Afrikaner and black women both suffered through wars, but the way they were treated after the conflicts could not be more different
Antjie Krog OI was awake … suddenly completely awake in my bed. It was very dark but I sensed someone bending over me then these cold, kind of dry hands were at my throat.O The woman talking fastens her light auburn hair with a golden clasp. OI started shouting, fighting and hitting while the grip tightened around my throat. Then per chance my hand touched the prickly shorn scalp and I immediately realised it was that bloody old grandmother! But by that time everybody was storming to my room because of my shouting.O
The grandmother was an ordinary woman. Or so her family thought. The fact that she had shaved her head ever since the Anglo- Boer South African War and always wore a kind of skullcap was regarded as a sign of healthy mourning. The fact that two of her baby girls, born after the war, died seemed part of her somewhat tragic life. After the attack that night on one of her grandchildrenOs friends, the grandmother was sent to an institution. Years afterwards the family found remnants of a diary which contained the following entry: OThe storm was raging through the night. The mortuary tent blown away. This morning they lay there. Row upon row of drenched corpses. Hair wild and eyes and mouths distended under the scorching sun. Among it we saw the red plait of Aletta.O Aletta was the grandmotherOs first-born. Then the family remembered that at least one of the babies who died had red hair like the grandmother herself. How does one reconstruct a society after conflict? How does one cut a community loose from the destruction of the past? Is it possible to rebuild a post-war society when those who should weave the social and moral fabric are themselves maimed? Add to this a fact shown by research that men, brutalised in conflict, bring violence and abuse into the domestic sphere. How then is maleness to be reconstructed? How does one prevent destroyed identities from affecting the third and fourth generation? Less than a century later another voice testified. The woman talking was beautiful, articulate, smart and black. OI was a pretty little thing in a tutu the only daughter in a well-off family. We read, we talked politics. Then this was destroyed. [Her father became a political prisoner.] Our home became cold and needy. I and my mother for me there was a real war against my mother. We were so clumsy with each other … I felt so unloved by her. I was abused by stick, by mouth, by neglect … OI took that with me into my own family. I bashed my son. I almost killed my son. Today he is overseas (a brilliant musician) … But his sister saw him go up, he was about six, trying to hang himself in a tree because I used to bash him so much. I sent him to the shop. I spat on the floor. You must be back before the spit dries. My son would run. My boy would run and then I worry. He is too short, they wouldnOt see him at the counter. Maybe someone kidnaps him. Maybe he dies. And when he comes back, I take the sjambok I would beat him, I would beat him, I would beat him until the neighbours jump over the fence and stop me. And this son of mine, this one so close to my heart, I hear him say to his friends: I donOt know suffering.O How does one break out of this cycle into normal caring? How does one ever establish love without the anguish of the past? How does one learn to live with scars? Become oneself among others? How does one become whole and released into understanding? How does one make good? Cut clean?
Two groups of women fell victim to the violence of war during the 20th century in South Africa: the Afrikaners and the blacks. The Afrikaners fought British imperialism. The blacks, who suffered for three centuries under colonialism and racism, fought a low- intensity civil war for more than 30 years against official apartheid. But the way women were treated by these two groups after conflict could not have been more different.
Let us take a step back to the 1800s. Although Afrikaners are known for their harsh patriarchal culture, there have always been strong vocal women present among them. As far back as August 1843 one of the pioneer Voortrekker women, Susanna Smit, demanded womenOs franchise from a visiting commissioner of the conquering British. He laughed, describing her as a disgrace to her husband, because nowhere else in the world did women want to vote. After this insult, she uttered her famous words: OI will walk barefoot across the Drakensberge ere I live under British rule.O
But the fact that a woman challenged a British official during those times raises an interesting point: times of turmoil are a potential springboard for womenOs emancipation. The moment a community directs all its resources towards an external threat (in this case against the Zulu and the British), there is likely to be some fluidity in social ordering. Conflict blurs and sometimes destroys the boundaries between household and communal space, so that gender roles become reversed. Women take over menOs positions in households and communities, while the men fight the physical war. In these instances, breaking out of the traditional female role is seen as the ultimate sign of loyalty towards the cause which pushes women further into militancy. In Ireland the term Oaccidental activismO is used to describe women who previously did not see themselves as in any way political, but became advocates and agents for social change.
Although 27 000 Afrikaner women and children died in British concentration camps, others took the place of their men on the farms or hid their families in the mountains and bushes. Some even fought shoulder-to-shoulder with male burghers. Their bravery and resourcefulness, and their ability to fend for themselves, were well known.
