heard some things that honestly I wish I had never seen or heard, I am at a point where I am extremely sensitive on the issue of rape and violence against women. I am of the mind that we as human beings are just not outraged enough by what is going on every day, every minute, every second around the globe. I am of the mind that we are not disgusted enough that girls and women are getting raped then gratuitously mutilated, cut up, disemboweled and left for dead. I am fed up with people who will try to sideline the issue by stating that “women rape too” or that men also suffer abuse at the hands of women. I do not dispute this fact at all and I am concerned about that also. However, when you show me stories of men being gang raped by women then cut up and left lying in pools of their own blood, then maybe I will champion the cause of violence against men as vociferously as I talk about the fact that 1 in 3 women on this planet will experience rape or violence in her lifetime. When the statistics for female- on- male violence come anywhere near as close to the stats for male- on- female violence then I will sit up and do something about that also. However for now, I choose to focus on the war against the feminine which has gone unchecked for centuries. I choose to Rise up against the Patriarchal structure that has allowed this madness, this atrocity against my own kind to grow into a huge cancerous mass that is consuming us steadily. What this means is that I have zero tolerance for anyone who dares to blame the victim of rape, or who blames the females in the victim’s life. Let’s get real here: rape and violence against women happens no matter what a woman is wearing or where she chooses to go. Women in Afghanistan who are completely covered up save their eyes are raped daily, and then executed for getting raped. That act of execution is placing the blame of rape squarely on the victim’s shoulders and she pays for her own rape with her life.

I am bothered by the discourse surrounding the brutal rape and disembowelment of seventeen year old Anene Booysen( here) in which some people are asking why she was out that late in a tavern. Or where was her mother? Implicit in these questions is blame, it was her fault that she was out late at night or it was her mother’s fault that her daughter was out late and got raped. Just to illustrate how flawed this kind of thinking is, there is another recent story. A 15 year old girl in Chicago was taking trash out when a car pulled up, dragged her in and she was taken to a home where she was gang raped by three men for hours (here). Who do we blame for this girl’s abduction and rape? Whose fault is it that she was taking the garbage out to the trash can? Why must women live in perpetual fear and change their behaviors when they are NOT the ones committing rape?

 

Rape is never the victim’s fault or anyone’s fault but the rapist. Subtle language that insinuates that the victim or someone other than the perpetrator of the crime is to blame is part of the reason we are not angry enough about this issue. When we fully accept that rape is a violent crime and that those who rape should face the full extent of the law (by law here, I mean either jungle justice on the streets or the courts of law).

I remember a time when a man would get beaten up by other men if he dared to beat his wife either in public or in private. Women knew to scream blue murder because someone would come to their rescue. Now it seems that men will form a mob to humiliate and to encourage the rape or beating of a woman in broad daylight. There are numerous stories of women in Harare being stripped naked by mobs of men for wearing a mini skirt. Yesterday I watched a video of a group of about 8 men beating up two girls for stealing a bottle of wine. Earlier this year I watched a video of a Nigerian girl beaten up and stripped naked for stealing a cell phone. What is seen in the videos is the sexual humiliation of stripping the women down to their underwear or totally divesting them of all clothing and kicking their legs apart. These men video tape their atrocities and share them with the world. What happened? When did the streets we walk on become war zones for women? What is the difference in terms of safety between a woman in Harare or Johannesburg and a woman in a remote part of the Congo? Nothing because in both cases these women can be gang raped, with impunity for the perpetrators. In both cases these women are not safe and their womanhood places them at risk for assault.

