Politics

op-ed: no azania without black women

October 29, 2015

The ‘Revolution’ is irrelevant. The very word implies revolving; going around, returning. Battle after battle, revolution after revolution, the slave adapts, subject to an advanced  form of torture and on revolt, the people fight only part of the cause of the oppression. For freedom, we cannot revolve; we need to evolve. What is required is a complete shift in consciousness: Holistic rebellion, dismantling every form of oppression. We can only truly shift if we dismantle the oppressive power structures at every intersection. The evolution will be lead by the underdogs. Systematic oppression is the most obvious and apparent depending on which side of the gun you are on. Our bodies are on the line. In Cape Town, South Africa, those with a slave memory have joined the movement to decolonization. The black woman remembers because everything reminds her. Without the perspective of the black woman, the queer woman, the trans woman, the poor woman, the woman with disability… Azania will never come. Women and gender non binary activists continue to play a massive role in the project of decolonization taking place in South Africa.

By Nazlee Arbee, AFROPUNK Contributor

Photos by Imraan Christian

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Warrior Queens are on the front line fighting for Azania. They are on the streets singing war cries through megaphones. They are in meetings and seminars leading discussions, theorising and imagining. They have been beaten and bruised, shoved into the back of police vans and locked in a cell. Some women worry, other women are warriors and the women of Azania acknowledge the battlefield. Within the movement, there have been instances where men have felt defensive about patriarchy. Without properly engaging and understanding Black Feminism, some men have felt attacked and are unsure of how to position themselves with regard to the dismantling of patriarchy. Women and gender non binary activists within the movement have encouraged the men to learn through pedagogies of discomfort. With so many misconceptions about Black Feminism (often due to the positionality of men) it may be hard for men to understand how they are being systematically oppressive. There are many men within the movement that are trying to dismantle their own systematic privilege. Women within the movement have encouraged everyone to ‘check their privilege’, be it heteronormativity, being cisgendered or having economic privilege. Azania is intersectional and the most intersectionally oppressed are the ones whose voices are burning with fire. The people of Azania listen to the war cry. The voice of the warrior is evolving & she sounds more and more like her ancestors with each word.

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In the past week, decolonial activists behind the banners of #feesmustfall and #endoutsourcing have been brutally harassed by police for challenging the neoliberal system. Black women’s voices have been central in posing questions toward neo-colonialism, white capital monopoly and the commodification of education. I had been one of these women, hunted down, stun grenaded and tear gassed by policemen. What struck me the most was how the men shoving my sisters into the back of those vans, had looked so familiar to my father. How their own children could not afford the education that we were fighting for. What stood out to me was that they had guns and all we had was our notebooks, our cameras and our voices; it shook them. My fear of their guns dissipated when I realised that everything had always been violent. Many of my sisters have told me that they wake up in the morning anticipating violence, be it structural, systematic, epistemic or physical. The past week has visabilized the battlefield. For the first time in a long while, the state has taken off its mask and we have stared the green eyed monster in the face. Last week, it was the boys in blue, with skin and stories like my own. The riot gear reminded me of the battle. It reminded me of the immediate suppression of the black imagination and in the moment I watched my sister drive off at the back of the kwela-kwela, we both shouted at the top of our lungs, “RIOT”.

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* Nazlee Arbee is a street poet and activist. She is an artist, rapper and writer. She has published in various anthologies and mobilises through street performance. She is currently doing an undergraduate degree at the University of Cape Town, Triple Majoring in Anthropology, Gender Studies and Literature.

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 Instagram: @warriorwombman

 Email: nazlee.arbee@hotmail.com

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