By: Gcobani Qambela, South Africa, SSH Correspondent
**Trigger Warning**
A few days ago, I was shocked when I woke up to a tweet from a colleague who works in youth activist circles with me. In the tweet he said: “Activism without facts is like winking at a girl in the dark. No one knows you’re doing it #Factivism”. I was shocked that he would tweet this because he is a man working in youth activist circles that seek to especially advance women and especially young girls from the harmful ravages of patriarchy in Africa.
I was thus surprised that someone working in these spaces that promote not only gender parity in Africa, but also seeks to create an open African society where young women do not have to contend with harassment from men winking at them whether in the dark or public sphere without express permission to do so.
A few days after, I would encounter the same misogynistic type of tweet being retweeted into my timeline by someone who is a member of the new controversial political party, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in South Africa. The young man who was retweeted, Khaya Caluza, maintains close links to the African National Congress (ANC), the governing political party in South Africa. In the tweet Caluza, using violently patriarchal languages, relegates women back to being alive only to look after and please men sexually.
These might appear to be isolated incidents, but misogyny and harassment of women (and sometimes LGBTIQ people) in heteronormative activist and political circles in South Africa, and Africa more broadly is a serious problem. The tweets and retweets by these young activist young men reminded me that even in activists’ and political movements, where women are supposed to be united with men for a common purpose, women also often have to contend with the extra-burden of not only doing activist and political work, but also combating patriarchal, sexual and misogynist attitudes and harassment from some of their fellow men. These attitudes carried by these men that a woman’s place is in the kitchen doing the dishes, or that winking at women is cool, especially when it is seen by others, is worrying because it means these attitudes also infiltrate into the gender dynamics of the work that must be done.
In The Guardian’s “Top 10 sexist moments in politics” is included the case of South Africa’s Lindiwe Mazibuko who constantly receives sexist comments in the course of her political work. Earlier in the year for instance she was criticized at a budget debate by two ANC MP’s for her dress sense. Writing for the Mail and Guardian, Nomalanga Mkhize, Mathe Maema, Babalwa Magoqwana and Siphokazi Magadla note that while Lindiwe is famous because of her political position in (South Africa’s main opposition party) the Democratic Alliance, they note that “Mazibuko’s case is only the latest in a number of public incidents where women are dismissed on the basis of body, age and dress – that age old language of reminding women that even when we [as women] have our right to leadership, we are not truly to be taken seriously in the public sphere.”
The tweets by these young men remind me that while we must tackle the harassment that women experience in public and in the streets, we also need to devote attention to the harassment women activists and politicians are subjected to.
Political and activist spaces are supposed to be spaces where all of us in our different genders and sexualities are supposed to come together, be free and united in common purpose of carving a positive change in society. However, because of harmful heteropatriarchy in South Africa, many women find themselves fighting what South African researcher and gender activist, Rethabile Mashale, calls a “dual war” for women.
She tells me “the dual war is unrelenting, and what is further troubling is the extent to which not only men, but also women nowadays in South Africa have become complicit in perpetuating deep misogyny against women like Mazibuko and not recognising the interconnectedness of our struggles as women. It’s not only sad, but deeply worrying.” I couldn’t agree with Mashale more. I hope that as all men (and women) in the activist and political movements especially, that we will start examining and correcting the ways in which our internalised (patriarchal) attitudes and words are harmful against many of our fellow men, women and LGBTIQ family in the anti-patriarchy and anti-street harassment movement.
Gcobani is completing his Masters in Medical Anthropology through Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. His research centres around issues of risk, responsibility and vulnerability amongst Xhosa men (and women) in a rural town in South Africa living in the context of HIV/AIDS. Follow him on Twitter, @GcobaniQambela.
