“I have no idea how I managed to drive myself here. I feel like a zombie. Seven years, two sons, and yet Simon did this to me. Why, why, why?” My friend Noelle asked me the question only her husband could have answered. So I did the girlfriend thing. I made her a strong cup of tea, I listened as she outlined all possible revenge routes. I listened to her scream and yell, I watched her hyperventilate, I helped her curse as we talked about how he had betrayed her trust after all these years — after everything she had been through. And then she calmed down, we polished off a bottle of wine, and she slept to wake up with a new steely determination the next morning. I knew she would sort herself and Simon out one way or the other.

Two years later, she had made up with Simon and had another child with him, a boy, now five months old. Noelle and I were having breakfast and she was going through the list of names of people I was inviting for a function. She paused on one name. “Cleo? Girl, where do you know Cleo from?”

“She is a friend of mine from the arts industry,” I answered. “Where do you know her from?” I threw back.

She gave me a mirthless laugh. “Small world,” Noelle paused, then continued, “Cleo is Thabang’s babymama.”

I almost choked on my waffle. Thabang, you see, is Noelle’s brother. So I had to ask, “You mean your brother is the Thabang who has failed to pay child support for his daughter for eight years and has not seen the same child since she was three? What is wrong with your brother?”

She smiled and answered without any sense of irony whatsoever, “Come now Zooks, you know Thabang is irresponsible like that. She should not have had a child with him anyway. Besides which, she is older than him and she should have known that he still wanted to have a good time.”

Noelle was telling me that it is okay for her brother not to take care of his responsibilities because “he is irresponsible like that”. The same Noelle who would get her brother to use his money to buy us drinks and take us out. The same Noelle who came crying to me because her partner had emotionally abused her in almost the same way as Thabang had and continued doing to Cleo. I was supposed to be sympathetic to Noelle’s cause but I was supposed to understand that Thabang was like that and Cleo should have known. And therein lay the rub.

So what does this seemingly totally random anecdote about my friends and the men in their lives have to do with the Mail & Guardian’s Book of South African Women and being a woman in South Africa?
Perhaps nothing.

But maybe, just maybe, everything.

A few months ago, South Africa was surprised when the South African Institute of Race Relations came out with a report stating that a total of nine million children are growing up without fathers. I am unsure why this came as a surprise to many because if I think of any 10 households in my own life, I will be hard-pressed to point out three that have both parents or, in the other seven, I do not know a single one where the head of the house is a male. This is true of my grandmother and her sister. It is true of my aunts and my cousins. It is true of my friends and colleagues. Heck, it is even true of me. And in these women-headed households, many of us are raising or have raised men. We are mothers, lovers, grannies, sisters and cousins to men. I believe that a conversation about growing up a woman in South Africa cannot be done without looking at our men, and in looking at the men we are raising or have raised, we can then have some serious introspection about where we, as women, need to improve and where we are on the right track.

My experiences and observations of being a woman in South Africa tell me that I am luckier than the women in other developing nations but perhaps not quite as lucky as my sisters in some of the Western nations. As a South African woman I am protected, theoretically, by one of the best Constitutions in the world. I am told I am free to work and live where I will, and to love who I want. I am told I have the right to an education funded by the state and I have the right to free birth control and healthcare.
But how protected am I?
When I cannot walk to my rural school 10km from home because I have my period and my school has no toilet and I have no sanitary towels, how protected am I as a woman in this South Africa really? How free, when, on getting to school, I am expected to come out with good grades yet I have no books and no roof over my head to protect me from the weather?

When I walk in my working-class neighbourhood in the south of Johannesburg and I have to cross to the other side of the street when I see a group of men because I know they will pass lewd sexual comments, where is my freedom?
When I am in a relationship with another woman and I cannot walk with her late at night in the townships because we both fear something called “corrective rape” and reporting it to the police — some of whom are homophobic — results in lost dockets, no investigation, or further harassment from my tormentors, how protected am I?

How free is the South African woman and how protected am I by the Constitution if the public hospital where I am expected to give birth has no essentials and the nurses, many of them women, who are supposed to be taking care of me do not care because they are too underpaid and are stressed by their own bills?

Am I, in fact, free to live and work where I want in this South Africa when I have to buy a place in a gated community with a bunch of people I care nothing for because there is safety in numbers? When I rise to the highest echelons of my industry and everyone assumes I must have got there either because I am a slut and must have slept with someone to get there or I am a bitch and have been a ball-breaker, am I in fact free to be me? To work where I want?
When will we achieve the equality — not similarity please note — that many a feminist has been fighting for since the 19th century where none of the 100 women achievers in this Book of Women will no longer be “The First Woman to…” and just be celebrated for their achievements as human beings?

