No one can say African birds don’t know how to put on a show. Every year end, like clockwork, they’re at their best during the continent’s two greatest ornithological spectacles.
In Kenya, the pink flamingos mass on Lake Nakuru. In South Africa, everyone who owns a tie-dye top and a husband who cooks leads us in the 16 Days of Non-Violence against Women.
Calendar days marked by predictability, plumage and bird-brains.
There are certainties that I’ve spent the month since the end of the banal 16 days thinking about. These are:
that white ribbons will be dished out on the public square;
that politicians with skirts will go on about “more needing to be done”;
that a shelter or two will be opened with lottery funds; and
that there will be marches … with men.
Back in Kenya, millions of the fuschia-pink birds spend their days on other, more bird-brained activities, such as feeding on algae, preening and doing the tango to show off their beaks.
At least the flamingos don’t grant interviews — they know they’ll be back same time next year. And that they all sound the same.
If the 16 Days of Non-Violence against Women are anything to go by, the country is full of intellectual pussies who cannot think beyond their own.
Where are our towering women intellectuals?
The Americans have Naomi Klein. The Egyptians have Nawaal Saadawi. The Brits have Polly Toynbee. The Indians have Vandana Shiva. We have the Commission on Gender Equality.
Presided over by a kindly, pantyhose-clad matron who could be anybody’s gogo, this Constitution Hill-based henhouse annually receives millions in government funding, but — despite the task at hand, its far-reaching powers of investigation and censure, and its website’s grandiose claims — it does little.
Except pay for its “activists” (who have double-barrelled surnames, like all real feminists) to attend conferences where they dazzle with their modern gender positions. Like the chairperson’s alleged pearl of wisdom reported on News24.com last year: “It is obviously unethical for anyone to have sexual relations out of wedlock.”
Also last year, the same chairperson sent kwaito king Arthur Mofokate scurrying when she threatened to “consider what action to take” over his pussy song Sika Lekhekhe.
One yearns for the days of the 1956 women’s march. For the days of Fatima Meer, who, now in her late-1970s, is still doing her thing, quietly and unquoted. Of Ruth First’s pen from Maputo.
The African National Congress Women’s League is a sobering reminder of just how long ago those days were. The current league’s chairperson’s knees are too weakened by stilettos to even make the driveway of the Union Buildings, let alone cross the country to journey to its steps.
The 16 days is symptomatic of this intellectual dearth — an effervescent hype that comes and goes with little real impact.
Granted, there were some innovations last year.
Like the anti-women abuse postcards — which Sipokazi from Sebokeng, nursing a blue eye from her daily thrashing, could pick up at her local post office. She could then take one back to her abusive husband to sign “to show support and personal commitment to non-violence”, and post back to the Department of Correctional Services.
And the thrilling Cyber Dialogues chat room — where Privashni from Phoenix could toss her rickets-afflicted infant on her back, leave the weekly cupful of dhal simmering on the stove and dash down to the local WiFi spot; just in time to talk masculinity theory with Sandra from Sandhurst.
The nation, and its “gender machinery” — which can’t even solve the problem of men, let alone world hunger — needs some real clever women.
Like the thinkers described in The Last Intellectuals, by Russell Jacoby, as “an incorrigibly independent soul, answering to no one”.
Critical thinkers; women who can get the nation thinking about gender, sex and violence.
Like what to do about those women who thrive off their men as financial parasites — and don’t mind the occasional moering, so long as it’s not too hard to make Club Monaco out of the question on Friday night. Or the devout women who will chain themselves to the Cape High Court steps to demand their Sharia-given right (allegedly) to be beaten by their husbands.
A part of the problem is credentials. What Edward Said called “professionalisation” of the smart folk.
These days you can’t get anyone to listen to you unless you have been in exile, have a postgraduate degree, or some similarly important trump card hidden in your bra. Perhaps this is why the droves of clever chicks haven’t revealed themselves yet.
That certainly hasn’t stopped the men. Look at Mister Linguistics, Noam Chomsky.
South Africa needs cherries with brains who can ask the real questions, who aren’t afraid to rock the boat and with just the right dose of wicked wit to not bore us to tears.
A Miss Smarty Pants who doesn’t need certification from the intellectual police. Who can freely express her opinion on sexual violence without feeling she needs to first get the certificate from the district surgeon confirming that she was raped and therefore knows all there is about it, unlike the rest of us.
Women we can eagerly swish pages to get to in the broadsheets over our morning coffee. Women we can believe when they talk with authority on the telly about the economy.
Evidently, we are not alone. Last year, The Guardian published an article questioning why there were hardly any women on the top 100 list of Britain’s public intellectuals — issued by that thinking man’s journal, Prospect magazine.
The Guardian went on to compile its own rather curious smorgasbord of Britain’s Top 101 Female Public Intellectuals, which included Cherie Booth QC and fashion designer Vivienne Westwood.
South Africa has legions of clever chicks we’d do well hearing more from. Women who can write, are good for a sound bite and couldn’t be a bore even if they tried. To name but a few: Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala. Catherine Burns. Zelda Moletsane. Precious Moloi. Lebo Mashile. Lin Sampson. Sharon Fonn. Neva Makgetla.
If the reader hasn’t heard of any of them, or what it is that they do, this is precisely the point.
Michel Focault once said it is often less a problem of sterility of thought, as it is one of limited conduits.
Generally, the intellectual, so-called, is only assumed to be one (a title “bestowed”, as it were) because they have a newspaper column; or because of appearances on television.
Not only should there be a state of affairs where it is not the media presiding over the coronation of clever people with opinions, but there should also be a broadening of the means by which we, the masses, have access to these clever people.
Like independent journals. Open-mic poetry sessions. Podcasts. Public lectures. Blogs. Radio.
The Guardian article also quoted Steve Fuller, author of a soon-to-be published book entitled How to be an Intellectual, saying women intellectuals did not reinforce each other enough. “There needs to be a critical mass of women intellectuals who will cite each other, refer to each other — that’s what happens to men.”
So that’s it, then. Just as soon as we start knowing who they are, and hearing more from them, that other bastion of intellectualism, the Third Estate, can start citing women intellectuals as well.
Not Edward Said’s nemesis, mentioned in his 1993 Reith Lectures: the “free-floating intellectual, whose technical competence is on loan and for sale to anyone” — the safe and uncontroversial figure who says all the right things, on cue, and bores to tears.
But rather, the African birds that can hold forth on other matters of consequence, like global warming, the Catholic Church, or refugees. On how best to get women making their own money — beyond teaching them to make beaded Aids brooches.
It’s time to hear from the intellectuals with balls or, in this case, tits.
Khadija Magardie has been given a complimentary copy of the The Y’ello Book of South African Women, a guide to 300 awesomely clever chicks. You can order yours (at a cost of R135 including postage) from the Mail & Guardian on (011) 250 7300