A part of you reels in sadness over her dying days, another in awe of her defiance against the apartheid regime – her latter days by far were her greatest moments in our history. But if as a society we are able to introspect, we divorced the rights of the woman long before we honestly reflected on her place within our society, is it ironic that almost yearly, towards the celebration of Women’s Day, South African women, somewhere, every year, go through a heinous crime of sorts. Women like Winnie Madikizela-Mandela went all in for a collective, but as we…
A part of you reels in sadness over her dying days, another in awe of her defiance against the apartheid regime – her latter days by far were her greatest moments in our history.
But if as a society we are able to introspect, we divorced the rights of the woman long before we honestly reflected on her place within our society, is it ironic that almost yearly, towards the celebration of Women’s Day, South African women, somewhere, every year, go through a heinous crime of sorts.
Women like Winnie Madikizela-Mandela went all in for a collective, but as we lay uTata to rest, we forgot that beside him, spiritually, sometimes physically, was a woman who endured, faced abuse, isolation and detention.
And when women find their voice we are turned into villains because we needed to find fault in the dissolution of marriage of a power couple, a man that spent 27 years in prison could not be at fault, and so we carried the weight for the Madikizela-Mandela marriage.
We felt compelled to pick a side, we celebrated the icon, we sang his praises, but we forgot the role this ever-rising phenomenon played in the dispensation to our democracy – we forget because history played the patriarchy card and we allowed it to make a fool of us. And so, over the years, we watched the media villainise her, we watched women in politics render her used goods, we allowed history to depict her as angry.
We forget that every wrinkle on that beautiful face carries years of thankless sacrifice. We forget that the home she fought for post his death were kept erect by her tireless effort as he languished in prison.
We forget that she sacrificed her parental obligations to raise the foster child that was the South African nation.
Women are being buried, long before their time in this country, be it physically, financially and even emotionally. We are dying because society has decided we are replaceable.
We are meant to be rocks that withstand all sorts of pain and hardship. And now the women of our generation refuse the label of rocks. We are eggs, treated as such, we cannot continue under this hardship.
