Mashatile to visit Mangaung municipality for cleanup campaign
The presidency said this was part of the government's ' clean cities and towns campaign' aimed at ensuring that communities across the country live in clean and healthy environments.
The campaign, which was first launched in Soweto in the south of Johannesburg in June, also aims to get communities involved in cleaning up their towns.
'The campaign aligns with government's broader service delivery objectives under the District Development Model (DDM) and builds on the Free State province's 'Bontle ke Botho', which promotes community pride and shared responsibility for public spaces,' the presidency said in a statement.
The Mangaung cleanup initiative is under the theme: 'Bontle Ke Botho: A Free State that works for all, building clean and sustainable communities'.
Mashatile's office said the initiatives were part of the government's efforts to 'revitalise urban areas, enhance service delivery, and combat environmental degradation'.
With climate change a reality that requires urgent intervention, the presidency said, these campaigns were also part of the government's commitment to help curb the deterioration of the planet and take climate action to preserve the environment.
'The visit by the deputy president will mobilise communities and stakeholders to participate in cleaning and greening initiatives, showcase accelerated service delivery interventions, including waste management, infrastructure repairs, tree planting as well as reinforce partnerships between the government, private sector and residents to ensure sustainable urban development.'
Mashatile will be joined by ministers Parks Tau, Pinky Kekane, Bernice Swarts and Free State premier Maqueen Letsoha-Mathae.
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The other group comprises lawyers and others doing gender-based violence research, who met through contact with the Institute for Strategic Litigation in Africa, a pan-African and feminist human rights organisation. Three interlinked key concerns have come to the fore from these conversations and my doctoral research on the different ways in which black women have been excluded from rape law reform. The first concern is that there is a possible overlooking of black women's expertise when authoritative insights are sought on cases of rape, sexual harassment and other misconduct. The second concern is the framing of black men and women in black anti-racist rhetoric around sexual violence. The third concern is the use of African cultures as a trump card to mask or justify abusive behaviours. Who/where are the black women experts? The historical dominance of white women in discourse on sexual harassment and violence can be linked to the theories on gender-based violence which arose during the second wave of feminism between the late 1960s and 1980s and the growth of women-focused international human rights regimes from the 1970s. These developments started during the apartheid era, a time when black women's (especially black African women's) participation in academia was restricted and civic engagement with the state was not an option for them. The post-1994 democratic dispensation provided the constitutional framework that gave all citizens the right to participate in the making and reform of polices and laws. However, the anti-rape and sexual harassment law and policy wheel was already in motion by the time that black women activists and researchers had a place at the metaphorical negotiating table. While some black women were already using black feminist socialist and intersectional lenses to explain convergences of sexual and other violence in black women's lives, many ordinary black women were on the back foot regarding the major debates and processes around these issues. They also continued to face socio-economic and cultural barriers (such as the language barrier) to participation. I, and some of the black women I engaged with, largely agreed with the analysis that Vetten provided. But more than three decades into democracy in a black majority country, why are decision-makers not calling on black women experts to explain black women's experiences and circumstances of violence, specifically black African women experts in closer cultural and experiential proximity to black African opposing parties or research subjects? There are more black South African women involved in sexual violence research than there were in the past, although the proportion might still be far from ideal. I also acknowledge Dr Zakeera Docrat's expert witness testimony as a forensic and legal linguist in this case. But are black African women experts still largely unknown, or are they being overlooked? Are black women not availing themselves to provide expert testimony? If so, why? Is the problem in how we identify what constitutes 'real' knowledge? Among those I interviewed in my doctoral research were black women who shared that they were overlooked as expert contributors to law and policymaking/reform because they were not involved in producing published research and opinion editorials. Donors, state representatives and other decision-makers did not view their provision of counselling, information, education and other support services for black victims in historically disadvantaged areas as a basis for their consideration as knowledgeable people or knowledge producers. Are black African women's voices then only valued insofar as they articulate experiences of suffering — but not their ability to provide authoritative interpretations thereof? Black anti-racist rhetoric on sexual violence While racist laws around sexual offences have been repealed, there has never been a national dialogue on the damage done to black communities by the laws' racial and gendered prejudices and discrimination against black people. Black (especially African and coloured) men were constructed as hypersexual and predisposed to being rapists or sex pests. Black women were constructed as innately promiscuous and therefore, in the words of Gqola, 'unrapable'. Black anti-racist rhetoric on sexual violence remembers the discrimination and victimisation inflicted on black men but is mostly silent on the sexual victimisation and discrimination inflicted on black women across and within racial and class divides. In 2016, Judge Mabel Jansen reportedly made statements on social media to the effect that black cultures condoned black men's raping of women and children and that black women accepted this. The black anti-racist rhetoric tended to magnify what Jansen's statements meant in terms of unfair discrimination against black men rape defendants and to treat as secondary the implications of the judge's statements for discrimination against black women rape complainants. Sexual violence research's focus on black communities has historically reinforced racial stereotypes. The black women I interviewed also elaborated that black women are often portrayed in contradictory ways as helpless victims and as complicit in the violence perpetrated against them, rather than as resistors and change initiators. Some suggest that black women are happy to play the role of victim. A recent example of this comes from an opinion editorial authored by another well-known white woman writer, Gillian Schutte. Schutte suggested that Mengo subverted the power imbalance between herself and Mbenenge by flirting with him. Mengo was framed as allowing herself to be seen as a victim under a Western 'liberal feminist' lens. The editorial implies that all feminists who see merit in Mengo's complaint are analysing it through this Western liberal feminist lens. It both conflates a broad spectrum of Western feminist thought and fails to fathom black women's indigenous African and decolonial feminist explanations of the relationship between sexual violence and abuses of power. In contrast, the editorial framed Judge Mbengene as an Africanist decolonial hero. My intention is not to suggest that black women are victims in every situation. Just as political columnist Malaika Mahlatsi argued in another opinion editorial this year, the problem I want to highlight here is that there is a belief among many in black communities that prominent black men are accused of sexual violence as part of conspiracies to bring their leadership and achievements into disrepute. Many are unwilling to consider that at least some of these accusations might be warranted. This is something that black communities must confront and work against. The use of culture as a trump The use of cultural claims to deflect accusations of sexual coercion and violence is not a novel strategy. Mbenenge's counsel's use of culture to argue that there was consent in the interactions between him and Mengo was thus something that her counsel could have foreseen. It could have been planned for by involving black gender-based violence experts with the appropriate experience and skill set. Not every black gender-based violence expert is necessarily an expert on African languages and cultures. However, as documented by African philosopher Phola Mabizela Mabaso, a Red Gown Stokvel member whose Nguni heritage has given her some knowledge and experience of Xhosa culture, also educated us that it is taboo in Xhosa culture for a man to sexually proposition a person young enough to be his child. Atonement may be required for the transgression. It is more often black women who suffer the negative attributes of African customs and who seek to build on its positive aspects. It thus falls to black women and people to address the oppressive aspects of their cultures. Unfortunately, adversarial court and tribunal proceedings restrict constructive engagement. Furthermore, black women have sometimes suffered dire professional and personal consequences for publicly challenging patriarchal interpretations of African cultures. This and the other mentioned concerns underscore the importance of centring black women's voices and knowledge in national discourses on sexual violence, highlighting the need for black women to be supported when sharing their knowledge and experiences. Nompumelelo Motlafi Francis is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation, University of Johannesburg.
