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What we black women ought to tell this president
Rhoda Kadalie
October 28, 2004

http://www.bday.co.za/bday/content/direct/1,3523,1737350-6078-0,00.html

NOTHING gets President Thabo Mbeki's knickers in a knot as much as utterances he construes to be racist. More frighteningly, he lashes out histrionically at those he thinks guilty of the sin.

A recent target, among others, is an "anonymous" white woman, whom we all know is Charlene Smith, a feminist African National Congress (ANC) activist whose loyalty to issues of justice has always preceded that of loyalty to the party.

She has the knack of sending our president into an apoplectic rage over a seemingly innocent statement that still offends him after four years! It reads: "Here (in Africa), (AIDS) is spread primarily by heterosexual sex spurred by men's attitudes towards women. We won't end this epidemic until we understand the role of tradition and religion and of a culture in which rape is endemic and has become a prime means of transmitting disease, to young women as well as children."

Whether Mbeki likes it or not, this view underpins the high rates of sexual and domestic violence, HIV infections, femicide and family murders experienced by South African women on a daily basis. The scourge of violence against women is not the prerogative of any ethnic group. In all groups men rely on patriarchal culture, religion and tradition to justify treating women as chattels and second-class citizens.

This attitude has come a long way.

Even the great philosophers of our time believed women were genetically inferior, legally and politically incompetent. The radical Proudhon believed women had two functions in life: housewife and prostitute.

So what Smith says is unmitigated fact. To accuse her of saying, "African traditions, indigenous religions and culture prescribe and institutionalise rape" and implying that "African men are inherently potential rapists and barbaric savages" when no such evidence exists is libellous and irresponsible.

Such far-fetched rubbish I have not heard in a long time. Racist interpretations of innocent statements such as hers smack of obsession at best and paranoia at worst. They resemble the incantations of a rabid African nationalist, not of someone described by the media as an intellectual.

Surely this kind of response is out of kilter with the office of president and enough to strike the fear of God into the hearts of any ordinary citizens who dare to voice their opinions?

If a puny little white activist is capable of sending the president into continual fits of rage, what does this say of Mbeki?

Maybe the time has come to call a spade a shovel.

Maybe we black women should start telling the president most black men treat black women badly, as borne out by the startling evidence of domestic violence, default on maintenance, sexual offences and the criminal courts of the land.

Maybe we should tell the president sexual autonomy for women is a myth, men do not accept "NO" for an answer, and many think women are their property.

Maybe we should tell the president the reason more young women than men are infected with the AIDS virus is because most men sleep around with more than one woman and refuse to use condoms.

Maybe we should tell the president girl children on school benches are sexually abused by teachers when they should be learning, according to a report of the education department.

Yes, Mr President, most of these men are black they violate not because they are black but because the majority of men in this country are black.

Mr President, I suggest you undergo some serious antiracism training so that you can identify the sin when you see it. Lashing out at activists who dare to call abuse by its regular name weakens you and not them. Why are you selectively vociferous about some matters and not others? Why do you not similarly trumpet the promotion of safe sex, antiretroviral medicines and sympathy for those infected with HIV?

Why do the HIV/AIDS pandemic and gross human rights violations in Zimbabwe not similarly move you? Why do you not condemn men for infecting multiples of women at the same time?

Your presidential letters are obsessed with your own notions of race and what it means to be African and how others, mainly whites, misinterpret this "sacrosanct idea" that only you, Thabo Mbeki, understand. Even your congratulatory letter to Wangari Maathai is misdirected.

After reading it, all I can say to you is, Mr President, is get a life!

*Kadalie is a human rights activist based in Cape Town.

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