Will we continue to be the ones expected to be the first to drop out of school and work for the family should our parents get ill or/and die? Are we the ones who will continue to work the streets of big cities under dangerous conditions so we can remit funds to our rural homes to take care of our children because the fathers are nowhere to be found? Will we forever be victims of patriarchy — forced to surrender the professions we excel at if we are to become good mothers, lovers, or both?

I do not have the answers to any of these questions. What I do know for sure is that South African women make up the majority of the population, according to Statistics SA, and so have the power to change their own conditions if they strictly worked on the numbers. It is South African women I think of when I read British novelist Tony Parsons, who said, “we are living in a matriarchy that poses as a patriarchy to make the lads happy”, because I think this is absolutely true.

My friend Noelle, who has no qualms about laughing and supporting her no-good brother who fails to take care of his child, is a South African woman. Noelle is a mother to three sons. So too were many of the women who felt that a young lady was “asking for it” when she had her “too-short” skirt ripped off her by a taxi driver at Noord taxi rank a few years back. The Wits University student who told me five years ago that if her chosen political party had a president who was a woman she would not vote for it because South Africa is not yet ready for a woman president, yes, she too was a South African woman.

The women at a Pietermaritzburg rape trial spitting at the complainant and carrying placards reading “You can rape me anytime”, those were South African women. The grandmother who tells her grandchild to go back to her husband who has cheated on her because “this is what men do”, the aunt who asks her niece who is a chief executive “when she is getting married because it all means nothing if you are not married”, the woman who disrespects her daughter-in-law for reporting her son to the police for domestic violence: these are all South African women.

And these South African women are mothers, sisters, and/or caretakers to the nine million children being raised in single homes in South Africa. Is it any surprise then when our men are so messed up that they rape, rob and disrespect us, in public spaces, at home, and at work if we women, who are raising these men, are the ones who are pushing patriarchy?

The women in these pages have shown that, with enough ambition, it is possible to achieve whatever one wants to as a woman in South Africa, though sometimes the odds may be against one. In 2011, as we look at South Africa’s leading ladies, let us also take time to think about how we, as women, may have failed to ensure that another woman succeeds. This Women’s Month, let us pause and reflect on how we have allowed the barometer that men give us — that of the way women look — to help us judge other women instead of judging women, to paraphrase another man, “by the content of their character”.

As mothers, sisters and lovers, here is hoping that we may, in this lifetime, achieve the utopia where we will not fear but have mutual respect for the men whom we raise. I raise my glass to a South Africa where we are equal but different, and where, perhaps, one day we shall not need to have a Book of Women to celebrate the women who have achieved but a Book of South Africans (although of course it would give me delight no end if a majority of the people in that book are women). I toast to a time when South Africa will not celebrate achievements based on gender because women, through men, but sometimes through our own fault, continue to be the marginalised gender.
That said, despite the odds stacked against us by patriarchy, whether of men or our own doing, the women who feature in these pages have surmounted all of them to be the very best that they are. And that should be celebrated. To the women in the 2011 Book of South African Women, we are honoured that you belong to us.
Thank you.
The names have been changed.

