Centre for Women & Gender Studies

• Published date: 30 November 2020
• Publication title: Mail & Guardian: Web Edition Articles (Johannesburg, South Africa)

The Centre for Women and Gender Studies (CWGS) was launched at Nelson Mandela University in October 2019. One of the CWGS's key academic projects is to research and foreground African women's biographies, intellectual production and political histories. These speak of women's power and leadership in society. The absence and erasure of these voices is part of the sociology that contributes to gender-based violence (GBV).

"We see it as our mandate to resuscitate these voices and histories: not only the voices of intellectuals, we want all African women's voices — workers, rural women, women in business, politics, the arts…" says the Interim Director of the CWGS and senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Dr Babalwa Magoqwana. It is the intellectual cleansing/ukuhlambulula of her story, aimed at healing the systematic and intellectual trauma that defines our society today.

The CWGS is mainstreaming these histories in its teaching and research:

To develop a gender corridor in the Eastern Cape; and

To link universities and scholars dealing with gender questions and profiling African women's biographical intellectual histories.

"We are partnering with other universities in the Eastern Cape, such as Rhodes University, in talking about women's liberation histories and popularism; how women in the liberation struggle were more than mothers and wives, they were essential to the revolution," Magoqwana explains.

"We shouldn't be reading about Sol Plaatje and the history of the ANC without reading about Charlotte Maxeke. In the same vein, we have commissioned a thesis on Adelaide Tambo who is often referred to as the wife of Oliver Tambo, although she was a political force in her own right. This is the kind of erasure of African women's intellectual history we are combatting. Even in the rewriting of our country's history, our African brothers have generally neglected the enormous role of women; or referred to them as 'the wife' or 'first lady'."

The CWGS is currently working on a book on African women's intellectual histories co-edited with Rhodes University's Siphokazi Magadla and Athambile Masola from the University of Pretoria. Due for publication in 2021, the book explores the voices of women in all spheres — from pop icon and activist Brenda Fassie in the eighties and nineties to intellectual activist Charlotte Maxeke, going back 150 years.

The CWGS is also exploring what it means to be "Queer in Africa", based on the work of Professor Zethu Matebeni, the Centre's first visiting professor, appointed in 2019, who is based in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of the Western Cape. Her research focuses on gender and sexuality, with specific attention on black lesbian lives, LGBTQ rights and queer issues.

"To show that LGBTQ life is not foreign or Western, it is part and parcel of our own cultures, Prof Matebeni explores the local languages in the Eastern Cape and how they represent sexuality. Her research speaks directly to what is happening in our communities and to the growing conservatism about sexuality in Africa that is often based on religiosity. It challenges dogmatic and traditionalistic approaches that dismiss sexuality as something that should not be engaged with in an African context."

Prof Matebeni's films, poetry and essays have been published in numerous journals and she is the co-editor of Beyond the Mountain: Queer Life in Africa's Gay Capital (UNISA Press, 2019), and Queer in Africa: LGBTQI identities, citizenship and activism (Routledge 2018).

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and rise in GBV during lockdown, the CWGS launched a digital platform in early April 2020 to build a local and global online community. "We invite people to speak on the work they have published and we encourage students from different disciplines and faculties to participate," says Magoqwana.

As part of their aim to develop perspectives on the effects of the COVID-19 crisis, the CWGS's weekly online series Reading with the author began with a focus on health and gender, in a conversation titled "COVID-19: Movement and class in post-apartheid South Africa" by gender activist and prominent feminist author, Professor Pumla Gqola.

"The CWGS is committed to addressing issues to which everyone can relate," says Magoqwana. "In the Department of Sociology we will be investing in a new curriculum that foregrounds African sociology, to nurture African-centred gender scholars from first year who can see themselves in the curriculum and who go on to pursue Master's and PhD degrees."

