Second, Dlakavu, Shikwambane, Mavuso and Chirwa chose a key moment in the performance of democracy to remind us of what else this year marks. It was the South African public they were in conversation with. They chose to neither interrupt nor threaten President Zuma. Indeed, he was unaware of what was unfolding until the commotion alerted him. He was not the addressee. What they disrupted was the hypocrisy at the heart of the rainbow nation.
Importantly, as their action suggests, the hypocrisy was that of the electorate and voting public. Another round of free and fair elections are hailed as cause for celebrating the successes of the new dispensation. They are part of the pomp and ceremony of freedom and a country that works democratically. However, for these women the farce of democracy relies on the unacknowledged or trivialised scourge of gender-based violence. Shikwambane’s “I am 1 in 3” is a stark reminder of the ever-presence of sexual assault, written in red like the blood the silenced/airbrushed victims and survivors bleed. They were reminding those in that hall as well as millions more watching in live broadcasts of the underbelly of this celebration. Nationalism is violent. There may be successful elections but women are still unfree and when Khwezi – Fezekile Kuzwayo, who also went by Fezeka – stood up, she was battered and exiled. Having pushed her out of view – and most South Africans were unaware that she had long returned – what Wambui Mwangi has elsewhere called “misogynist male interpreters and patriarchal narratives” tidied her out. These women, unlike many of their peers who sat with their political parties and celebrated the violence of narrative and the successes of an election, refused to be complicit with the erasure of women’s daily realities in a democratic South Africa. “10 yrs later”, Mavuso’s sign reminded us, the patriarchal nationalists had returned to business as usual. Like the 1in9 banners, they insisted that there was no cause for celebration.
And while their EFF membership made them prime targets for accusations of hypocrisy given Malema’s own 2006 rape apologist comments against Khwezi, seeing these women as only EFF pawns requires that we not take them seriously, that we airbrush everything in their lives except that which we can use against them. Malema was not part of their protest. They made this decision. To re-insert him as a way to dismiss them is violence. It requires that we embrace the very hypocrisy they challenge. Feminists located in other political parties like the Democratic Alliance, the African National Congress or the United Democratic Movement do not have to apologise as long as they toe the party line and can accept as supreme law the discipline of the organisational hierarchy.
Chirwa’s sign read “Khanga”, gesturing ambiguously. On the one hand, a khanga is an item of clothing African women wear daily and unspectacularly in many parts of the continent, that has sociality, aesthetic cultures and a politics much written about in East Africa. This item was used to belittle Khwezi/Fezeka as undressed during the court case. That demands repetition. Fezeka dressed herself like many East and Southern African women do and had this used against her. On the other, “I am Khanga” was the poem Kuzwayo wrote, published in 2008. In it, she writes:
I wrap myself around the curvaceous bodies of women all over Africa
I am the perfect nightdress on those hot African nights
The ideal attire for household chores
I secure babies happily on their mother’s backs
Am the perfect gift for new bride and new mother alike
Armed with proverbs, I am vehicle for communication between women
I exist for the comfort and convenience of a woman
But no no no make no mistake …
I am not here to please a man
And I certainly am not a seductress
Please don’t use me as an excuse to rape
Don’t hide behind me when you choose to abuse
You see
That’s what he said, my Malume
The man who called himself daddy’s best friend
Shared a cell with him on Island for ten whole years
He said I wanted it
That my khanga said it
That with it I lured him to my bed
That with it I want you is what it said
But what about the NO I uttered with my mouth
Not once but twice
And the please no I said with my body
What about the tear that ran down my face as I lay stiff with shock
In what sick world is that sex
In what sick world is that consent
In the same world where the rapist becomes the victim
The same world where I become the bitch that must burn
The same world where I am forced into exile because I spoke out?
This is NOT my world
I reject that world
My world is a world where fathers protect and don’t rape
My world is a world where a woman can speak out
Without fear for her safety
My world is a world where no one, but no one is above the law
My world is a world where sex is pleasurable not painful
“Khanga” on a placard implored the witnessing public to remember that women’s bodies belong to themselves in a just world. The poem – Fezeka’s own words – was in that room that night, hauntingly reminding us that “This is NOT my world/I reject that world”. The world rejected in the poem is a patriarchally violent one in which men have legitimacy and nothing women do for themselves and in their own name matters. Ironically, in the responses by the leading women of the governing party, centring two patriarchal men – Zuma and Malema – is re-creating that world, even as the four women in front of them tried to unmake it, reminding us of the urgency of crafting the kind of world that can belong to women.
Many of us located in religious, educational, corporate or political institutions do not merely function as pawns of the patriarchal men in leadership and management. Their association does not inform every living breathing experience of women. This too is a reminder contained in the poem, and echoed in the #RememberKhwezi protest. Therefore, understanding these women as pawns requires the deliberate phallic re-insertion of men who are not in the frame of reference and minimising what the women’s choices and bodies communicate. It also undermines the complicated layered lives that human beings live.
The #RememberKhwezi protesters are EFF members. They are also much more that offers no contradiction to their chosen protest action in August 2016. Two of the protesters were at the Results Operations Centre with press passes. One of them publishes regular opinion pieces in print media and has an occasional column for a major weekly newspaper. Reading her columns and public essays leaves no doubt about her ongoing commitment to Black women’s activist traditions, narratives and uplift. Her community work in education and firing up the imagination of children in marginal communities predates the existence of the EFF. Returning constantly to questioning power in ways that are innovative and incisive, Dlakavu’s decision to form part of #RememberKhwezi makes perfect sense.
A second hosts her own radio show on a university campus, and has previously co-hosted a women’s talk show on national television with three women, two of whom are prominent feminist media powerhouses. Again, here is a woman whose radio show constantly probes the intersections of legal institutions and transforming societal power. Shikwambane’s legal degree intersects with her media experience to probe especially the ways in which women’s lives can matter differently.
One of the #RememberKhwezi protesters was a founder member of #TransformWits; she has worked closely with different parts of the student movement, including #RhodesMustFall and the #RUReferenceList.
Mavuso’s