In 2008, I was appointed as the director of a fairly large funding and advocacy organisation. With a staff complement of 60 and a budget of about R180-million, I was more than a little bit intimidated. I was younger than my colleagues in senior management and I had just had a baby. And, of course, I was a woman working in the notoriously male-dominated sector of human rights and governance.
My predecessor had built up an insti-tution with a sterling reputation and had pulled together a talented, passionate and committed team. He was an intellectual powerhouse — as close to a super-hero as you can get without actually wearing a cape and a mask.
So there was some trepidation about someone new stepping in to fill his shoes, particularly when that someone was untested at the management level and would need to have the trust and confidence of staff not only in Johannesburg and the Southern Africa region, but also across the global network.
It was not just my colleagues who were anxious. I was a nervous wreck. How on earth would I do this?
My instinct was to focus on what I was good at. I have been involved in work on gender and women’s rights since the beginning of my career. I thought I would make my mark by turning our workplace into a model for gender equity.
I imagined I could try out some ideas around flexitime, and introduce more child-friendly policies. I had grand ideas about challenging people to appreciate that long hours in the office did not necessarily translate into higher productivity. And I wanted to ensure that female employees felt free from sexual harassment, and that male employees understood the boundaries and were supported to contribute towards an organisation striving for gender equity. I would make myself available to female staff members by listening to their problems and mentoring and coaching them through difficulties.
All this would be in addition to the daily work of driving strategic direction, keeping an eye on the finances, managing a diverse and engaged board of trustees, monitoring the political temperature in our 10 countries of operation, and responding to requests for analysis and information from colleagues in Budapest, London, Brussels and New York.
It became evident quite early on that a) the gender utopia I thought I might achieve simply wasn’t the most pressing organisational need of the moment;
b) given who I was (young, black, female) the pressure to be excellent was intense and c) that once you are the boss, not many people are interested in sharing their problems. When they are, it’s usually with a view to wriggling out of some obligation. So I nixed the mentor idea.
I realised that if I focused all my time and energy on being a strong “woman” leader, I would not be making very strategic use of my time. I would also be sending a message that I was hired because I was a woman, not because I was a woman who could do the job. So, much as I understood that relegating gender to the category of “soft” issues was problematic, there was no getting around the fact that others would read any preoccupation with gender as precisely that: an inability to deal with the core issues of the job.
I quickly realised that the organisation did not need a gender warrior. It needed a higher degree of internal accountability. This required less of the kinder, gentler woman’s touch approach, and more of the hard-nosed tactics often associated with men. It required confronting people, paying close attention to detail with respect to adhering to the policies of the institution, it required looking closely at the audit, and it required me to say no, very often to men who were older and more educated than I am. It also demanded of me an ability to let people go if they were behaving in ways that were undermining the institution.I learned very quickly that no matter how difficult and disliked an employee had been, it was impossible to come out looking like the good guy when it had been your decision to fire them. Sadly, a number of the casualties were women, so I earned the PHD moniker (pull her down).
So, by the end of my first 18 months, I had had no had had no cozy chats, and certainly didn’t feel as through I was bringing any kind of feminine sensibility to the workplace. It was a tense time with lots of departures and lots more apprehension. I was not turning out to be the feminist leader I had hoped I would be.
Yet there were also clearly a number of ways in which I was acting out classic female leadership traits. I spent a lot of time in the office, despite the fact that typically the executive director has had a strong representative role, requiring travel. This was a function of two primary factors: firstly that I had a very young child, and secondly that the organisation needed a manager who was focused on
in-house matters. It did not escape me that in some ways I was playing into the classic gender binary: women spend time within the boundaries of the compound, as it were, whereas men go out there and conquer the world.
There were many trips that I had to turn down because I was the mother of a small child. Some travel was borderline — it wasn’t essential that I was there but it would have demonstrated “leadership” for me to be present at a particular function or meeting that happened to be in another country. There were evenings, as I left the office at 5.30pm when I would have preferred to stay until 9pm to get the job done — the way I did before I had a child. These difficulties arose not because of being a woman per se, but because of being a mother, which is of course something that a man cannot be.
In time I learned to use every minute during regular working hours wisely. I cut lunches short, seldom lingered to chat in corridors, and turned the BlackBerry on at about 8pm, so that I could respond to my colleagues in New York, who began to send messages just as I was getting home at 5pm.
There is no question that a man in my position who had chosen to spend more time in the office might have been viewed as an underperformer. I was given more leeway, and there was less pressure on me from my colleagues, because they knew I had a small child. In fact, there was a strange way in which my bowing out of events and trips was congratulated. I got comments from people approvingly telling me that I had made the right decision when I went home early. I got a number of “you are the mother, after all” type of mutters. Underneath the supportiveness there was, with some people, a layer of judgment: “Of course you should go home: why are you even doing this job at this stage in your life?”
And there lies the heart of the matter. It is important and right to make an organisation more women- and family-friendly. It is important and right to shoot for targets in terms of men and women occupying important jobs. But it is much more complicated to be a woman with children, who chooses both her career and her family. Many women only get promoted once they have the freedom of having older children and less demanding partners. Others put off motherhood so that they can focus on climbing the ladder. Both are wise decisions because the costs of trying to juggle are high.
Today the institution I help to manage has grown. We are 87 staff and our budget is about R250-million. We operate on a range of human-rights and governance issues, from monitoring the conduct of mining companies in poor communities and sensitive ecosystems to supporting litigation related to human-rights abuses in countries as diverse as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Swaziland and Malawi.
The organisation is no longer tension-filled. I have become a more relaxed leader. Those early hard-nosed decisions have paid off: people understand that accountability is key and so there is far more peer monitoring. People have largely bought into the broad vision we have of a region in which change starts with us and we have a strengthened operational team.
I have two children now. I still have not had time to sit down and have any of those mentorship conversations I had thought I would. However, given where I sit, I have accepted that younger colleagues — both men and women — have learned a few things from me by watching.
We have no more women in leadership positions today than we did when I started the job. In fact there are now less women managers. At the time, there was gender parity in the senior management. Today that figure has slipped to about 45%, so I have not done well on that score.

