By: Siki Dlanga
The ANC conference kicked off on Reconciliation Day. It is undeniable that the concept of reconciliation in South Africa was designed to protect white people and men as black South Africans particularly black women remain the face of poverty. What is reconciliation to the ANC when it is yet to produce its first woman president?
No one embodies the failure of the reconciliation project like the current ANC president. Had it been white people who had been massacred in their numbers in Marikana for example after that now infamous email – Cyril Ramaphosa would have only remained president of the Ankole society and no further. Since then, we have had another massacre of black lives under the same president. Black lives simply do not matter because they do not matter even to black people themselves.
It is for the same reason that Chris Hani’s assassin has been released. If Chris Hani’s life does not matter which black person’s does? Limpho Hani’s outrage over the release of Janusz Walus was a reminder of how little value is ascribed to black life when even the life of an important leader like Hani is dismissed. While black people celebrated with racists in their rejection of Mrs Hani’s objection – Belinda Magor wasted no time as she called for the genocide of all blacks. Magor’s words were a reminder that white civilisation was built on black genocide. There is no European or American civilisation without black genocide of the nature that was represented in Magor’s words or Walus’ actions. Lindiwe Sisulu wore a dress that should have gotten a thinking nation to ask – what is reconciliation to us in the days of Magor, Walus and Stellenbosch urinators?
Mrs Hani’s cry for justice shows how it is black women who wear the pain of apartheid in their bodies like Sisulu did on Reconciliation Day. The point of not forgetting is so that there is no repeating of the cruelty of what we suffered. To forget is to be on the road to repeat what must never be repeated. Black women are the only ones who understand the justice that is owed to black people or the dangers of moving on without it. If you have paid any attention to the Calata women, you will see that Mrs Hani’s cry is not hers alone. This country will be made right when it is led by black women who have not forgotten. The most powerful advocates of Africa’s rightful place in the world today are the voices of African women who are impatient with a world that continues to treat people of African descent as second-class citizens. Dr Ayoade Alakija’s interview on BBC went viral after she was outraged by the banning of South Africa by western countries after discovering omicron. It is black women’s fight against all injustices whose stories remain hidden. It is in the erasure of black women’s contribution in the struggle that cause many ANC women to be undermined for top leadership positions with lesser men being considered more worthy. The culture that reduces Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Lindiwe Sisulu to their surnames is part of an old culture of stealing women’s contribution to credit men and to push women to obscurity. While the lives of black people are treated carelessly it is for this reason that we must be led by a black woman who actively carries the memory of the cost of precious black people’s lives and the cost of our liberation. Mrs Hani chanted Lindiwe Sisulu’s name on that day and told black people to listen when a black person tells them something about the injustice of this country.
On the first day of NASREC, Sisulu wore a dress whose images were an arresting sight. She wore the cost of liberating this country in a single piece. Among the images on her dress was an image more personal and painful probably to her than anyone else. In June of 1976, Sisulu was arrested in the same prison as Solomon Mahlangu and became the last person to see him alive. The image of the young Mahlangu haunts her in a similar way that causes Mrs Hani to refuse the dishonour of Hani’s life. Walus is celebrated by racists. Why would our government give racists something to celebrate? I suppose for the same reason that our government is relaxed about creating conditions that encourage the flourishing of black people. There is no urgency to make life better or more justice for black life. When Sisulu wrote about this at the beginning of the year, newspapers turned it into a spectacle. The struggle Chris Hani fought for remains a struggle to fight for. Perhaps Walus release is a reality check. Hani’s aspirations were denied by Walus’ bullet and this government that shuts its ears from the cries of the Calatas, Limpho’s and black women who continue to suffer in poverty. They have no famous surnames but they are everywhere and their fortunes have not been changed by a billionaire. Their dreams have been denied and their silent suffering is prolonged. Sisulu wore that dress with all those faces as if to call all those heroes to memory as though summoning a cloud of witnesses to this crucial ANC election where the ideals they fought for are held hostage by dollars in a sofar or auctioned to the highest bidder.
Her dress carried the memory of Charlotte Maxeke who advocated for the inclusion of African women in the formation of the African National Congress, an inclusion Sisulu herself is contending for with Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. Both are being given a hard time for no other reason other than the fact that they are African women.
These are strong women who have successfully led in government who are currently running for ANC president. They have fought for this country much more than even these men who are being given a chance to lead for no other reason than that they are male while the women’s achievements are being diminished to the high heels they wear – ignoring Sisulu’s clean audits wherever her heels have stood. You would have imagined that those who had claimed to be champions of anticorruption would have backed her first. Not so. They would rather call her princess or any other diminishing title than give her the credit she is worth as a credible leader. They will back a leader who presided over COVID corruption, PPE scandals, July unrest, Eskom crisis, failing infrastructure or any other failure rather give her credit for her anticorruption bill. Women with no corruption or dead bodies linked to their names are being called corrupt simply because.
Sisulu is running to be the first female president of the oldest liberation movement in Africa that also liberated white women from the patriarchy of apartheid of which Helen Zille is a beneficiary however much she may hate the ANC. Zille has led and is even free to terrorise black people thanks to the ANC but the ANC could not allow African women to lead their own party. The fight is always harder for African woman. The fight is against US interests and European interests. The fight to lead the ANC and South Africa is embodied in the dress won by Lindiwe Sisulu. A dress they will not be talking about even though they pick on her clothes every day on twitter like ticks as they tweet for the sake of disrespecting a black woman who dares to call out a compromised and failing president.
The faces on Sisulu’s dress aught to remind us to reject leadership where black death happens far too easily. That dress must remind us that it is time to elect leaders who create an environment that makes it difficult to urinate on black people’s dignity. Sisulu’s dress must remind South Africa that the reconciliation project does not exist if black people can still be easily massacred with no outcry. Those faces are a reminder that this country has been loved by those people. It must only be led by a woman who remembers the face of Solomon Mahlangu as he was sent to the gallows for the love of our freedom. Those who pick at Sisulu must pick on that dress and the faces on it for a change but they are silent. They are silent because their issues have little to do with her dresses. and everything to do with what she addresses in her proposal for a more equal society and her aims for economic reconciliation which this country cannot do without for it to be at peace with itself.
*Siki Dlanga is a politics and media analyst, poet and gender activists
