Upon celebrating Mandela day on 18 July, I was yet again encouraged and thrilled to see the whole country united in charitable generosity and kindness. Obviously as an NGO we are overrun by requests for people wanting to join us in doing something. Of course we love showing guests around, for me that is one of the favourite perks of my job. I enjoy taking guests with me to the hospital, showing them around the maternity ward and allowing them to meet the new moms, give them a Bosom Buddies bag and they might even get the opportunity to dress or cuddle a newborn. It is, as with most things, a double-edged sword, though. The mothers having just given birth are in the euphoric, high-adrenalin and endorphin hormonal stage and need quiet time to bond with their babies and initiate breastfeeding. They don’t feel pretty, they are (often) in pain, perhaps even overwhelmed. I know that most of them are thrilled to have a guest, someone who congratulates them with the birth of their baby, but I feel loathe to have them pose for pictures, for them to feel in any way patronized or being ogled at by outsiders. I am therefore always aware that we need to be sensitive and look for what we have in common, rather than what makes us different, divides us.
Another event that is upon us is Women’s day, celebrated on 9 August. Always at this time, I contemplate what it means to be a woman in SA today. I wonder why we don’t have more strong African female leaders.
Girls and young women aren't encouraged to follow politics as a career. Traditional roles will take a long time to break down. In SA, too many young women fall pregnant out of wedlock. What happens mostly is that they give up school or their studies and fall in the cycle of poverty-stricken, undereducated mothers. Daughters are stuck in this cycle and follow by example. We have many strong women in our government and modern political parties with female leaders, but whether they will get the traditional African male vote remains to be seen. I doubt it, the average African woman is not even 'allowed' to wear jeans or trousers, and I doubt they will get the respect and dignity they deserve very soon.
On 9 August 1956, 20 000 women converged on the Union Buildings in opposition to the Group Areas Act and the pass laws that was extended to women. It was during that march that the protest song Wathint’ abafazi wathint’imbokodo (You Strike a Woman/You Strike a Rock) was first popularised. While we enjoy paper rights and can, if we have the means, access the law to force equality, on this August 9, 2013, we should not celebrate. If the women we meet on a daily basis are anything to go by, we as women in SA are mostly afraid and disempowered.