But I am proud to say that we have incredibly progressive maternity and paternity leave policies. Women who have given birth are entitled to six months paid leave, and men whose primary partner has had a child are entitled to three months paid leave, taken within the first year of the child’s life. Staff members who choose to adopt are similarly entitled. We provide time off to new mums to breastfeed and to work flexihours and we cater for travel for caregivers when working parents have to go away on business.
We have also paid careful attention to creating an environment that is free of sexual harassment.
I have personally dealt with each incident of potential or real harassment that has come to my attention, and our policy is clear and unequivocal. We make no room in our organisation for bullies, and we don’t tolerate victimisation.
I have learned an incredible amount over the past three years. Despite all my misgivings, and my concerns about whether or not I would be respected simply because of my age and my gender, I have been provided with the type of support that many managers can only dream of. It wasn’t automatic — nor should it be. But I felt that as I learned, I began to earn their respect.
You do not become a leader by virtue of the position you occupy. Every day in my job I am reminded that you become a leader because those you work with for a common cause give you permission to lead.
In an organisation that is brimming with talent and intellect, I have been provided with the permission to lead. I have been allowed to make mistakes and to pick myself up and to try again.
My dreams of turning the organisation into a gender experiment have given way to a more realistic, but no less lofty set of goals: to ensure that we build a Southern African institution in which the values of hard work, integrity and authenticity are embodied by a team of women and men committed to a more transparent and accountable region. That a woman happens to lead the team is both essential and completely incidental. I have learned to live with the contradictions that come with the territory.

It is through woman that life comes
Our bodies are built with this divine purpose
Far greater than textbook theorems
And profoundly more meaningful than the financial gain of medics
Who want to cut it from us
As if the tightness of your vagina in the name of keeping a man overrides this divine purpose
Our healing is far from done

Today I stop fighting
Hand clutched with a fist full of baggage and a cry full of silent prayers
Stuck in the psychological prison of my past,
A past that spans over centuries
Ancient patriarchal structures that we all have a part in creating
My palms are opened

I’m not beating the neighbour’s door down today
Desperate screams hoping that they’ll stop turning a blind eye to the blatant blue eye
Pathetically masked by that 6.5 Bobbi Brown base and fake smile
The smile we all wear as a shield from
the truth
I’m not doing it.
But rather strip the shield and face all
fear that consumes us

Today I stop hiding
Behind these velvet royal blue drapes of shame, because in this world there is something pretty about them.
You see these drapes were soaked in velvet royal blue tears of a woman’s sorrow and sometime regret but not always
Abortion is a choice
And I am no longer telling the story
Looking for approval from your
career-based ideals
Nor am I denying the experience in the face of your superior glance
As you say you could never
How do you know you could never if you haven’t ever?
And as you clear your throat to buy time to deal with your discomfort with either side of this painful fence
Ask yourself wrapped in your velvet drapes, “who am I to judge?”

Today I stop suppressing
Squashing these sexual urges into this social box, part of a woman lives in, called non-existent
I no longer seek permission to put the first foot forward
And no, that does not mean I’ m promiscuous, which is only a problem if you aren’t too.
Nor does it mean I don’t expect you to call me when you say you will
Or send me a flower every now and then
It will light my heart and maybe let it skip a beat or two
Being empowered does not replace my desire to be picked up wined and dined
Have you walk to my side of the car, open the passenger door, kiss me on the cheek and do it again the next night
And please be clear
I’m not interested in hanging on to the 10 steps of “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man” — as if it’s the Holy Scripture to true love
I will act and think like me, because I want a companion to my True Self
And if that’s not you, it ‘s ok.
He’ll show up

So today I stop pretending?…
Yes it’s true
I can bat my eyelids, challenge your intellect, put on a suit, make a home, mother my children and “Run the World, Girls!” all at the same time
Blessed with the gift to be all things that we need to nurture humankind
But today I stop because I no longer want to do it without you.

