Subject: [fem-women2000 687] [WA-News] Intersections - Covering Gender & the WCAR NGO Forum
From: lalamaziwa <lalamaziwa@jca.apc.org>
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 00:38:30 +0900
Seq: 687
---------------- Original message follows ---------------- From: jradloff@iafrica.com To: wa-news@womenaction.org Cc: jradloff@iafrica.com Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 14:27:54 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [WA-News] Intersections - Covering Gender & the WCAR NGO Forum -- Intersections $B(B(B $BCovering(B $BGender(B $BthWCAR(B $BNGForum,(B $BDurban(B $B2001(B $BIssu(B(B $BPart(B $B****************************************************************This(B $Bbulletin(B $Bis(B $Ban(B $BAPC-Africa-Women(B $Bproject,(B $Bimplementeby(B $BWome$BCT(BNet South Africa. For the full version or to add your stories and information please go to: http://www.apc.org/intersections About us: Women$BCT(BNet is a joint project of the Southern African Non-Governmental Organisation Network (SANGONeT) and the Commission on Gender Equality. It is a vibrant and innovative networking support program designed to empower South African women to use the Internet to find the people, issues, resources and tools they need for Social Action. http://www.womensnet.org.za APC-Africa-Women is a network of organisations and individuals that work to empower African women's organisations to access and use Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for equality and development. (APC stands for Association for Progressive Communications) http://www.enda.sn/synfev/apcfemafr/indexapc.html ***************************************************************** Items in Issue 1 $B(B(B $BPart(B $Bhave(B $Bdreaof(B $Breparationanmore(B $Bby(B $BLeonarTiHector(B $BRacismColonialism,(B $Banthheritage(B $Bof(B $BSlaverBy(B $BYvette(B $BAbrahams(B $BResearch(B $BCo-ordinator(B $B-,(Bhib Women's Centre * Guerrilla reports by Elizabeth Araujo, ****************************************************************** I Have A Dream of Reparations and more By Leonard Tim Hector The other day I had to marvel at the ignorance, the conservative stupidity of some of the black men who taught me. I came across an article by one of my former teachers, one Leonard Shorey, arguing the white man$BCT(B case for not paying reparations for centuries of Black slavery. Shorey made the white supremacist case better than any Klu Klux Klan high priest would have done. He argued that since Black men sold other black men into slavery, whites were not solely responsible for slavery $B(B(B $Bblacks(B $Bwere(B $Btoantherefore,(B $Bno(B $Breparationshould(B $Bbe(B $Bpaid(B $Bhave(B $Brarely(B $Bseen(B $Bsuch(B $Bahistoricasimple(B $Bequation(B $Breasoninin(B $Balmy(B $Blife(B $Bshuddeto(B $Bthinthat(B $Bsuch(B $Bfoolishnestaught(B $Bme(B $Bas(B $Bthey(B $Battempteto(B $Bmake(B $Bme(B $Bgrow(B $Bup(B $Bstupid(B $Bundethuniojack(B $BThis(B $Bview(B $Breflects(B $Bignorancof(B $Bthfact(B $Bthat(B $Bwheronfindoppression(B $Bmemberof(B $Bthoppressegrouhelp(B $Bto(B $BenforctheiowoppressionIt(B $Bwa(B $Btrue(B $BfomediaevaSerfs,(B $BanfoJews(B $Bin(B $BHitlerCT(B holocaust. This argument is as stupid as saying that because Jews participated and collaborated in the holocaust, there should have been no trial at Nuremberg, no trial of Eichman. This argument also reflect lack of knowledge of the origins of slavery, so eloquently outlined in one of the most celebrated passages in history, found in the opening of CLR James$B(B(B $Bworld-renowned(B $BBlacJacobins(B $Bthonhistorical(B $Bansociological(B $Banalysis(B $Bof(B $Bplantation(B $Bsocietwhicputs(B $BthNeandertha(B $Bviewof(B $BShorey(B $Bin(B $Bthschoolbo$BCT(B rubbish bin: "The tribal wars from which the European pirates [of slaves] claimed to deliver the African people were mere sham-fights; it was a great battle when half-a- dozen men were killed. It was on a peasantry in many respects superior to the Serfs in large areas of Europe, that the slave trade fell. Tribal life was broken up and millions of detribalised Africans were let loose upon each other. The unceasing destruction of crops led to cannibalism; the captive women became concubines and degraded the status of the wife. Tribes had to supply slaves or be sold as slaves themselves. Violence and ferocity became the necessities for survival and violence and ferocity survived. The stockades