OPINION
This previous weekend, the Eastern Cape provincial command crew of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) introduced that it had resolved that Nokuthula Mlokoti and Zikhona Njoli, who had contested the positions of deputy chairperson and deputy secretary respectively at the Provincial People’s Assembly earlier in the month, would assume these roles. The ladies had misplaced the election, leading to the high 5 management of the province being comprised of males solely. The election of the all-male management was closely criticised by EFF president Julius Malema, who argued that it didn’t mirror the values of the get together and the increased civilisation that it seeks to vogue. Following his intervention, it was determined by the provincial management that the elected males would step down and cede their positions to the ladies who contested them.
The profundity of Malema’s actions dawned on me when the African National Congress (ANC) launched the poll of contenders for the high six positions for the upcoming fifty fifth National Conference scheduled for December. Only two ladies, Nomvula Mokonyane and Febe Potgieter-Gqubule, have made it on to the poll. Sadly, they’re contesting one another for the place of deputy secretary common. Women who had been contesting different positions didn’t meet the threshold to contest. These embody Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Lindiwe Sisulu, who had been contesting for president; Mmamoloko Kubayi and Thandi Modise, who had been contesting for deputy president and Gwen Ramokgopa, who was contesting for the treasurer common place. This means solely two out of seven ladies who had been contesting or had been nominated, met the threshold.
The tragedy about that is two-fold. Firstly, the ANC is the oldest nationwide liberation motion in Africa and but, regardless of its historical past of claiming to champion ladies’s struggles, it has by no means elected a lady president. The closest it ever got here was in 2017 when Dlamini-Zuma misplaced to present president, Cyril Ramaphosa, by a small margin. Secondly, ladies make up a better proportion of the ANC’s membership. And but, persistently, they don’t nominate and elect each other. This was evidenced in the latest regional and provincial conferences too, the place fewer ladies had been elected and the majority of those that had been elected are deputising males. Mokonyane and Potgieter-Gqubule are additionally nominated for deputy positions.
The sample of girls deputising males in management positions will not be distinctive to the ANC. Despite its very progressive stance in compelling males to cede their positions to ladies, the EFF has a historical past of patriarchy that may be gleaned in the exodus of radical black ladies. These embody however aren’t restricted to Mandisa Mashego (former Gauteng provincial chairperson), Magdelene Moonsamy (former treasurer common) and Simamkele Dlakavu, who was a member of the EFF Student Command at Wits University. Dlakavu, whose masters dissertation titled “Asijiki: Black women in the Economic Freedom Fighters, owning space, building a movement reflects on the place of women in the EFF”, has gone on to publish compelling critique of the organisation’s gender politics, arguing that the EFF is giving pedagogical authority to males who’re failing to talk to the types of gender oppression skilled by black individuals.
In phrases of gender illustration in the nationwide meeting, the EFF is second to the ANC, with 44% of its Members of Parliament being ladies. Still, the EFF’s high six, elected at its 2019 National People’s Assembly, contains of three ladies: Poppy Moiloa (deputy secretary common); Veronica Mente (nationwide chairperson) and Omphile Maotwe (treasurer common). Being an organisation that’s describes itself as Sankarist, the EFF ought to fairly take such a stance.
Thomas Sankara, the former chief of Burkina Faso, was unparalleled amongst post-colonial African leaders in his dedication to the emancipation of girls. Many liberation actions on the continent, each African nationalist and Marxist, had been centered primarily on the decision of the nationwide and sophistication questions. Sankara, on the different hand, understood the intersectionality of race, class and gender. He noticed ladies’s emancipation as not solely an moral necessity however as intrinsic to the success of Burkina Faso’s revolution. As such, his authorities was intentional in its implementation of insurance policies geared in the direction of ladies’s improvement and empowerment. Sankara inherited a Burkina Faso with extraordinarily excessive ranges of illiteracy. Women, particularly, had been denied entry to fundamental schooling and by extension, participation in the extremely segmented and gendered labour market.
In his first yr in workplace, Sankara established the Ministry of Family Development and the Women’s Union of Burkina as a method of offering Burkinabe ladies with a framework and devices for difficult heteronormative patriarchy legislatively and institutionally. He compelled the Ministry of Education to prioritise enrolling younger women in class, arguing that illiteracy was the biggest obstacle to the freedom of girls. In addition to this, he restricted polygamy and dowries and prohibited compelled marriage and feminine genital mutilation. He granted new rights to ladies, together with introducing inheritance for widows and orphans. During his presidency, he appointed ladies to authorities positions and amended the nation’s structure, making it necessary for presidents to have at the very least 5 ladies ministers in Cabinet always.
The EFF can’t be Sankarist if it fails to be intentional in coping with gender inequities inside the organisation and in society at massive. Some may argue that by forcing males to cede their positions to ladies, the EFF acted undemocratically and undermined the company of delegates who votes for the males. However, company will not be exercised in a vacuum, however inside outlined structural constructs which are rooted in heteronormative patriarchy. These constructs, grounded in energy relations, can’t be negotiated out of existence. Power concedes nothing with out wrestle and intention to dismantle it. The actions of the EFF exhibit radical intention to rewrite the narrative of male domination. This doesn’t change the embeddedness of patriarchy, however it does give impetus to the argument by Sankara that the revolution and ladies’s liberation go collectively and that this liberation is a fundamental necessity for the revolution to triumph.
It is a lesson that the ANC is but to internalise.
Malaika is a researcher at the Institute for Pan African Thought and Conversation, University of Johannesburg