 

 

We need to be angry and the decent men need to express more outrage at this violation of the feminine. Men need to step up, and be heard speaking unequivocally against the violation of their mothers, sisters, wives, girlfriends, colleagues and children. When good men are silent and remain uninvolved then they are sending a message of endorsement to this sickness. Yes, in your silence you are all complicit and perhaps you can live with the fact that the women most precious to you are at high risk for being violated. If you cannot accept this then you need to be heard and you need to RISE! When enough men Rise and pitch their voices with those of the feminine, this madness will stop. If this does not happen, then policies will not change, the law and penalties will not be enforced and the rot will get worse and deeper. Men need to challenge every circumstance where a woman is harassed or degraded in their presence. They should be affronted by this and they should become intolerant of misogynistic comments among their friends and colleagues. They should shame their fellow men who talk trash about women in the name of “locker room banter”. The words expressed by people often reveal the darkness hidden in their hearts and given an opportunity, many will act on their dark thoughts. When they are shamed for this and made face the ugliness that they harbor, perhaps they will find it that much harder to act out those things.  And if they do go ahead and rape then there should be swift, effective application of the law, such that the perpetrator and potential perpetrators will be shocked out of their sick spiral towards hurting women.

The more we allow rape and violence to go unpunished the more desensitized society becomes and the more normalized it becomes. To remain sensitized we need to have ZERO tolerance towards rape and violence against women. ZERO tolerance means NEVER ever blaming the victim ever.

 

Tribute to Damini

The Muse for Women is a group of poets who write about the social condition of women around the world and seek to conscientize people around issues of Violence against women. The last few months I have been immersed in activities around women's issues and engaged in conversations about how violence against women can no longer continue unchallenged. From the US presidential campaign and the Republican push to reverse reproductive rights, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), to the unintelligent remarks about women and rape to the censure of a female Michigan politician for saying the word vagina in an address to the House, I have followed closely. The situation of women in other parts of the world, from Zimbabwe to India, from Egypt to China is clearly sub standard as far as violence is concerned. The stories of gang rape of women in the Congo and in Syria, where rape is a weapon of war are enough to send one spiralling into depression. However the story that shook many of us and made us heart sick was the story of Damini, the 23 year old Indian medical student who was brutalized on a bus by six men and left for dead. The story can be found here. The Muse for Women decided to put together an anthology around the theme of violence against women as a tribute for 23 year old Damini. I was asked by one of the editors to contribute a poem and I am sharing an excerpt with you.

In two weeks on February 14, the campaign One Billion Rising, a global call to Rise, Strike and Dance as a way to create a heightened awareness to gender based violence will come to its climax. I have been a part of the journey towards this grand finale of global mobilization where different groups the world over will hold events in their communities. more information can be found here.
The request for a poem by Muse for Women was just what I needed to deal with the turmoil that daily, relentless exposure to the horrors of violence against women can stir. So thank you Muse for Women for this outlet for our pain which we exorcised in poetry! Here is an excerpt From Brute on my Body. Acerbic Anthology will be out in the next few days and details where to purchase will follow.







 

A wasteland of war.

Battlefield my body. Weapons of mass violation,

 Diabolical drones pierce the sky of my soul.

They throttle the laughter of my joy,

And darken the portal to my ecstasy.

Thieves pillage my orchard of sweet solace,

And spit shards of agony into the universe.

Constellations crash and burn while

The brute on my body

Lays my soul a wasteland of war.

 

Earth will revolt and regurgitate

 The grimy grizzle of war.

The putrid odor of warlords

On her body, my body, our bodies

Will be washed away in defiant tears

And mutinous sweat;

Her sweat, my sweat, our sweat.

 

She will Rise, Resist and Strike

Down the stalwart bastions built

On our blood and bones

For our own oppression and violation.

We will dance again.

Barbara Mhangami –Ruwende, 2012

 

 



On the Unbearable Unrightness of Whiteness and the Intolerable Blackification of all Things Negative

There has been a robust discussion on the issue of white privilege in the world and in South Africa in the last few days on FaceBook and I am relieved to see that finally people can have these discussions and express their views without the whole exercise degenerating into an e-blood bath. Therefore it was no surprise to wake up on Wednesday morning and find that one of my friends had tagged me to a response she had written to a blogger named Brendon, who had written a “mea culpa”, confessing to his prejudices against black people. You can read the blog here. My friend Gillian Schutte is a white South African who has no problem discussing the devastating role that colonialism and its hideous cousin apartheid wreaked on the continent of Africa and she will never back down from challenging notions of white supremacy. Her rebuttal to Brandon can be read here.