GBV during lockdown

Gender-Based Violence (GBV) has escalated during the COVID-19 lockdown. While our country is working hard on controlling the virus, very little has happened to control GBV. Mandela University has responded by establishing the GBV Command Centre for anyone in need of help in the Nelson Mandela Bay Metro. The call centre numbers are 0800 428 428 and 0800 120 7867. The university also launched the MEMEZA anti-GBV campaign, which raises awareness about GBV and seeks to improve community safety through a range of measures, including the distribution of yellow whistles, to be blown in an emergency.

Documenting women's contribution to history is key to academic project

Nelson Mandela University Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sibongile Muthwa

Inyathi ibuzwa kwabaphambili – a Xhosa proverb that means wisdom is learnt or sought from the elders.

This powerful proverb was the overarching theme of the two-day virtual colloquium hosted by the Centre for Women and Gender Studies at Nelson Mandela University, in collaboration with Rhodes University and the University of Pretoria.

The colloquium, held on 28-29 August 2020, served not only as a significant Women's Month commemoration, but was also the culmination of the first year of the Centre's flagship intellectual project to recover memory and "re-member" women's intellectual histories in Southern Africa.

Opening the colloquium, Mandela University Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sibongile Muthwa, said it was aptly themed, and deliberately sought to recognise the generational continuities and discontinuities of the struggle and achievements by women today.

"The discussions contribute to righting the wrongs of excluding women's historiographies that have fundamentally shaped ideas of personhood, liberation and leadership, yet are largely left out of history and how our common journey as human beings is told," Prof Muthwa said.

"Inyathi ibuzwa kwabaphambili is a call to action for us to look back while we are building and moving forward, learning from our elders … those who have built the institutions before us; those who have sacrificed so much for so many of us, and for those who are yet to be born. This connection and recognition of the linkages of the history and future of women enables us to recognise the continuities within the challenges faced by women today."

Two years ago, Prof Muthwa, during her historic inauguration as the institution's first black African female Vice-Chancellor, foregrounded the revitalisation of the humanities as one of the University's key focus areas in the renewal of the academic project.

At the time, Prof Muthwa said: "The humanities, with open and malleable borders, are called upon to use their innate potential to awaken African scholarship, epistemologies and systems of thought so as to excavate the African praxes of our regions to write an inclusive narrative of progress. There is a constitutive link between knowledge, teaching and learning and institutional culture. Much of our non-transformative, exclusionary academic and non-academic practices and behaviours are closely knitted into our views of pedagogy, knowledge and institutional ethos."

The Centre, which was launched in October 2019 under the interim directorship of sociologist Dr Babalwa Magoqwana, is aimed at providing an inclusive "gender agenda" that is informed by the broader transformation project of Mandela University in creating a more humane and equal society.

Through the colloquium, the Centre wrapped up its yearlong academic project of archiving and showcasing the biographical histories of the African women thinkers, infusing history and the creative genres of arts and language to centre the works that have been neglected from the maternal intellectual ancestors.

Opening the colloquium, Prof Muthwa called for the deliberate positioning of the daily struggles of ordinary women at the centre of the conversation, allowing recognition as intellectuals in their own right.

"[This] will add to a broader feminist archival project which seeks to re-member women and fight the continued colonial and post-colonial erasure of women's intellectual contributions in the political and cultural imaginations in Southern Africa," said Prof Muthwa.

Supporting the work of the Centre is the Charlotte Mannya-Maxeke Institute (CMMI), which was established to preserve this formidable leader and activist's legacy by producing the same calibre of African women.

Maxeke, who was a key yet often underrated figure in South African history, is now recognised for the pioneering role she played in the emancipation of women and their overall contribution to society.

Representing CMMI at the colloquium, Dr Musawenkosi Saurombe said: "It is therefore important for us to take note of these contributions that have been made and how this has been a foundation laid for those of us currently continuing with the mandate previously established, and how important it is to continue the work that has been long started."

The CMMI is working on a programme to commemorate the 150th birthday celebrations of Mama uMaxeke.

ooMakhulu as an Institution of Leadership and Knowledge

Interim Director of the CWGS and senior lecturer in Nelson Mandela University's Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Dr Babalwa Magoqwana

The Inyathi Ibuzwa Kwabaphambili (wisdom is learnt/sought from the elders) of our African...