The month of August in South Africa provides an opportunity for all those who believe in freedom and women’s liberation to pause and reflect on the path we have traversed as a society in galvanising a coherent and thoughtful struggle against all forms of women and gender oppression. Women’s liberation has been and continues to be an integral part of building a society that is democratic, united, non-sexist, non-racial and prosperous. In essence, the task of fashioning a national democratic society will remain incomplete without the resolution of the women’s question as part of the national question.

  It is the responsibility of all of us to frontally deal with this human rights matter that has a solid foothold on our development aspirations as a nation and people.

The Nelson Mandela University’s Student Life and Development division is making significant strides in centering gender transformation as an integral part of its work. The core of our work is placing human and material resources to properly identify, analyse and defeat the standing social structure of patriarchy that continues to stubbornly entangle our student’s bodies according to oppressive patterns of gender disadvantage. The oppressive and discriminatory practices mainly target feminine individuals and groups, specifically, women, lesbians, and queer identifying people of our university.

How we perceive, reason, and make sense of ourselves in the kind of social justice of society we seek to build, is going to be a key defining feature of how we restore the integrity of a dignified livelihood that is free from all forms of domination and exploitation. We say this to clearly underscore that gender, in our view, is not something that we become in our communities, but rather gender is something we consciously or unconsciously choose to do on a daily basis. In that sense, our gendered identities therefore, must both be achieved and maintained. Our argument here is that in an unequal society such as ours, gender is not a category of difference but rather that of inequality.

South Africa overwhelmingly is a society that is deeply embedded in patriarchy. By association therefore, universities become microcosms of society. All our institutions and social systems are patriarchal to the extent that they are male-dominated, male-identified and male-centred. This means that under patriarchy, men tend to be in positions of power and authority and what is seen as normative and valuable tends to be associated with men and masculinity, and the cultural focus of attention tends to be on men and the things that men do. This is clearly evident in the state, in business, in academia, the media, the NGO sector and throughout our community organisations.

The genuine transformation efforts of placing women in leadership positions in the polity, private sector, academy and civil society is being deliberately undermined by a society dominated by patriarchy and thus disabling consistent and sustainable progress on this front.

It is against this backdrop that we strongly believe that a collective fight and comprehensive uprooting of this scourge will be realised when consistent gender consciousness work is programmatically applied in our institutions specifically towards addressing the attitudes of young men. Gender consciousness work must be about unlearning learned gender oppressive teachings and practices, and relearning the values of social justice and co-habitation of spaces by all as fellow human beings brought together by their common humanity. Additional to the difficult yet possible task should be the infusing of the economic transformation campaign with gender mainstreaming sensibilities across all its content material and praxis.

Our division therefore will expand its collaborative efforts with fraternal institutions and formations who are dedicated to waging this good fight against all forms of women and gender discrimination. Unity and continuous building on the progress made is not an option.

The work of the existing structures and invented spaces like the Gender and Sexual Based Violence Activist Task Team should be heightened. The building of a movement against gender and sexual based violence at our University should be seen as an act of compulsion. Its work must be enabled by popular awareness and education campaigns, shifts in policy and practices both at institutional and societal levels.

Our commitment as the University remains to be the building of a socially just society that will see gender inequality and all its manifestations destroyed.

The 1956 generation of women were pioneers and torchbearers. Living their legacy is a matter of necessity.

 
Posted on 09 August 2019 15:24:16


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This platform serves as a reflective, discursive and connecting space between myself and the entire student community of our beloved university. Through this platform, we converse with our students and broader stakeholders on all matters of student life, wellbeing and development at Mandela University.

Luthando Jack, Dean of Students