 

However, after reading both Brendon’s blog and Gillian’s public response to it, where she basically tells Brendon that his views are not the views of all white people and that his admittance of prejudice, with absolutely no sign that he was in any way trying to overcome those prejudices was in fact of no use to anyone but himself and others like him, I felt a compulsion to defend myself. Defend myself you wonder? Yes defend myself, my blackness, because this is what many black people will tell you: Whenever a black person does something wrong, commits a crime, drops a piece of paper on the street, rapes, or murders, all black people become those things. All black people carry the burden of the guilt of one person or a small group, because of blanket statements many of us have grown up hearing from the mouths of white people in southern Africa. Many of these whites were raised with racism as the very backdrop of their lives, in which they had a black nanny or “house girl” and a black “gardenboy”. By the way these were usually grown men and women with families of their own, but they were infantilized even by the white children, who came of age totally believing that the purpose of black people was to be of service to them and that is all blacks were created for. These children grew up hearing their parents talk about the dangerous blacks who robbed murdered, raped, littered, stank, were drunks and cared only about fucking, dancing and drinking beer all the while beating their women and living in squalor. Brendon represents the kind of adults those children became and many stayed that way even as adults. Brendon basically believes that he can never be friends with blacks because blacks are not worthy of his friendship by virtue of their “nature”. Brendon, and many whites have concluded that blacks are harbingers of all things evil and bad, and that blacks are substandard subspecies of lesser human form and because of this we, blacks will never reach a standard of intellectual or material accomplishment that would make us worthy of effort by white people.

 

 

Just to make things clear to Brendon and his ilk: The mimicry you see black people perform, the fawning the flattery and the bootlicking which you so accept as due worship, happens because we are survivors. Many blacks realized that it was a matter of survival to comply and bend with the sick wind that your ancestors belched over us. That is why we could be transported across seas and still thrive where we were enslaved, and made to work like the beasts of burden white people saw us to be. Look around the world Brendon and you will see that blacks survived where other indigenous peoples died out in their millions. The USA and Native Americans is a great example, as is Australia and the Aborigines. At our core we have unpacked and deconstructed your bullshit and I am glad to say that my children will fare better in the new world order than yours will.  My children are being raised to see human beings first not color. My children are being raised to be conscious that there are other peoples on this globe and that a sense of entitlement is a dangerous quality to harbor, one that results in stereotyping others and bigotry. There is no room for the kind of prejudice you exhibit. Those days are gone and just because you confess to prejudice does not make you a better human being. You have shown the world your baseness, your arrogance and stupidity, quite frankly.

I grew up in a country where white people lamented the demise of minority white rule and they all predicted the fall of the great Zimbabwe, bread basket of Southern Africa, all thanks to the white farmers of course. Well, that Great Zimbabwe did fall, but rather than look at the reasons why things went the way they did, and rather than blame an inept, corrupt and brutal regime that has meted out all manner of injustices on all the citizens of Zimbabwe, many white people say:”look what the blacks, ALL blacks have done to this country”. I have not head any of them remark at the ingenuity of black zimbabweans at home and abroad, who sustained a dying nation through sheer guts and steely resolve to hunker down and SURVIVE!

In the introduction his personal history of Biafra, Professor Chinua Achebe, great Nigerian writer and scholar writes: “Africa’s post colonial disposition is the result of a people who have lost the habit of ruling themselves. We have also had difficulty running the new systems foisted upon us by ‘our colonial masters’. Because the west has had a long but uneven engagement with the continent, it is imperative that it understand what happened to Africa. It must also play a part in the solution. A meaningful solution will require the goodwill and concerted efforts on the part of all those who share the weight of Africa’s historical burden [There was a Country. A Personal History of Biafra, 2012]’.

