By Terri Barnes Everyone and anyone connected to Feminist Africa knew Elaine, so although I am typing this alone at my computer, I also feel that I am writing a collective statement about our friend and comrade. Elaine was not a friend to everyone. She did not suffer racists, fools or hypocrites lightly. Read the…
Category: Feminist Africa Issue 22: Feminists Organising – Strategy, Voice, Power
The focus of Feminist Africa 22 – “Feminists Organising” – implies a vision, a sense of alternative possibilities of greater social justice alongside the liberation of women from all sources of oppression, and collective feminist energies being mobilised to bring about change in this direction. How have feminists in Africa organised and what are the ends to which feminist organising is directed? What strategies are used to pursue which goals and what trajectories of change are envisaged? How do we effect change within ourselves, even as we strive to change relations and conditions at local, national, regional, and/or global levels? Whose voices are privileged, heard or silenced in the course of feminist organising and in what contexts?
Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism, by Karima Bennoune. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2015
By Charmaine Pereira In a world marked by the proliferation of violent jihadi groups, what can be done to turn the tide against Muslim fundamentalism? This question lies at the heart of Karima Bennoune’s Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism. Bennoune’s award-winning book focuses on the struggles…
Rape: A South African Nightmare, by Pumla Dineo Gqola. Johannesburg: MF Books, an imprint of Jacana Media (PTY) Ltd, 2015
By Jane Bennett I make the assertion that rape is not a moment but a language…and I untangle and decipher the knots and codes of this language, to surface its structure, underline its histories, understand its rules. (Gqola, 2015: 22) In the two years since the publication of Pumla Gqola’s third book, Rape: A South…
Feminist Africa 22 : Feminists Organising — Strategy, Voice, Power
The focus of Feminist Africa 22 – “Feminists Organising” – implies a vision, a sense of alternative possibilities of greater social justice alongside the liberation of women from all sources of oppression, and collective feminist energies being mobilised to bring about change in this direction. How have feminists in Africa organised and what are the…
Raising the Veil — A Tribute to Bi Kidude (circa 1910-2013)
By Vicensia Shule We met Bi Kidude in 2003 in Zanzibar, when we were at the planning meeting for the African Feminist Congress. She liked to smoke and drink in public. She liked to sing in public. She also liked to straddle her drum and gyrate her hips as she beat that drum. She said…
Nudity, Protest and the Law in Uganda
By Sylvia Tamale The human body is itself a politically inscribed entity, its physiology and morphology shaped by histories and practices of containment and control. Susan Bordo (1993: 21) I view law(s) as an authorized discourse — as a language constituted by a series of symbols that is located in not merely the realm of the…
Reflections on Feminist Organising in Angola
By Aurea Mouzinho and Sizaltina Cutaia Context In the contemporary postcolonial history of Africa, Angola is known as the site of one of the most treacherous conflicts that has ravaged the continent. After independence from Portugal in 1975, the 27-year civil war among the three leading liberation movements — the Popular Movement for the Liberation…
Feminists Organising – Strategy, Voice, Power
By Charmaine PereiraThe focus of Feminist Africa 22 – “Feminists Organising” – implies a vision, a sense of alternative possibilities of greater social justice alongside the liberation of women from all sources of oppression, and collective feminist energies being mobilised to bring about change in this direction. How have feminists in Africa organised and what…
Disrupting Orthodoxies in Economic Development — An African Feminist Perspective
By Fatimah Kelleher In recent years, women’s economic empowerment (WEE) has been the focus of perhaps the most intensive spotlight to date within the international development global arena. The creation of the UN High Level Panel on WEE in September 2015, in the wings of the UN General Assembly that ushered in the new Sustainable…
Feminist Reflections on the Rhodes Must Fall Movement
By Kealeboga Ramaru The year 2015 was undoubtedly one of the most memorable years for me in post-apartheid South Africa. Just six weeks short of the country’s 21st-anniversary celebration of the advent of democracy, a movement that was to have a lasting impact on the history of the University of Cape Town (UCT), and the…