Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-p2v8j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-10T02:17:16.345Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 7 - Women's struggle during this democratic government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2020

Shereen Essof
Affiliation:
University of South Africa
Daniel Moshenberg
Affiliation:
University of South Africa
Get access

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 Africa
The New Calculus of Dignity
, pp. 120 - 121
Publisher: University of South Africa
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×