Brené Brown's call for courage could help South African women and men conquer the GBV scourge

Dear DM168 reader,

When I was in Sub A at St Augustine’s Primary School opposite the Greyville racecourse in Durban (a Department of Coloured Affairs government school run by Catholic nuns), I would often dream of being a boy.

Boys in our school wore a white shirt, a navy blue tie and shorts.  We girls had to wear a white shirt, a navy-blue pleated skirt and navy-blue panties. The boys’ underpants were unseen, so I imagine they ranged from Batman undies to all the colours of the rainbow if they wished.

I watched with absolute envy how freely the boys ran around while we  had to hold our skirts down and behave like little ladies.  A feat at which I failed. Hopelessly. I was just not born to be a lady.

That little girl’s desire to gender-swap because of the denial of freedom of movement soon dissipated when I realised that I quite liked the shape and form of the body I was born with and was growing into. I could run around in shorts and T-shirts as much as I wanted to at home and during holidays.  And I found an exquisite sense of freedom in reading, writing, drawing, painting and listening to rebel music in a downstairs bedroom. My father sacrificed his study to make the room for me.

Adolescent Freedom

My sister recently reminded me of how she and my brother decided to lure me from my bedroom cave after I carved poetry on to one wall.  And painted a tropical island scene with flowing green palm fronds on which I stuck sanitary pads dripping with red paint on another. What can I say. It was my 16-year-old statement about how my idyllic freedom was being curtailed by debilitating menstrual cramps and my monthly uterine blood-letting.

I’m glad my siblings drew me out of my creative cave ­– because they introduced me to the world of anti-apartheid politics. Where I was exposed to many women and men of courage, people who shared my ideas of freedom. Not just from the sexist notions that a women’s place was to be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, but also from the brutal racist strictures of apartheid.

Finding inspiring role models

Pregs Govender at The Gathering Twenty Twenty Four Election Edition at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on 14 March 2024. (Photo: Shelley Christians)

Through the UDF, the Natal Organisation of Women (NOW), and our involvement in the anti-tricameral parliament campaigns, I was inspired by amazing women such as Pregs Govender, Sandy Africa,  former deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, our current speaker of Parliament Thoko Didiza and lawyer Victoria Mxenge, who was shot and axed to death at her home in Umlazi on 1 August 1985.

Prof. Sandy Africa, political sciences scholar, currently serving as Deputy Dean: Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria. (Photo: Alet Pretorius)

Thoko Didiza takes her seat for the first time as the newly elected Speaker of Parliament. at the 7th parliament first sitting of the National Assembly at the CTICC. 14th June 2024. (Photo : Shelley Christians)

It was through NOW that I learnt of the 20,000 courageous women, some carrying babies on their backs, who marched to the Union Buildings on 9 August 1956 to hand over a petition to President JG Strijdom protesting against the National Party’s dompas (pass book), control over the free movement of black people. Strijdom was not there and ignored the petition. But, nearly 70 years later, on Women’s Day and every day I drive on Lilian Ngoyi, Sophie de Bruyn, Rahima Moosa and Helen Joseph streets in Pretoria, I am reminded of the sweet victory of the women who led that march in 1956.

A country of courageous heroes and sheroes

We are a country born of courageous people, men and women, who made great sacrifices for a future they dreamt of in which we, their descendants, could be truly free to live our lives to their fullest potential.

But we are not free. Women make up 51.5% of the population but the only woman leader of a political party in Parliament is The Good Party's Patricia de Lille. With one seat. Have we moved backward from those days when we planned protests in the NOW office? And from 1956, when women who represented the diversity of our country said no to tyranny?

Today, we are plagued by rape culture, domestic violence against women and children and a frightening rate of femicide. We all, women and men, need the courage to stop this scourge. The thing is, courage is not just about heroes and sheroes and putting our bodies on the line to make a political stand.

Why we all need to be courageous

Courage is about every one of us saying no when we mean no and yes when we mean yes. It’s about not following the herd and being what others expect us to be. It’s not about getting angry, frustrated and violent when we or those close to us cannot live up to the expectations that we think we should fulfil.

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As Ted Talk star researcher and social worker Brené Brown reminds us, the word courage had a very different definition in its earliest form from the one it does today. She says courage originally meant “to speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart”.

For Brown: “Heroics is important and we certainly need heroes, but I think we've lost touch with the idea that speaking honestly and openly about who we are, about what we're feeling, and about our experiences (good and bad) is the definition of courage.”

Women’s Day and Month are a reminder of the value and worth of us 51.5% of the population, but  I’d like to dedicate this month to 100% of the population. All of us. Let us  us stop chasing the next big or better thing and find the courage to be who we truly are. Worthy recipients of the gift our marching ancestors bequeathed us. Freedom.

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Get your copy of DM 168 at any retail outlet from Saturday or if you are an insider you can read the e-edition on Sunday mornings. This week's lead story in DM168 by Rebecca Davis and Nonkululeko Njilo looks at the progress of anti-racism efforts in our public schools and the difference in the way the Western Cape and Gauteng education departments have proactively dealt with this.

Yours in defence of truth,

Heather

 

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.