What happens when we avoid facing the past? Does it haunt us, yielding feelings of shame, guilt or anger? Or do we deny it and the feelings it evokes and then pursue a quest to “move on” and forget? Does the past play itself out symbolically in our lives, transforming us into victims, heroes or villains? Does it transform into a language of hate and destructive engagement in the public sphere? Or does it explode into violence — real or symbolic — against an Other?
These are not just rhetorical questions; they are questions of profound significance in a society, like ours, whose history is steeped in repression and violence. The questions are necessary because they have implications for our understanding of how “the past” may play itself out in repetition in times of crisis in our society. Past injustices are often collectively remembered by groups that have suffered oppression and gross human rights violations at certain critical times of the group’s social life. These collective memories of past traumas may be violently acted out when the level of frustration proliferates and escalates.
The parallels between the rising dis-content that we have witnessed among the majority of South Africans who are still waiting for meaningful transformation in their lives, almost 20 years since liberation from apartheid rule, and the frustration observed among African Americans a century after their liberation from slavery, calls to mind the words of the African-American poet, Langston Hughes. Hughes wrote his poem Harlem, in the early 1950s as a warning to America about the powder keg of frustration among black Americans that was threatening to explode. When the dreams, hopes and aspirations of a people are “deferred” or frustrated, he wrote, they will “explode.” The African-Americans’ Civil Rights Movement some years later could be seen as this “explosion” that Hughes predicted in his poem a decade earlier.

I have been concerned about the issue of the potential for “explosion” in our society for a few years now. It has reappeared again, and has been brought into focus by Julius Malema’s words and actions in recent months, and especially his speech at the ANC Youth League Conference in June.

A central issue in the Youth League leader’s “sophisticated terrain of struggle” — as he referred to his call for economic freedom — is the past, and the urgent need to redress it. Malema places himself in the centre of this narrative about the past and connects his own individual memory of the past with the collective historical experience of the people on whose behalf he speaks: “We are children of domestic workers,” he said, “we know what it means not to find a plate of food on the table.” This was not simply an interesting detail about his past family life, but rather, more fundamentally, it was a persuasive public testimony about a world where helpless parents worried how they were going to feed their children. The current reality of Malema’s supporters is inextricably bound up with their past, a past that Malema shares. Therefore, despite his lifestyle, he can rely on the powerful bond with his supporters because of a shared past he is able to articulate on their behalf.

The memory of long-past traumatic injustices cannot be silenced. Yet some have called for a “forgetting” of the past. They argue that “digging up” the past is a senseless exercise that turns back the wheel of history, and that it perpetuates victimhood and undermines a future-oriented political vision. It is true that the emergence of collective memory of victimhood into public discourse may reignite hatred of historical enemies. For people who want to forget the past, however, “remembering” threatens their deepest sense of humanity, because of the memory of what they did — their complicity — or what they did not do — their silence.

In contrast, Malema articulates in powerful language and imagery the sense of growing frustration among people for whom nothing has changed, because they have not tasted the fruits that political transformation promised. Making the beneficiaries of apartheid privilege “return” what they acquired during the apartheid era is the only chance of restoring the unfulfilled hopes of the oppressed, and the only way to deal effectively with the discontent and demands for real transformation.

At the same time, however, Malema is advocating a model of remembering that flirts with the most destructive aspects of memory: revenge. With time, continuing the trend he has started is bound to ferment into anger, confrontation and revenge. This is why South Africans need an alternative way of remembering the past. We need a new public discourse that is imbued with moral possibilities and a sense of responsible citizenship — to face the past in order to gain perspective about the present, including a capacity for understanding the experiences that confront many young people whose lives have not been touched by the waves of economic opportunity that have been rolled out in the name of black economic empowerment.

One has to be mindful of the dilemmas inherent in the “project” of facing the past. As Martha Minow, the dean of law at Harvard University, puts it, in considering the question of facing the past, there may be “too much memory or not enough; too much enshrinement of victimhood or insufficient memorializing of victims and survivors; too much past or too little acknowledgement of the past’s staging of the present”.

The reality of facing historical injustices is that it is not always easy to confront the past, because facing it may uncover difficult truths. Yet avoidance of the past is no longer an option for us South Africans. We can draw lessons from the memory of the Holocaust and the remembrance of its victims across the globe. The unspeakable crimes of the Holocaust are known not only for their origin in the public statements of the Nazi leader that dazzled the youth of those days, but also for the moral failures of societies of bystanders throughout Nazi Europe who supported Nazi policies. The same can be said about the events that led to the genocide in Rwanda.

In all the histories of policies of systematic abuse of margnalised and oppressed groups, there is a society of voters who supported these policies. The former supporters of oppressive governments are usually the targets of hatred and resentment when the extraordinary hopes of oppressed groups remain unfulfilled. Therefore, the quest for dialogue about the past is a quest to convey the aspiration to prevent discourse driven by hate, and to build an alternative legacy of a nation in conversation about the past in order to build responsible communities and a more humane future.

