Johannesburg - August is august in South Africa - or it should be. But is it?
The democratic national government of South Africa, led by the ANC, since the advent of political change in 1994, correctly declared August Women’s Month, in recognition of the multiracial march to the erstwhile seat of power in Pretoria, in 1956, by about 20 000 women, essentially for the right to be free.
Such a seat of power, in both the apartheid and democracy eras, has actually been, invariably, the seat of patriarchy.
Successive National Party-led governments, similar to ANC-led governments, share a distinct similarity - only men as heads of state.
Patriarchy, which is the outright dominance of society by men, endorsed by both men and women, respects no racial classification, but is universal.
For instance, in the US, for well over two centuries since the late 1700s, a woman - except in the TV series, House of Cards - has never been the president of the wealthiest nation in the world.
South Africa is no different. In 46 years (1948-1994) of official apartheid governments and 28 years (1994-2022) of democratic governments, no woman has been the head of state, ever.
Black Economic Empowerment deals - which generally entailed white-owned big business company shares or operational businesses that were sold to mainly black male ANC politicians and bigwigs - reinforced the patriarchal entitlement of men. The lion’s share of the transactions benefited men, with a miniscule windfall for women.
Name one South African black woman - whether African, coloured or Asian - who is wealthier than or as wealthy as African Rainbow Minerals founder Patrice Motsepe, with an estimated net worth of $2.6 billion (or about R43bn)? You cannot, can you? Because, there is none.
Or, name any white or black South African woman, who is the wealthiest person in our country? You cannot. No such woman exists. Richemont chairman Johann Rupert, with an estimated net worth of $8bn (or about R134bn) is - officially, that is - the wealthiest South African. Telling, is it not?
What is it then that women of all races in our country are meant to celebrate during Women’s Month? More of the same patriarchy?
Gimmicky politicians will have women at all stations of life believe that the so-called “gains” over the 28 years are worthy of celebration.
Savvy women know deep in their guts that there is really nothing to celebrate while they still play second fiddle to men, for no other reason but for the accident of their birth as girls.
They have come to understand that, for as long as patriarchy in public and private life is firmly intact, all this Women’s Month fanfare is actually an insult to their intelligence, if not to their human dignity: that from the first to the last day of August, nothing would have changed in any fundamental way, whatsoever - that it is all a spectacle.
The great warrior of the Struggle against apartheid and fierce opponent of patriarchy in our society, Winnie Nomzamo Madikizela-Mandela, who we shall always honour, is said to have once opined: “The overwhelming majority of women accept patriarchy unquestionably and even protect it, working out the resultant frustrations not against men but primarily against themselves, in their competition for men as sons, lovers and husbands. Traditionally, the violated wife bides her time and offloads her built-in aggression on her daughter-in-law. So men dominate women through the agency of women themselves.” The great matriarch was right - patriarchy is man-made, yet women-propelled.
For women to be truly liberated they must first not accept male-domination and power as a given. It is not.
Women are people, they are real human beings capable of leading men in all endeavours and fields.
The main battlefield to break the back of oppressive patriarchy is the family household, a space that is, ironically, the worst violator of women’s rights and the largest stumbling block to women’s emancipation.
In other words, the family, with a scant number of exceptions, sustains patriarchy, feeds the beast of male domination and keeps women at the bottom of the decision-making ladder, across all races and cultures.
Far too many women have paid the ultimate price with their lives for daring to redefine the patriarchal and oppressive machinery of the family. But if beasts such as Nazism and apartheid can be defeated, so can patriarchy.
Women also need to cease being their own worst enemy.
Women must cease to be patriarchal. They must become matriarchal. For instance, after more than 3 000 years of female oppression by men, the mother of a boy is generally the first to decry the exclusion of boys from projects such as ‘Take A Girl Child to Work’ and says: “What about the boys?” Well, what about them, really?
How does more than 1 000 years of the exclusion of females from such a right as basic as acceptance to pursue studies at a university or to author a book in her own name, compare to less than three decades of the exclusion of boys?
Put differently, is the mother of the boy saying, it is okay to exclude her daughter for 1 000 years or more, yet not okay to exclude her son less than half-a century? Where is the fair redress in all that? Does she mean it will be okay for her daughter, in later years, to become a patriarchal mother, aunt and grandmother?
It was actually a man, Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o, who once expressed the view that change means those at the head of the queue go to the tail of the queue.
“Nothing ever changes unless there’s some pain,” sings songwriter-vocalist Roland Orzabal in the 1993 release, Goodnight Song, by English pop-rock duo Tears for Fears.
The death knell to patriarchy is the pain men refuse to endure, whereas women have gracefully endured centuries of unfair exclusion.
Former US president Bill Clinton once observed that most people want change, so long as it does not involve them changing, too.
By this logic, men will pay lip service to matters of gender equality. It is women who must exercise vigilance to not feed patriarchy with its oppressive agency.
It takes great wisdom in any man to understand, support and cherish the unmistakable superiority of women in the world.
It takes, in any wise man, complete abandonment of entitlement by assumption, the insight to relinquish his ego in its entirety, to support matriarchal greatness without any apprehension or sense of loss of either power or agency.
Former senator Hillary Rodham Clinton once indicated that nothing changes because you scream at it, ‘Change!’ You put in the blood, the sweat, and tears to make the change happen.
Yet, no matter how much blood, sweat and tears that women such as Madikizela-Mandela, a potential president of the ANC, put in, during her lifetime she was incessantly vilified, and ultimately rendered unelectable as the president of the ANC and consequently of the country, because the patriarchal attitudes of men within and without the ANC could not countenance a female leader at the apex of the governing party, and consequently, our republic.
Madikizela-Mandela, with all her real and perceived faults, which were no worse than those of any male candidate in history, lost out on the presidential office to patriarchy. This is the story of many capable women across the country, whether in the private or public milieux.
It stands to reason that, both women and men have not changed their attitudes about patriarchy, but have unquestioningly accepted it as an unchangeable or God-ordained reality that fell from the sky.
Thus, the commemorative celebration of each successive Women’s Month has become a vacuous political gimmick. Yet, all the same, the charade persists.
Mabaso is acting News Editor.