by Camalita Naicker
Abstract
Events in the last decade of contemporary South African history have ruptured the normalised regime of politics on the mines and in the universities. These events began with the Marikana strikes in 2012 and South Africa’s hashtag movements - #rhodesmustfall, #feesmustfall, #RUReferencelist, (and relatedly #metoo).The rejection of representative forms of politics signalled by the direct action of workers at Marikana and students in universities seemed to suggest that institutionalised structures, i.e., the trade union and student representative councils, were not capable of articulating political concerns on the ground. I am interested in how, in the absence of these organised political forms at Marikana and during #feesmustfall, women suddenly appeared visible on the frontlines of these struggles in these spaces. More specifically, I am interested in how such an appearance of women was accompanied by discourses that challenged dominant representations of popular politics in the public domain. At Marikana, Sikhala Sonke’s claim to be “The women of Marikana” foregrounded the gendered dimensions of a struggle that until that point had focused exclusively on striking male mineworkers who had occupied a mountain. During #feesmustfall, women held placards that read “#imbokodolead” and “this struggle will be intersectional, or it will be nothing,” claiming a central role for women and gender in the student protests. Through women’s discursive practice, the space of the mine and the university seemed to become gendered in ways that made prior representational focus on wages, fees, class, and race, through representative bodies appear suddenly narrow and limited.
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