Mandisa Mbali,
"Women in South African AIDS Activism:
Towards a Feminist Economic and Political Agenda to Address the Epidemic"
(page 2 of 8)
1) Historical and political challenges for women's rights work in
South Africa
Many of the challenges experienced by women AIDS activists in
ascending to leadership positions within their organizations, and in
effectively exercising authority there, are not unique to
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working on AIDS. Indeed, South
African women in civil society and politics more generally face these
challenges. The post-apartheid proportional representation system has
led to more women entering the government. But once in government, women
have not always put forward feminist agendas, as a demonstration of
party loyalty is usually the highest priority for ambitious female
politicians who desire to advance their careers. Therefore, women in
government are often disconnected from feminists in civil society, and
the latter have few effective channels by which to influence their
counterparts in the country's legislature, executive branch and civil
service. In addition, women leaders in AIDS-related organizations are
often not taken seriously as spokepeople, which diminishes their
political authority.
South Africa has a racially and culturally diverse population. This
fact has always acted as a brake on the development of a sustainable,
powerful, broad-based, multiracial women's movement since at least the
early twentieth century. Forging feminist solidarities has proven
particularly difficult because women in the country have historically
experienced sexism differently depending on their racial and cultural
backgrounds (Bozzoli 1983). During the apartheid period, racial
privilege insulated white women from many aspects of sexism such as
unpaid domestic labor, because they relied on the services of poorly
paid black domestic workers to undertake such work (Bozzoli 1983).
Nationalism, as by both Afrikaners and Africans, has long been a driving
force in South African political life. In this context, the political
allegiances of many South African women have historically cohered around
their racial identity and nationalist political agendas perceived as
serving the interests of their race (Walker 1991). Even when South
African women have been involved in work promoting gender equality, they
have not described themselves as being "feminist," a concept popularly
derided being as a Western import (Walker 1991; Britton and Fish 2009).
Similarly, postcolonial feminists have noted that women of different
races do not have identical interests, and that transracial (and
transnational) feminist political solidarities have to be consciously
constructed through constant dialogue about women's different
experiences of oppression (Davis 1981; Mohanty 2003). In a postcolonial
context, there are additional representational challenges in creating
space for the voices of subaltern women to emerge in writing (Spivak
1988). These challenges are not, however, insuperable, and I try here to
allow some of the voices of women AIDS activists, from a variety of
racial groups, to emerge.
The South African women's movement achieved many significant gains in
the period of the country's transition to democracy and in the early
post-apartheid period under the government of Nelson Mandela. In the
transition era, the multiparty Women's National Coalition (WNC) did
vital work to ensure that women were represented at a relatively senior
level in the different parties' negotiating teams (Hassim 2006). In the
post-apartheid era, South Africa adopted a proportional representation
system. In this context, women's representation in Parliament increased
as a result of lobbying by the African National Congress Women's League
(ANCWL) for the implementation of a gender-quota system in the
construction of the parties' lists (Hassim 2006). The inclusion of the
gender-related clauses in the Constitution's Bill of Rights; legislative
reform around domestic violence, sexual assault and abortion; and the
creation of the Commission for Gender Equality, have all been admirable.
But these laws have often been inadequately implemented, and there is
much room for improvement in the socioeconomic status of the country's
women.
Shireen Hassim has argued that with the shift of many women activists
into government after 1994, the women's movement has become broken into
issue-based movements such as securing access to safe abortions and
preventing violence against women (2006). She also noted that in the
post-apartheid era, there has been a significant disconnect between
women in civil society and those in government (Hassim 2006). There are
women politicians in government who have proven responsive to feminist
demands, such as Pregs Govender, but it is a glaring irony that it was a
female minister of health—Manto Tshabalala Msimang—who for many
years resisted government provision of the antiretrovirals so many women
desperately needed, and her department that delayed implementation of
the antiretroviral rollout.
In relation to South African AIDS activism, Ida Susser has lamented
"the repeated disappearance of women's experiences from research and
public discussion" (2009: 217). As Susser notes, the erasure of women's
social experiences and agency in the public discourse about AIDS is
paradoxical in a context where much of the data about the epidemic comes
from women being "counted, monitored and tested," especially at
antenatal clinics (2009: 217). Women's experience of "voicelessness" and
their difficulties in effectively challenging the established
patriarchal "rules of the game" are far from unique to AIDS activism.
Denise Walsh has pointed out that the Congress of South African Trade
Unions (COSATU) only elected Connie September as its first female
national officer in 1993 (2009). Moreover, in 1997 the unions rejected
the recommendation made by the Commission on the Future of the Unions,
which September headed, that 50 percent of union leadership positions be
set aside for women. Instead, the unions opted for a gender-training
program to promote women in the unions' ranks and a declaration of union
solidarity on gender equality (Walsh 2009: 60).
Walsh has gone on to convincingly make the case that the extent to
which women meaningful participate in civil society can be assessed
using three criteria: access, voice, and whether women can contest the
sexism in an organization's rules and everyday practices (2009: 48). If
we use these criteria to assess women's participation in AIDS activism,
it is clear that many challenges remain to gaining gender equality
within the movements that focus on addressing the epidemic.
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