I have mentioned that for a range of factors, facing the past does not come easily. Music and the arts, however, can give shape to our historical legacies and help us find a language with which to face our history in an attitude of building bridges for human connection across diversity instead of breaking them down. Philip Miller’s musical composition, Rewind: A Cantata for Voice, Tape and Testimony, offers an important alternative for engaging with the past. Rewind is based on recordings of testimonies of victims and survivors who appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In Miller’s musical, we encounter the interweaving of stories of victims, perpetrators and bystanders, all voices from the past telling the story of the different roles they played.

One of the stories in Miller’s performance is based on the TRC testimony of Nomonde Calata, widow of Fort Calata, one of the “Cradock Four” executed by apartheid security police. At the TRC hearing, she tried to tell the story of the important role that her husband played as a teacher and community leader who worked hard for the rights and dignity of black people. Her voice, replayed in Millers’ musical production, carried all the emotions she experienced when she found out about the vicious murder of her husband. At one point during her testimony, which was replayed at the staging of Miller’s Rewind at the Baxter Theatre in May, her voice faltered, and then she let out a piercing cry that shattered the stillness of the theatre.

It is this wailing voice that Miller resurrects from the archives of TRC narratives. A soloist, Nozuko Teto, then picks up Nomonde Calata’s crying voice and represents it through her magnificent and electrifying soprano voice. Several other voices in the choir, with different levels of intensity, male and female voices, sing this wailing cry. The effect is a seamless repetition of this voice-cry that reverberates like a re-enactment of a wound that refuses to be silenced. Miller seems to be telling the audience: This is not yet past. Indeed, at the end of Miller’s show at the Baxter, there is a still and dead silence in the hall after the curtain call. The audience, clearly moved by Miller’s unsettling stories, leave the hall in reflective mood.

And here is the power of the creative arts in bringing us to remembering the past: people did not leave after the performance of Rewind. Instead, they gathered around each other, and even around strangers, crying, talking to one another and sharing the most tragic, shameful or confusing aspects of our past. Through these brief dialogue encounters with one another we each can take some first steps into the light of hopefulness, to begin to feel some wisps of a fresh breeze coming and be part of that possibility of living reconciliation. Hope — not as an abstract concept, but as a moment imbued with the real possibility of deepening a sense of acknowledgement, understanding and respect for one another’s pasts.

The government should begin to think more creatively about what it can do to offer substantive alternatives to thousands of young black South Africans who wake up every day to face emptiness in their lives. Many of them are living their parents’ and grandparents’ lives in repetition, and in some cases their lives are worse than those of their parents’. The picture is a grim one for many of our young people, and the model that Malema offers — to take back what white people unjustly acquired in the past — inspires them to keep hope alive. Needless to say, for pragmatic (and moral) reasons, it is a model that is bound to fail and would lead our country to chaos. Past injustices, and the struggle against these injustices, have led to disruptive consequences across generations of black families. At the same time, generations of many white families have done relatively well and prospered because of the protection, privileges and benefits whites received under apartheid. The heritage of economic oppression and a life of servitude in previous generations continue to put younger members of many black communities in all their diversity at risk. The long and impenetrable shadow of injustice still covers our society, to paraphrase African-American activist Randall Robinson, and it is a legacy that the post-apartheid government has per-petuated over the past 17 years.

Malema’s voice is important for us because, driven by both personal and collective goals, he reminds us of the real possibility for an explosive eruption. This is why I believe it is important that new or alternative conversations emerge at the level of civil society. An honest look at — and dialogue about — our past would be a good place to start.

We take ourselves and our company very seriously. We meet at least every second week as executive directors.
When doing transactions, we insist that our advisory team reflects diversity (black people and women of any colour). We are proud that a number of women who were given their first chance through our insistence have risen in their company ranks.
We also actively help our companies to source good professionals, especially good women, for management and for their boards. Once recruited, we actively mentor those women in skills development, personal confidence and growth and, importantly, values.
Each of us has a circle of young people whom we mentor — mainly (but not exclusively) black and mainly (but not exclusively) women. We bring the women together two or three times a year so that they form networks that can work for them and for them to support others.
Peotona has been a place of huge personal growth for me. Being the “head honcho” is a very lonely place. Being a peer in a sea of success has been very uplifting. It has been a huge privilege and loads of fun to work with three smart women who make me laugh and who I know are there for me through thick and thin.
I recommend women to trust other women and to build other women for the sake of our country. We make up more than half the population. We constitute slightly more than half the tertiary education population. For a country with so many challenges and so many opportunities it is just plain stupid to wilfully exclude half the population from full participation to make this country as great as it can be.

