Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you! -----Original Message----- From: Mayihlome News <[email protected]> Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 10:45:09 To: <[email protected]> Subject: [New post] WOMEN CAN LIFT UP HALF THE SKY!
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Mayihlome posted: "Stirring the pot on gender inequalities and outdated
attitudes observed in the post-Sharpeville 1960 era, Lauretta Ngcobo's eulogy
at the late Joe Mkhwanazi's funeral in January this year highlighted the role
of women, their emancipation through the cruci"
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WOMEN CAN LIFT UP HALF THE SKY!
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/women-can-lift-up-half-the-sky/>
by Mayihlome <http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/author/payco/>
<http://mayihlome.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/lauretta-ngcobo.jpg>
Lauretta Ngcobo
Stirring the pot on gender inequalities and outdated attitudes observed in the
post-Sharpeville 1960 era, Lauretta Ngcobo's eulogy at the late Joe Mkhwanazi's
funeral in January this year highlighted the role of women, their emancipation
through the crucible of struggle and their potential to make positive
contributions in the leadership of the African revolution. She said to complete
the story, to connect the dots, the voice of the African woman needed to be
heard.
She probably ruffled feathers, but she was correct. In the first stage of the
Positive Action campaign, the PAC leadership asked women and children to stay
at home as men left behind their passbooks and marched on police stations to be
arrested for violating the apartheid and settler colonial laws. In the
unfolding programme of mass action, there would be a role for women and
children and for every sector of society - but these roles were not stated
outright at the time. Some among us in the Pan Africanist school of thought
assume this mishap to have been an endorsement of male chauvinism. Far from it,
African women have inspired and pushed the struggle to greater heights. We are
four square behind non-sexism.
African women are still placed at the bottom of the pile, assumed to be very
inferior intellectually, treated as beasts of burden and fair game to be abused
in unimaginable ways by reactionary traditionalists and damaged men. This
syndrome has inverted itself such that women have internalised oppressive
conditions and have taken to running households, raising children and looking
after their men as their primary station in life. Modern African women are vain
in their exaggerated desire to be pleasing and lookable, and they are ignorant
of the workings of the beauty industry when they want to make themselves up in
the image of white women.
Women, as the saying goes, can lift up half the sky. When they consciously
participate in the mainstream of society, they grow to become the avatar of
socialist democracy. Their freedom and expansion into greater social and
economic roles holds immense potential to uplift communities, and build a
formidable nation.
African womanhood is treated as a cornerstone of the liberation of the African
nation. The authors of the Africanist manifesto make this point very clear. The
Osagyefo, Kwame Nkrumah, said in order to ascertain the status of development
of a nation one must assess the development/progress of women in that nation.
Mangaliso Sobukwe refused to join the fray that treated wives in particular and
women generally in contemptuous terms such as the 'petticoat government', and
he is on record as having advised Steve Biko and his colleagues to refrain from
taking liberties with women.
Talking of Lauretta Ngcobo, she is herself a formidable intellectual and a
versatile author of works of fiction with novels and children's stories like
Cross of Gold (1981), And They Didn't Die (1990) and a collection of interviews
with South African women in exile, entitled Prodigal Daughters (2012). She went
to Inanda Seminary - the girl's high school - and Fort Hare University where
she increasingly became a political activist and went on to form PAC
underground cells in the rural areas of Kwa Zulu Natal before going into exile
in 1962.
In her fiction, Miriam Tlali, author of Muriel at Metropolitan (1975) and
Amandla (1981), has used her sister's experience to depict the challenges of
love and commitment and young people responding to the national call up to the
serve the African people. Her sister was married to Peter Molotsi at a crucial
time of the struggle, when Molotsi was personally assigned international duty
to go abroad and mobilise support for the PAC ahead of the Positive Action
campaign.
There are many other feminist patriots whose roles are less known but have
equally made outstanding contributions in the national liberation struggle.
Christine Qunta's Women in Southern Africa (1986) is an Africanist version of
women heroes from Manthatise of Batlokwa to Nzinga of Angola, in which she also
profiles the role of Nomvo Booi in the Poqo Insurrection. There are many others
like Maphiri Masekela and Boniswa Ngcukana, of a younger generation, whose
tales are yet to be recorded and appreciated.
We should take a leaf from Joyce Nhongo (Mujuru), a battle-hardened guerrilla
with ZANLA forces, who was in action on the ground, highly pregnant, fighting
alongside her comrades, survived and lived to tell the tale. She is currently
the deputy president of Zimbabwe. The popular media turns such heroes of the
African liberation struggle into villains and power mongers, making monsters
out of them. That Joyce Mujuru appears as a reticent and media-shy political
leader is as a result of a bias against Robert Mugabe's comrades and prejudice
against African women heroes.
As we should all know by now, it is a milestone by itself if the tale of making
history is told by the history makers themselves. It will be far much better if
the story of women's emancipation is told by African women themselves. In
today's terms, where are they?
By Jaki Seroke
Mayihlome
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/author/payco/> | August 12, 2013 at 12:44 pm |
Tags: African <http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=african> , Africanist
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=africanist> , Angola
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=angola> , Batlokwa
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=batlokwa> , Boniswa Ngcukana
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=boniswa-ngcukana> , Christine Qunta
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=christine-qunta> , Fort Hare University
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=fort-hare-university> , Inanda Seminary
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=inanda-seminary> , Jaki Seroke
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=jaki-seroke> , Joyce Mujuru
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=joyce-mujuru> , Kwa Zulu Natal
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=kwa-zulu-natal> , Lauretta Ngcobo
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=lauretta-ngcobo> , Mangaliso Sobukwe
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=mangaliso-sobukwe> , Manthatise
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=manthatise> , Maphiri Masekela
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=maphiri-masekela> , Miriam Tlali
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=miriam-tlali> , Nomvo Booi
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=nomvo-booi> , Nzinga
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=nzinga> , Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=osagyefo-kwame-nkrumah> , PAC
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=pac> , Pan Africanist
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=pan-africanist> , Peter Molotsi
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=peter-molotsi> , Robert Mugabe
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=robert-mugabe> , Sharpeville
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=sharpeville> , South African
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=south-african> , Steve Biko
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?tag=steve-biko> | Categories: Feature Articles
<http://mayihlome.wordpress.com/?cat=81030> | URL: http://wp.me/pwCDu-I3
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