The Sunday Independent

Unsung heroines come alive in new book

LESEGO MAKGATHO lesego.makgatho@inl.co.za

IF you’ve followed Gugulethu Mhlungu’s work, you’ll know she has contributed to the South African media landscape for nearly a decade.

Popularly known as Gugs, she was the deputy editor of Bona Magazine and before then a host of a weekday morning news programme and former talk radio presenter.

Her new book, You Have Struck a Rock: Women Fighting for Their Power in South Africa, has been released.

In it, Mhlungu looks to answer the question why black women are the most impoverished and vulnerable South Africans to this day, and what can be learned by exploring the lives of women – in the past and the present.

Drawing on the experiences of women ranging from political activists to domestic workers, sex workers and students, commentator and writer Mhlungu examines how history has shaped the conditions women face today.

She also considers the impact of pass laws, land dispossession, racial discrimination and gender-based violence. She concludes that there is still plenty of work to be done in realising the South Africa envisioned by the Constitution.

So why are black women the most impoverished and vulnerable South Africans to this day?’

Mhlungu had my attention in the first chapter when she correctly stated that even in the liberation struggle, history focuses on the names of male heroes; women’s names are not documented to the same extent.

Who knows the roles that the following women played in the struggle: Lilian Ngoyi, Rahima Moosa, Dora Tamana, Florence Mkhize,; Motlalepula Kgware?

In eight detailed chapters, the book expands the narrative of gender issues by celebrating the ways women have worked tirelessly for equality.

In the second chapter, titled “The Federation of South African Women and a history of women’s activism”, and sub-headed “Prioritising and Centring Women”, she borrows from the Women’s Charter.

“The federation, although it pledged its support to all efforts to end apartheid, was very deliberate in highlighting the particular challenges that women faced. The preamble to the charter stated: We, the women of South Africa, wives and mothers, working women and housewives, African, Indians, European and coloured, hereby declare our aim of striving for the removal of all laws, regulations, conventions and customs that discriminate against us as women, and that deprive us in any way of our inherent right to the advantages, responsibilities and opportunities that society offers to any one section of the population,” she wrote.

According to her, this mattered, especially for black women, who, according to racist and sexist ordering of the time, were relegated to the lowest rung of society. Pass laws had applied to black men since 1952, but from September 1955, they were extended to include black women – something that would have a devastating impact on those wanting to live and work in the cities.

Among many other things, Mhlungu also looks at women and land, and why women are in court, fighting for access to land and housing. The book is also dedicated in part to the late Gogo Sizani Ngubane, founder of the Rural Women’s Movement, whose work she reflects on.

While it can be read in one sitting, it is a book that will have you often shocked; sometimes ashamed and regularly angry at the political and social positionality of black women in this country.

If you really wish to understand the answer to the question posed at the onset, read the book. The reader will identify with most of what is said, and be propelled to look into our history a little more deeply.

You Have Struck A Rock: Women Fighting for Their Power in South Africa is published by Kwela Books and is available at all major bookstores countrywide.

METRO

en-za

2021-06-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-06-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://thesundayindependent.pressreader.com/article/281612423346058

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