In essence what white people on the continent and in southern Africa in particular do, is to absolutely refuse to look at what black people have become, as a direct legacy of the work of their ancestors, who dehumanized, robbed, raped, disenfranchised and fragmented millions of organized  black communities in order to enrich themselves. Therefore when people like Brendon throw out blanket statements about their racist selves and how they have stopped trying to be friends with blacks, it doesn’t occur to them that blacks have a deep seated distrust for white people based on this ugly and relatively young history and that many blacks don’t really care to make friends with them. They are so blinded by their position of power in terms of wealth and influence they truly believe that to befriend black people is to do them a huge honor or favor. It is this mindset that needs to be deconstructed in the minds of young people if there is ever any change to be made towards real and genuine respect for one another. When white children see black children as their peers then things will turn around. However in order to do this they need their parents to lead by example and stop calling blacks kaffirs and baboons at the dinner table.

 

I have lived in several all white communities since leaving Africa and believe me, white people’s shit stinks just as much as black people’s and at 19 years of age the scales fell off my eyes when I saw a German man snort and spit out a bolus of green mucus onto the pavement. I had never thought a white person capable of such a nasty act even in private and here I was the only black person in middle Bavaria in a tiny village where people stared at me out of windows as I walked down the village streets.

 

In 2010, after running the Chicago marathon, I decided to stop and use one of the hotel restrooms in downtown Chicago and to my horror I found overflowing toilets with ugly turds floating on mounds of toilet paper, dubious looking liquids on the restroom floors and guess what, there were a handful of blacks who ran that race which had over 35 thousand runners that year. This was not black people’s mess!

 I use these two examples to illustrate how ignorant and backward it is to live an unreflected life in this global day and age. I also write because while it is great that my white friend Gillian spoke up, it is high time that black people speak out about racism and how it rears its ugly head under the disguise they call "honesty". While Brendon’s confession is hardly a sophisticated one that requires special genius to unpack, there are other more subtle, more insidious ways in which white people try to undermine black people and usurp any collective confidence we might try to gather as we go about our lives. A typical example of this is Donald Trump’s demand that democratically elected United States President Obama produce his long form birth certificate, to prove he was an American citizen. That act, performed publicly was supposed to have the effect of humiliating a black man, in the highest office of this land because then surely that would result in the rest of the blacks cowering in shame also. The white South African comedians and commentators who mock blacks under the guise of humor, by mimicking our accents when we speak English are  not-so subtle but effective ways of “putting us and keeping us in our place”, which is as the “house-girl”, the “garden-boy” and the cook. It is an underhanded way of sending the message to even those who have done well: you are still black and will always be black and all that this term connotes.

Black people have a lot of work to do on ourselves in terms of throwing off the shackles of mental slavery that have us believing that we are inferior to white people. People like Brendon count on us cowering and living down to their low expectations of us. We are better than that and when we know better and should teach our children the truth about who these racists are and who we really are: The original Africans who existed and had thriving civilizations before Brendon’s ancestors came a -creeping. That we are poor is because they are rich and have access to everything of the highest quality and standards. That is a fact and they sit in positions of privilege from which they write their unintelligent bull crap and call it confession! They believe they have superior knowledge through science and technology, all the while failing to accept that the reason the present is the way it is, is  because they kept all other peoples in various states of arrested development. Shame!

There is no shame in blackness Brendon and no, you are in no way superior because of your white skin. I would encourage you to go back to Ireland and visit the ghettoes of Dublin and come and tell me that blacks are inherently dirty, loud, lazy and inept. I hope you live to tell the tale upon your return if they don’t cut your hand off at the wrist to get to your cheap watch. However, there should be a sense of shame in prejudice as blatant and as archaic as yours and there should be shame at the fact that black Africa is in shambles because of the heinous acts of your ancestors. Other white people are trying to create a different legacy for their children than the one that will burden yours: a legacy of hate, oppression and imperial complex against a people that your ancestors came and stole from. They declared they came in friendship, your ancestors. Now we know different, and you want to believe that blacks want your friendship?! Get real!

