Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Chapter 1 Introduction: Searching for South Africa
- Chapter 2 Nothing Must Ever be Bigger than our Dreams
- Chapter 3 A Report and Comment on Worker Organising at the University of Cape Town
- Chapter 4 Race and Resistance in Post-Apartheid South Africa
- Chapter 5 ‘There is No Middle Ground!’
- Chapter 6 Masiphumelele: Making the Ordinary Endure on the Outskirts of Cape Town
- Chapter 7 Women's struggle during this democratic government
- Chapter 8 Daalah Cape Flets: Hip-hop, Resistance and Hope
- Chapter 9 Viva Revolution!
- Chapter 10 ‘Looking Back Moving Forward: Legacies of Struggle and the Challenges Facing the New Social Movements’
- Chapter 11 Fairytale violence or Sondheim on solidarity, from Karnataka to Kennedy Road
- Index
Chapter 7 - Women's struggle during this democratic government
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 February 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Chapter 1 Introduction: Searching for South Africa
- Chapter 2 Nothing Must Ever be Bigger than our Dreams
- Chapter 3 A Report and Comment on Worker Organising at the University of Cape Town
- Chapter 4 Race and Resistance in Post-Apartheid South Africa
- Chapter 5 ‘There is No Middle Ground!’
- Chapter 6 Masiphumelele: Making the Ordinary Endure on the Outskirts of Cape Town
- Chapter 7 Women's struggle during this democratic government
- Chapter 8 Daalah Cape Flets: Hip-hop, Resistance and Hope
- Chapter 9 Viva Revolution!
- Chapter 10 ‘Looking Back Moving Forward: Legacies of Struggle and the Challenges Facing the New Social Movements’
- Chapter 11 Fairytale violence or Sondheim on solidarity, from Karnataka to Kennedy Road
- Index
Summary
Nomvuyo was a member of the women's activist forum; initially a group of five women who would meet once a month in the Labour Research Services Library at Community House in Salt River, Cape Town, to more deeply understand the machinations of capitalist patriarchy, to talk about their experiences as women activists within male-dominated activist spaces, to read and write and to support each other as women. After meeting for a number of months without writing, the group decided that every member had to come to the next meeting with something written down even if it was just one line: This is what Nomvuyo wrote and read at that next meeting. She prefaced her reading by saying, she sat in her shack with a blank piece of paper and a pen determined to write. She made a deal with herself that she would not get up until she had written something down. As she read to it us, her voice trembled and many were moved to tears at her experience of herself both reading and having written.
Women are the majority in this country and the most affected people as well. Most of the time they are responsible and affected by most of the sufferings. As women we started fighting from the apartheid time, fighting the struggle against the apartheid government up to this democratic government. Women play a major role in the struggle. Women play a major role in the struggle still. We have the social movements, we are still fighting. The women's activist forum is also a social movement. It has to follow women's actions so as to voice out our pain and our anger to government.
As women we have responsibilities. We have to stand up and fight and struggle. Fight for our rights, the abuse of power by government, terrible health conditions like HIV/Aids. As women we don't have to be dominated by men in all issues. We also fight. The men make things go the way they suit themselves ignoring women or leaving women behind. As responsible women, we fighting evictions with violent arrest by the unit group leaders. We fighting water cut-offs done by the Sheriffs and electricity cut-offs. We fighting high crime rates, death, high unemployment rate, poverty, privatisation of state business companies. Where people lose their jobs by being retrenched by their employers, promising work under contracts with no benefits.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Searching For South AfricaThe New Calculus of Dignity, pp. 120 - 121Publisher: University of South AfricaPrint publication year: 2011