Yet as Afrikaner nationalism took root, the Afrikaner womanOs role during the war, though by no means forgotten, was somehow diminished in that she was relegated, as it were, to the ranks of exceptional martyrs. (The conquered Afrikaner men had to find some space where they were still the rulers.) Through the churches, memorials and separate organisations for women, emphasis shifted from doing a manOs job to suffering. The Afrikaner woman had suffered too much, was too noble, to be burdened by politics in a new dispensation. She was given a new task, said to be the ultimate task: to raise the new nation; to be Mother of the Afrikaner Nation (Volksmoeder). WomenOs voices slowly died out from the Afrikaner public discourse. They raised their children on blood and belonging and sent their energy underground. Over the years the Afrikaner women became a remarkable group with unremarkable power. They set up soup kitchens, financially supported their own social workers to look after poor Afrikaners, developed structures to educate women on primary health care and food, to sew clothes, to knit. They established reading circles across the country, where for decades Afrikaans books were bought, read and analysed. They had Bible study groups, for years the only sign of spiritual life in the churches. Once their men attained exclusive power, the women cultivated roses, presented gifts of poetry and self-made ceramic pots for Christmas, established spectacular gardens and toured the world. None of them found their way into structures of power. (Beware, says the Irish activist Marie Mulholland, the moment women move into politics, men leave it for business and take all the power with them!) Studies done in settler-state nationalisms have shown that women who are part of the power group are challenged on two levels: as members of the group who run the risk of losing their power and privilege, and as liberals who believe that womenOs universal experiences of oppression transcend all boundaries, including national borders. Success is usually achieved when women of the power group take their place as equal partners in new nationalist projects: new women for a new land. But the blocking-out of the Afrikaans feminist voice prevented this from happening. Meanwhile, the second generation of Afrikaner males coming out of the Anglo- Boer South African War did everything to get exclusive hold of power I die for the fatherland. The third generation, under the guise of preserving home and hearth, turned their power against fellow citizens I kill for the fatherland. In neither the second nor the third generation did Afrikaner women have any political or economic clout. As a liberation movement the African National Congress took a different route. The moment it came to power it introduced a quota system for women into all its structures. Despite criticism it was one of the most important steps in empowering women and reconstructing a society after conflict.
This step contradicts the assumption that the struggle for national liberation and gender equality are irreconcilable. Previous feminist literature indicated that liberation movements were apt to exploit women during the struggle, only to embrace conventional concepts of femininity, masculinity and gender relations after the revolution. But recent studies show that popular resistance raises womenOs awareness of the political character of gender inequality.
The changes made by ANC women in politics were striking they ranged from toilets for women and a crche in Parliament to a commitment of female Cabinet ministers towards bettering the lives of women on the ground. Former minister of health Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma introduced free medical care for pregnant women and children under five, also allowing women to put their parents on their medical schemes. Geraldine Fraser- Moleketi introduced grants for single mothers and increased the pension payouts for black women who usually look after children. The Minister of Housing, Sankie Mthembi-
Mahanyele, found ways of giving women access to bonds to build their own houses. None of these ministers were perfect. Like those before them and around them, they made a lot of mistakes. What was surprising, how- ever, was how blatantly they were singled out for systematic criticism and ridicule. At least half of their male colleagues did much less in their portfolios, yet the derision with which the womenOs mistakes and utterances were met by political commentators, satirists and the media was out of all proportion. I have always been struck by the viciousness and apparent ease with which people will criticise women (especially black ones) in important positions, but will tone down their adjectives and try to be even-handed and gracious when dealing with men. While black women in top positions were taking a public hammering, it was clear from the talk in parliamentary corridors that most of them also had tremendous household and family problems to see to especially in cases where the return from exile meant once again uprooting the children. For some reason children and childminders do not seem to mind an absent father (especially if he is rich or famous), but they all resent an absent mother (especially if she is rich or famous). One female minister was overheard saying that she would be relieved to be left out of the new Cabinet because she hadnOt seen her children for two weeks. She was given a new post and had to spend the next three months out of the country as part of her new job. But why should only the ANC make the quota system a cornerstone of policy? Why must businesses maintain a gender balance and not all political parties? To me it is ridiculous for the Freedom Front, New National Party and Democratic Party to claim that women are included purely on merit. Interestingly, the NNP seem to have no trouble sharing equal political footing with Sheila Camerer, but havenOt in all these years managed to find a single Afrikaans-speaking woman of enough merit to share their front bench with. I know of at least 10-million women who have more merit than most of those men in the opposition. Affirmative action legislation made women a real option, and even when they are appointed just to change the gender composition they are at least a presence in most situations of decision making. But how does a country hold on to the gains it has made? Especially South Africa. After more than 40 years of violation, the society cannot but be one where the destructive impulse is greater than the impulse of caring. How can it not be racist, rejecting the reality that good and bad people are of every colour? Added to this is another highly destructive element which could surface during a reconstruction: an unremitting dread of annihilation. This fear, when combined with the easy stereotypes of racism and destructive impulses, can turn a whole generation to believing that everything is justified for the sake of survival of the group. It was the AfrikanersO dread of annihilation after the Anglo-Boer South African War which, combined with racism and the scars of violence, led them to invent apartheid. If the scars of violence are present in millions of South Africans, so too is racism; whether it will be mixed with the annihilation dread (for blacks or Afrikaners) remains to be seen. An obvious step towards reconstruction should be a quota system for women in all decision-making bodies, be they political, cultural or financial. There may very well be women who arenOt up to it, but they could hardly be worse than the endless rows of male dead wood around. The mere presence of women will at least force people to operate more inclusively and in a broader context.
The next step is to create support systems for women in these positions to allow them to do their work unfettered. The essential point here is not to become like men, but to be granted enough community support to be what we want and can be. And to educate us away from unquestioning acceptance of men in power regardless of their worth as fathers, lovers or husbands. Some say itOs insulting to women to quota them into power, that women themselves would prefer to be placed there Oon meritO. The word makes me want to throw up. Whose merit? Who determines this merit? Do women have a say in what constitutes this concept?
The trouble with merit is that it determines the framework within which one functions. If a woman believes she got her position through merit, sheOll respect the merit-coders. On the other hand if she is appointed as part of affirmative action, she owes her allegiance to the millions of women less privileged than she is. She has the responsibility to take their needs into consideration.
It is only when there is a flow of female power from grassroots to tree top that real change towards reconstruction can begin.