 

 

 

 

 

Today, Just Walk Away

 

 

You with your swollen head, brutal hands, savage feet and empty heart.

You with your cold fish eyes and brown- toothed malicious grin.

Yes, you looking all bemused with a smirk of mockery across your distorted features. Yes you, if I were you I would use the sweat dampened collar of your uniform of death to wipe that insolence of your face, because this time, today, right now, step any closer waving that truncheon in my face and I will reconfigure that ugly arrangement that is your face for you, for free. With great pleasure.

This is how things will be from now on. This is how you will meet me day after day night after night, year after year until your pea- sized brain realizes that I am a human being capable of inflicting the same pain on you as you have done to me for centuries. So go ahead, bring your cowardly fists along with the dead mush in the space between your ears, that thing you call a brain but which cannot stop you from trying to contain an ocean in a teaspoon. You are really intelligent, which is why you brandish your batons with great skill, an extension of your penis, the ultimate gift to women, or so you have told yourself .and convinced others like you.

But today is today and your penis and your batons are no match for a sea of red hot angry women. Come any closer and we will show you what an angry woman is capable off. You mistook our gentile nature for stupidity and our acquiescence for idiocy, softness in the brain. We’ll get this: We are not your children who you can “punish” for wrongdoing. Try that shit and I will slice off that which feeds that your inflated ego and feed it to the mongrels roaming the streets. Go on, bring that one eyes trouser snake and try to force him into spaces he has not been invited and that will be the last time he shows any life.

 

 

Life!  I gave you life. Do you fully grasp the fact that without woman you would not exist? Dies it occur to you that as you stand here waving you baton at us you are essentially brandishing rage and contempt at your mother? Do you know how many women curse the day they allowed you passage out of their bodies? Do you know some wished they had strangled you on your umbilical cord? Oh don’t look shocked! How many girls have been snuffed out as soon as a vagina is seen between their infant legs? Let me tell you something you don’t know, we revile you because you are the reason we revile ourselves. You are the reason we hate being female and for birthing females, and for this we will fight you to the last. We have nothing to lose and there is nothing more dangerous than a woman with nothing to lose. So make our day, keep coming closer and closer until your rancid breath is the fuel that with ignite the match and we will burn you alive! For I am woman, I am the genetic blue print spelled out by two X chromosomes or eternal and infinite memory. I remember that the reason you strut across this planet, hands in pockets whistling empty tunes, plotting your next assault on me is because I gave you one of my chromosomes. Yes, I donated one to you and you treat me like dispensable piece of shit. Well today I am facing you down. Glare at me and I will glower back at you. Bring that baton closer and I shall wave my cutlass in the air around your throat. I don’t have time for your overbearing manner. Come closer so I can squeeze those precious eggs of yours until you squeal like a stuck pig. Spit in my face so I can draw up all the phlegm and ire I have stored up for this moment. And splatter it between your eyes.

Beast! You behave as though you fell out of the sky but a woman birthed you arrogant self. How dare I speak about your mother? How dare I address you in this manner?  You demand. You are laughable! I will address you in whatever manner pleases me and you will do nothing against this sea of womanhood that will swallow you whole if you so much as blink at me.

 

Walk away and go and reflect on the new world order you just encountered here. Get used to it, accept it, and embrace it, because it is here to stay. If you are thinking of catching me alone and doing me serious damage, think again because this army is everywhere. Try to accost me and they will kill you and good riddance. If you want to talk, come by and bring your own chair. The one in my house is mine.

But for today, just turn around and walk away. There is no point throwing a pebble at a mountain and expecting the mountain to disintegrate. That stone will ricochet and split your head into two. Just walk away. And leave to us mourn our losses in peace.

