This podcast examines the state of feminism in Africa today. It is contextualised by American political activist, scholar and author Angela Davis. Davis reflects on the 1985 Women’s Conference which took place in Nairobi, Kenya.
The podcast contains the reflections of Zacki Achmat of the Treatment Action Campaign, Nina Benjamin of the Labour Research Service and Bernadette Muthien of Engender.
Read the full transcript here
Primitive communism was essentially a class-less society that precluded the oppression and exploitation of one section of society by the other and by the same token excluded any of the exploitative and oppressive features of class society, including sexual oppression. Dr Evelyn Reed,the author of Woman’s Evolution,said, “One of the conspicuous features capitalism, and of class society in general, is the inequality of sexes. Men are the masters in economic, cultural, political,and intellectual life, while women play a subordinate and even submissive role.Only in recent years have women come out of the kitchens and nurseries to challenge men’s monopoly. But the essential inequality still remains”. For as long as the evil system of capitalism exists with all the exploitation and oppression, greed and corruption, deprivation and suffering, misery and gender inequality that accompanies it, including environmental degradation,there will always be a compelling case for a class-less and egalitarian society. Marx, Engels,Lenin, including our own historical experiences taught us that, it’s not just the efforts of noble-minded individuals, but organised class and other forms of struggle will deliver humanity from the evils which now oppress it.
Khayalethu Khaya Sebastian Hamana: Thank you for your comment. How pertinent to understanding how gender must be also located in class to understand that the gender division of labour has been a salient characteristic of racial, gender and class exploitation, especially now in relation to the South where unequal access to resources and power for women raises the crisis of water scarcity as they are frequently privatised. As guest editor of the Agenda issue “The politics of water” describes in the introduction in India the activism of women water activists Vandana Shiva and Medha Patkar have organised against the privatisation of water by international agencies and multi-nationals to protect the water rights of the rural and urban poor, whose access to water becomes part of a monetary exchange which has threatened to turn villages into water deprived communities. Water as a universal basic daily need is surely the inalienable right of all people and why water activists are organising to ensure the planet’s water resources are not squandered by corporations especially given the pressures on the planet of global warming.