“The 21st century woman embodies the hopes of her nation, knows the history of her people, exposes injustice and comforts the poor and the unemployed.”

These were the words of Jamaican university professor, Dr Pat Morgan, at a daylong National Women’s Day gathering, under the banner, The 21st Century Woman Leader.

I stand before you in the name of a woman who represents well-defined and articulated African humility, spiced with intrinsic and audacious internal resolve imbuing who she is and what she stands for. This woman whose name I stand for, displays immense strength, like the mighty Baobab tree.

The Ghanaians have a saying that confirms the largeness of this great symbol: “Knowledge and wisdom are like the trunk of a Baobab tree. No one person’s arm span is great enough to encompass them.”

No matter how you look at it, the baobab tree is one of nature’s truly remarkable creations. The baobab makes optimum use of very scarce resources. It flourishes and produces fruit on the semi-arid savannahs of sub-Saharan Africa.

It survives prolonged droughts, resembling women’s leadership and resilience.

The trunk can be hollowed out to make a shelter or cut into water containers akin to the multiplicity and roundedness of the roles fulfilled by a woman in the family and society at large.

It produces an edible fruit that has the highest concentration of vitamin C of any plant, analogous to the wide nurturing capacity of women.

The shade of the leaves and branches provides cool refuge comparable to the caring qualities of women.

Like a baobab tree, women represent endurance, conservation, creativity, ingenuity and dialogue.

Remember, out of little seeds, great trees can grow — these seeds are our children, as women we carry the responsibility of nurturing these seeds.

Two weeks ago I came across an inspiring story in the local press about a young lady, Thabisa Xhalisa, who was born in prison in 1983 during apartheid and was released, together with her twin brother, into the care of her 13-year-old sister, who was a domestic worker at the time.

By the time she turned 13, Ms Xhalisa had become a domestic worker herself and had to take care of an unemployed mother as well as her siblings. Today, this young lady has, despite these odds, managed to become a lecturer at the University of Cape Town and is a PhD candidate.

Needless to say that on the whole Ms Xhalisa’s experience of incredible human triumph over heavy odds made possible by access to public education is an exception rather than the rule. This was an account shared by our Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe in the ANC Today of the last week of July 2011.

This could be you, your cousin, the woman next door or even your mother.

In the words of Kofi Annan, former UN SG:

“When women are healthy, educated and free to take the opportunities that life affords them, children thrive and communities flourish, reaping the double dividend for women and children.”

Today at this special occasion marking the beginning of the celebration of women’s month, there is a message I would like to share.

Yes, the message is that we’ve strayed in society from the values of family, community and hard work.

Thabisa Xhalisa became a professor. We read everywhere in her story the message of the importance of family, no matter how challenging the attributes of the family she was part of are.

The life and story of Thabisa, should talk to us today, her passion resilience and faith touches the lives of many.

Her success and achievements should be celebrated and should equally be a source of guidance and hope for multitudes. She is the modern day symbol of defiance, she is embodies the resilient spirit of conquering and survival.

Sisters of the South, this could well be a story of colossal women who may have touched your life: Albertina Sisulu, Ellen Kuzwayo, Emma Mashinini, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma Hilary Clinton, Mother Theresa, amongst many others, to name but a few.

So, my fellow sisters, where do all these lofty thoughts take us, and what are we as women going to do to make this country of ours the best place on earth?

I strongly believe that the key to the restoration of our beautiful country lies in its women

Behind the façade of centuries of male domination, the women of the world have always, against all odds, held the fabric of society together. We were given, by God, the greatest privilege of all: to carry and bear our offspring.

We suckle them. We, more than our male counterparts, should be concerned with the morality and wellbeing of our children; no one is better skilled than us to do so.

We instill good values into our young ones, teach them, admonish them, nurse them back to health, fetch and carry them, play with them, and on top of all this, many of us work to put bread on the table.

In short, the measure of a great nation rests not in its government, but in its people. And the measure of a great people is in its family values.

The core, the centre of that family is you, the woman.

We advocate and choose the path of equality, fairness and access to equal opportunities

The fourth world conference of women agreed among others on certain fundamentals:

• The denouncement of women abuse
• It also spoke out strongly for more women in decision-making roles and to balance the rights of children and their parents
• It strongly supported the issue of equal inheritance and made a stand against on-the-job sexual harassment.