 

Young Woman of Note- August

Koketso Moeti- South Africa

Koketso caught my attention when I saw her commenting on Facebook on a mutual friend's wall. Her tone and her intelligent responses to development issues made me sit up and wonder who she was and what she did. My instincts told me that she was another unique young woman with a passion for positive social change and her articulation of how she thought this could happen was really impressive. I will let her talk to you herself. Thanks for all you do Koketso and thanks for being part of the re-branding of Our continent: showing the world that we have and are all we need.

 I am an ordinary 25 year old young woman, a servant and a mother to two beautiful children who are my world.

Despite the opulence we see all around us in South Africa, I also see too much needless suffering and growing up I wondered how that is possible. How one person can be worth billions, yet another dying of hunger? How one person can waste so much water, yet so many communities go without water. It was from this and my interest in the human mind that I felt compelled to try and go about changing this.

I found myself very frustrated about the way poverty alleviation is being handled, that a blue-print approach is being taken, which does not take people’s varying contexts into account. It was from this that a dream was born, a dream to create positive change- but differently. I had a dream that instead of the usual charity work one could actually empower people in a way that allowed them to break the cycle of poverty; create sustainable livelihoods which focused not on the accumulation of wealth, but rather on communities able to sustain themselves and families able to satisfy their most basic needs. This led to the founding of Operation ROOIGROND (www.rooigrond.co.za), which is a project that uses education and knowledge to promote access to information; alleviate poverty, eradicate substance abuse and all other social ills that go with poverty.

Young students of the early childhood learning center

Operation Rooigrond goes beyond building a library and facilitating positive change. It is about making a difference, bringing hope where there’s none. It is about lighting up a spark in people’s lives, a spark which they in turn would carry to another person leading to a fire within the community; which is bound to spread out and reach society at large. We also hope to be a vehicle through which we can actually have the voices of the marginalised heard and eventually even influence and alter policy. For too long the poor have gone ignored and here we say, despite people’s circumstances, let them be provided with an opportunity to be active participants in the creation of a better world.

The youth engaged in dance

There is a misconception of my work and it is perceived to be ‘anti-government’ or ‘controversial’, rather than ‘pro-people’ and ‘pro-justice’. As much as it isolates one, I am very fortunate to be doing what I love to do and this gives me more opportunity to immerse myself in it.

Community gathering

Apart from Operation: ROOIGROND, I am also the South African Correspondent of Safe World (Please seehttp://www.asafeworldforwomen.org/about/the-ngo/correspondents/koketso-moeti.html), which allows me to share news affecting women and children on the ground. Too often the plight of rural and marginalized people, as well as their stories of hope and victory, are ignored and this has given me a platform from which to share such stories and raise awareness of the challenges faced.

Temporary shelter to help with community relief after a fire

I also serve as the Provincial Coordinator of the North-West branch of the South African NGO Coalition (SANGOCO North-West). This has provided me with a platform from which to connect and serve in the province as a whole, a challenge I really have come to enjoy and love. It is also the means through which I fund the Operation: ROOIGROND administration costs and also allows me to reach further for the purposes of sharing the experiences of women in South Africa.

Rooigrond Early Childhood Learning Center

I am also an aspiring writer, with the ambition of using words to promote social transformation, my blog can be viewed on http://koketsomoeti.wordpress.comSocial media is another way I try to further the various causes in which I am involved, so I am quite active on a number of them including Twitter (@ORooigrond and @Kmoeti), Facebook (http://facebook.com/kmoetiand http://facebook.com/orooigrond); LinkedIn (http://za.linkedin.com/in/kmoeti1) and Google Plus (kmoeti@gmail.com).

