ALL we are asking is that he pay back the money, why are we getting thrown out?" was the question that came from a parliamentary member of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), who on August 21 was identified in a Voice of America news report as a "female EFF member", the day the EFF chanted "pay back the money" to a humiliated and illlooking President Jacob Zuma. Right before EFF spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi started chanting, I had hoped for a longer exchange between parliamentary speaker Baleka Mbete and the "female EFF member".
Although highly visible in their domestic workers' attire, the female leaders of the EFF have only been appearing in the background of escapades initiated by their male comrades.
The men of the EFF are unmasking the work of Parliament on various platforms. Ndlozi has taken the debate about the use of Die Stem in our national anthem outside the portfolio committee on communications, to a broader national audience.
Andile Mngxitama, the EFF's land commissar, has done the same with his open letter to Richard Branson who acquired a vineyard in the Western Cape some months back. It is striking how the big personalities of the EFF men have managed to accommodate each other's individualism, thus demonstrating that the EFF is not leader-centric.
Yet, the last public reference to one of the women leaders of the EFF was when Primrose Sonti, an activist from Marikana, was appointed as an EFF member of Parliament (MP) responsible for the Public Works portfolio. If not to extend on the debates in her portfolio, what does Sonti make of the performance of the Farlam Commission thus far?
As someone whose son was initially arrested for the alleged murder and attempted murder of the miners, what does she make of Cyril Ramaphosa's insistence that South Africans must take "collective responsibility" for the deaths of the miners in Marikana?
Magdalene Moonsamy is also striking in her silence. In 1993, Nelson Mandela wrote "human rights will be the light that guides our foreign affairs".
With the Dalai Lama denied a visa to visit South Africa for a third time, what does Moonsamy think South Africa's role should be in international relations as the country celebrates 20 years of democracy?
Sure, she did take to Twitter to lambast Clayson Monyela, the spokesperson for the department of international relations and cooperation, about the Dalai Lama's visa but why isn't Moonsamy leading us into a public discussion about how to re-imagine South Africa's place in Africa and the world?
Academic and gender activist Shireen Hassim recently argued in the Mail & Guardian that the ANC Women's League (ANCWL) has been reduced to a "gatekeeper". She contends that its role is to ensure that "reliable" ANC women are "appointed to parliamentary committees, government departments and parastatals" for appointments, who are "driven by considerations of party loyalty and political mobility rather than by a track record in gender activism."
In this age, when women's access to political institutions is reduced to ticking party quota obligations, to what extent are the women in the EFF offering a different form of participation beyond descriptive representation?
On August 30, the women of the EFF had a gathering for the purpose of "charting the way forward for women in SA". In its aftermath, there have been no further reports from the EFF about the ways in which the women of the EFF envision championing the interests of women in the legislature and elsewhere.
Is it a coincidence that some promising female voices have already exited the EFF while the male voices are seemingly thriving?
The history of the ANCWL reminds us that South African women's participation in the national liberation movement stemmed less from the invitation of men. The lack of appreciation of the intersections of gender and economic inequality are evident in the ANC's performance in government.
Hassim points out that part of the ANCWL's current inadequacy also stems from the fact that the ANC's constitutional commitment to gender equality is not matched by genuine "political and theoretical leadership" that takes gender seriously.
Has the EFF leadership demonstrated something different besides a rhetorical commitment to gender equality?
For some time Helen Zille and Lindiwe Mazibuko of the Democratic Alliance (DA) offered a possible alternative for what strong opposition party female leadership could look like. It is easy to forget that it was Lindiwe Mazibuko's bold leadership as DA parliamentary leader that pushed then parliamentary speaker Max Sisulu to form a special parliamentary committee to consider the Nkandla Report. This is the kind of clear leadership that is slowly slipping away from the DA under Mmusi Maimane's leadership.
How do we read the media's own lack of interest in the actions of the EFF women? When I look at the bravado of the EFF men, I see at work the creation of a new heroic masculinity. These new "heroes" are inviting us to reinvigorate our claims to the nation and to accept the radical choices we will have to make in achieving a greater kind of freedom. UK Academic Elaine Unterhalter, in her work, 'Heroic Masculinity in South Africa: Autobiographical Writing of the Anti-Apartheid Struggle', reminds us that the trouble with heroic masculinity is that "in the discourse of heroic masculinity, women may be un-gendered equal comrades, they may be heroines who inspire, but somehow do not live the struggle. They may be the wounded, or the innocent relatives. In all of these guises they have no autonomy, no different political interests, and no struggle. Their views are always expressed or interpreted by men"
The demise of the ANCWL already alerts us to the dangers of this kind of masculinity. Magadla is a lecturer with the political and international studies department at Rhodes University, Grahamstown.
Article by: Siphokazi Magadla.
Article Source: NEWAGE THE.