Whilst these profound standpoints were adopted, we continue to face resistance and barriers to change. There is resistance to the loss of patriarchal authority.

As Geraldine Ferraro said:

“We have chosen the path to equality; don’t let them turn us around”.

We need to actively assume the nation building role through our strategic position in the family.

The challenge I put to us all today is to be collectively and individually that rock on which this country shall be rebuilt.

We are going to do it if we fully understand who we are; that we are unique people with a special task in life.

We will do it when we are proud to be women.

We shall do it when as women we play the game according to our own set of rules — not as second-rate males, but as women.

We need to understand ourselves and we also need to believe in ourselves.

“Be more confident and believe in your abilities.”

As Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

In making your greatest responsibility yourself, you are in essence taking charge of your own destiny as opposed to allowing others to control what you are and who you become. How can you then lead?

Do not be afraid!

Again I quote from that wonderful woman, Eleanor Roosevelt, who once said:

“I gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which I must stop and look fear in the face… I say to myself, I’ve lived through this and can take the next thing that comes along.”

She concludes: “We must do things we think we cannot do.”

Take courage in both hands and shed fear, stand up and raise your voices in favour of values that matter, such as integrity, honesty and responsibility.

True personal leadership is about service, sacrifice and selflessness.

Do not be afraid: Stand up as women in solidarity and fight against the social ills of our day.

Alone you cannot fight evil. In solidarity with one another you can.

Again I say, let them, the evildoers, strike that rock that you are, let them feel the pain, let them feel your power until they cower away like battered hyenas against the lionesses of Africa.

A strong work ethic
China has a huge population billions of people, some 30 times more than our population!

Imagine the potential and power that such a nation can unleash if put to work.

And that is exactly what they are doing!

The Chinese people have a work ethic unparalleled anywhere in the world. Not even Japan, a country renown for its hard workers, can compare to China.

And alongside that work ethic, is a nation where children of three-years-old playing chess in the streets of Beijing, focus on education and personal development.

My challenge to us as women is therefore that we go out there and work, work hard and set an example to those who don’t!

Balancing our rights and responsibilities
I would like to quote John F Kennedy who said in the 1960s to all Americans: “Don’t ask what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country”.

And that brings me to my next point:

Managing eminent dangers
The culture of lawlessness: of disrespect for our fellow man; of greed for money at any cost; of complete disregard for all forms of authority.

We have developed a culture of “I want — I demand”.

In the past we had discipline without freedom — I called it tyranny.

Today we have freedom without discipline, which boils down to anarchy.

What use is it to a 14-year-old to have the right to an education, the freedom to learn and become somebody in life, but he chooses to hijack cars and kills people instead, and where is the mother?

Society is crumbling around us.

My point is therefore, that we need to balance out rights with our responsibilities.

Recognising and celebrating ourselves
Our other failure and real danger is our inability to recognise and celebrate ourselves.

We need to celebrate each other so that we can multiply the number of women who step forward.

Along the way of our self-development, we will find other women with the same quest, and when you do find these, walk together, for in that companionship you will learn much more from each other.

You will give each other support.

Whilst competition is there and given, remember though, that it is not necessary to dwell on comparing yourselves but rather recognising your uniqueness.

As women you are magical beings whose significance seeks expression in the world.

Declaration of Interdependence
by BJ Gallagher and Lisa Hammond

We hold these truths to be self-evident:

That all women are created equal -
but each is blessed with different gifts and talents.
That all women are endowed with certain individual rights -
but each must assume shared responsibilities.
For the happiness of all
depends on the commitment of each
to support equality and individuality,
rights and responsibilities.
We declare all women to be mutually interdependent -
banding together to support one another,
sharing our experience, strength, and hope,
that all may enjoy life, love,
and the pursuit of laughter.
We agree to encourage one another in tough times
and celebrate in good times.
We commit to taking turns leading and following,
inspiring and teaching,
listening and learning.
We agree to give credit where credit is due –
including us.
We commit to loving ourselves first –
because we can’t give what we don’t have.
With this Declaration of Interdependence,
we set ourselves free –
free from old beliefs that are no longer true,
free from self-doubt, insecurity, and loneliness,
free from self-imposed perfectionism.
We set ourselves free –
heeding our intuition in all her guises,
loving our bodies through every change,
finding our voices to speak our own truths.
We set ourselves free –
to create fulfilling work,
to form nurturing families,
and to build great friendships.
We are strong;
we are beautiful;
we are generous;
we are wise.
We are women –
committed to creating
a world that affirms us all.