Please find here-under some links which may assist you in discovering more about me and my work:

An article written by me for The Sunday Times about my project, Operation: ROOIGROND- 'The World is in My Hand' (published on the 10th June 2012): http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/2012/06/10/the-world-is-in-my-hand

Safe World for Women profile: http://goo.gl/JL84w

Operation: ROOIGROND website: www.rooigrond.co.za

‘The World Through My Eyes’ blog: http://koketsomoeti.wordpress.com

In the media:

ROOIGROND Response to North-West State of the Province Address:
http://goo.gl/ux3HT

Rooigrond People take on Premier: http://goo.gl/4B3PM

Waiting For the ‘Promised Land’: http://goo.gl/47LgC

Young African Woman of Note-July

Elizabeth Vimbai Mhangami

 

 

It is with great pleasure and a heart bursting with pride that I introduce to you Our July Young African Woman of Note.

Elizabeth happens to be my youngest sister and so writing this piece is at once easy but daunting a task. Elizabeth was born and raised in Zimbabwe. She is someone we in Zimbabwe refer to as a “born free” because she was born after the birth of Republic of Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe was declared an independent state in April of 1980 and Elizabeth Vimbai graced the world with her arrival in November of that year.

Vimbi as we know her did her primary and secondary school education in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and later went to the United States, where she studied political science and women’s studies at Loyola University, Chicago.

After working for a brief period in the United States, Vimbi made a decision to set up a not-for profit organization in Bulawayo in order to assist AIDS orphans. However her idea of assistance was to look at ways in which she could provide assistance without breeding aid dependency, which is a huge problem in Zimbabwe and the African continent. In her own words in an interview in the New York Times, 2011: “You start having conversations with yourself about aid and dependency what is the most effective way of helping that would do the least amount of harm?”

Catha, a child head

Vimbai works with youth as opposed to young orphans. These you are heads of households and this basically means that after the death of both parents to HIV/AIDS, these young people have the sole responsibility of taking care of their younger siblings. They are responsible for their food, clothing and school attendance. This means that they have had to drop out of school in order to generate income for their siblings to survive and also they are responsible for cooking cleaning and all the activities that come with parenting. Many of the youth were about 9-12 when they were left as child heads of households but they were in their teens when Vimbai started working with them.

A child head and her family

Vimbai is the founder and executive director of Vanavevhu, a Shona word meaning “children of the soil.” Through Vanavevhu the youth and their siblings are able to get food, shelter, basic necessities and healthcare and this has freed the youth to attend the program which Vanavevhu offers them. The program teaches entrepreneurial skills and this is paired with bee keeping, candle making and market gardening. These ventures are generating profit for the youth and a sense of financial security that they have never had.

Clearing the garden

Vanavevhu started out with ten families, supporting 32 children in total in 2010. To date another twenty families have been added bringing together over 90 children and seniors benefiting from Vanavevhu support.

In the classroom

With their teacher Vimbai

What Vimbai and her organization have given the orphaned youth in Bulawayo, beyond the obvious material and physical benefits, is to demonstrate to them that someone cares. Before Vanavevhu, many of these child heads of households were very vulnerable to exploitation in the communities they lived in. The girls were particularly vulnerable to predatory males. However having Vimbai and her team as their advocates has given them a sense of stability and security. Many of them were not moved from their communities in order to keep the siblings enrolled in school and in familiar surroundings.

Arrival of Vanavevhu chickens

Vimbai is fierce about protecting her youth and has an amazing understanding of the issues that they face. She brings to her program a very youthful vibe and they can relate to her easily because in so many ways she is one of them. Her keen perception of what typical teenagers need to go through, gives her youth space to be themselves, make mistakes and to move on. She deals with resilient young people, who in so many ways have had to grow up very quickly in order to fill the role of parents for their siblings. Many of them were vendors, selling candy cookies and matches in order to make a living. Read their amazing stories and be absolutely inspired here.

Vanavevhu dance!

When I ask Vimbai what challenges she faces with her work she talks about the fact that the youth are the forgotten ones in most of the development discourse. Her age group is not a targeted “vulnerable” population by large donor agencies and so very often she cannot apply for big grant funding for her program. She therefore works tirelessly to raise fund herself by holding speaking engagements back to back when she comes to the United States for board meetings. In a way this is to her advantage because she is not bound by donor agency rules and regulations, which are not always compatible with what she is doing on the ground. She therefore relies on the support of individuals or organizations that are at liberty to fund any program they wish to.

Vanavevhu Candles

Another challenge which she so articulately describes here is the vulnerability of young women to men who prey on them because they are wealthy. She describes the allure of the promise of clothes, a cell phone, and money and how a young 15 year old may be hard pressed to resist this and abandon the program, which offers long term benefits as opposed to short term gratification. Vimbai works hard to assist and counsel the young women into making good choices in order to spare them exchanging sex for money, so that they can avoid diseases and having to depend on a man who may at any point abandon them. As a feminist this is a very important part of her work, and she hopes to impart some of her knowledge to the young women in her program. As a feminist she works with the young men also, so that they understand the inexcusability of physical violence towards women and she insists on mutual respect and equitable allocation of chores and duties in a gender-neutral fashion.

Vanavevhu Girls

I have often questioned Vimbai on how it is that she can do what she does in such a challenging environment where there are incessant power outages, a tough political climate, isolation from family (we are all in the US and she is in Zimbabwe), lack of a vibrant cosmopolitan social life such as the one she had in Chicago, her response is simple: ‘these young people are the future of Zimbabwe. Whether we like it or not, those who can leave are leaving and probably not coming back. Those with well to do parents are all gone and what is left is these AIDS orphans who no one even thinks about. Not government or even NGOs. If we truly are serious about the future of Zimbabwe then these are the young people who will be running the country and if we do not try to at least give them basic critical thinking skills business skills and a sense of self worth, then Zimbabwe will be in even deeper trouble than it is now.’

Duncan and Brian preparing the bee smoker

The Bulawayo region in Zimbabwe is largely underserved and does not have as many opportunities for young people as does the capital city, Harare. Bulawayo is also the center of the Gukurahundi massacres of the 1980’s where tens of thousands of Ndebele people were slaughtered by government forces, leaving some terrible scars and a lot of anger and resentment. Giving the youth of this town hope is one way in which Vimbai does her part to ensure that the future of this region is not so bleak.

Musa, a child head

Vimbai’s take on development work is this: “If every African /Zimbabwean in the Diaspora, would take up just one social justice issue and DO something about it, then we would see positive social change.” She is of the firm belief that while we need assistance, Africans have to take responsibility for their continent and be at the forefront of articulating our issues, prescribing solutions, and then be the leaders who implement the action plans. This ensures that there is a real positive outcome and that it is permanent and self perpetuating. She often shakes her head as she comments on how for fifty years Africa has been the recipient of donor funding but the continent seems worse off now than it was fifty years ago. “We have allowed people to commercialize our problems and to commoditize our woes and the result is that these problems will never be allowed to disappear because then someone’s paycheck will have to vanish. Therefore the problems persist because the solutions offered are designed to fail. This is what the development industry is predicated upon”

 Mthulisi, a child head

                                                                                                   Sipha, a child head

Vimbai exemplifies the term “walking the walk”. She is committed to Zimbabwe in a way that many speak of but very few have demonstrated in a tangible way. Despite the many bureaucratic obstacles and intimidation she has stood her ground and with sheer determination and courage established what has to be one of the most innovative organizations that I have ever seen. I am proud that she is my sister, but more importantly I am proud of the high standards she has set for her youth and her staff at Vanavevhu. Her insistence that things be executed properly and with due contentiousness has resulted in a group of youth and staff who are proud of themselves and what they have achieved thus far and instilled a deep sense of ownership of the program and the enterprise that ensures that it can only succeed. She does this by having high expectations of herself and this is the role model she is to the youth and all those who work with them. Her passion is infectious as is her humor and her mischief and her amazing belly-laugh! Thank you Vimbai for all you do and for the amazing human being that you are.

You are a true visionary as exemplified by this apt picture of you! Beautiful!

Vimbai can be reached on facebook as Lizzabetty Mhangami and on the Vanavevhu websiteVanavevhu