of grinning skulls, the human sacrifices, the selling of their own children as slaves, these horrors were the product of an intolerable pressure on the African peoples, which became fiercer through the centuries as the demands of industry increased and the methods of coercion were perfected." If every West Indian schoolgirl and boy had to learn this passage it could help to remove some of the black guilt and inferiority complexes which plague some of us, making us enemies of our own people. We in the Caribbean have hailed as "great teachers" men who were authoritarian and brutish, who believed that blacks were so incorrigible and hard-headed that the strap as an instrument of coercion and unmitigated violence became the principal instrument of education. It needs to be said that teachers, in their authoritarianism, unbridled arrogance, and undiluted reactionary views, made us all uncritical objects of our subjection and subordination. They did not lead us out, but reinforced our inferiority and accommodation to oppression. Views like that of Shorey are echoed by those who white wash Dr King$BCT(B legacy with his "I Have A Dream" speech - which is all most modern people know of him. By glorifying this speech, America has tried to reduce one of the finest men of the 20th century to mere oratorical brilliance. King was much more than that and was one of the key figures who called for reparations as demonstrated in a striking passage from, $BE8(Bhy We Can$BCU(B Wait": "No amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation for the exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America [or the Caribbean, or Brazil] down through the centuries. Not all the wealth of this affluent [American] society could meet the bill. Yet a price can be placed upon unpaid wages. The ancient common law has always provided a remedy for the appropriation of one human being by another. The law should be made to apply for American [Caribbean and Brazilian] Negroes. The payment should be in the form of a massive program by the government of special, compensatory measures, which could be regarded as a settlement in accordance with the accepted practice of common law. Such measures would certainly be less expensive than any computation based on two centuries of unpaid wages and accumulated interest. I am proposing, therefore, that just as we granted a GI Bill of rights to war veterans, America launch a broad based and gigantic Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged, our veterans of the long siege of denial." The Rev. Michael Eric Dyson did an analysis of King$BCT(B profound and enduring demand for reparations. Dyson noted that "[o]ne of the greatest pitfalls of idolising the "I Have A Dream" speech and failing to grapple with King$BCT(B views on compensation to blacks is that it obscures King$BCT(B dramatic change of heart and mind about the roots of racism." There is no doubt that King hoped for a colour-blind society. But he came to recognise that its realisation would come "only as oppression and racism were destroyed." It is impossible to understand King$BCT(B hope for society where men and women will be judged not by the colour of their skin $B(B(B $Bbuby(B $Bthconten(B $Bof(B $Btheicharactewithouholdinuppermosin(B $Bmind(B $Bthat(B $Bthough(B $BKing(B $Bbelieved(B $Bthat(B $Bthconcepof(B $Bwhitsupremacis(B $Bso(B $Bimbedded(B $Bin(B $Bwhitsociet(B $Bthat(B $Bmany(B $Bwhites(B $B"are(B $Bunconsciouracists,some(B $Bdo(B $Bconfront(B $Bnotionof(B $Bthei(B $Bracial(B $Bsuperioritanstruggle(B $Bto(B $Bovercome(B $Bit(B $BHowever,(B $BKing(B $Bhimselin(B $B"A(B $BChristmaSermon(B $Bon(B $BPeace"acknowledged(B $Bon(B $BChristmaEv1967(B $Bto(B $BthCanadian(B $BBroadcasting(B $BCorporatio"thanolong(B $Baftetalkinabouthdreain(B $BWashingtonstarteseeing(B $Bit(B $Bturn(B $Binto(B $Bnightmare.Kingwith(B $Bhimarvellous(B $Banunrivalled(B $Bcadencof(B $Bspeechspok(B $Bof(B $Bthdegradinpoverthe(B $Bobserved(B $Bin(B $BU.S.(B $Bghetto"athantithesis(B $Bof(B $Bhi(B $Bdream"He(B $Bansaid(B $Bthat(B $B"isomethinis$BCU(B done, and in a hurry, to bring the coloured peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed." It is obvious that such injustice must be overcome and overthrown. It is obvious too, that it is in this "necessity or fear of a worse evil" that the overwhelming majority of the world$BCT(B working people live. It is well to note when slavery was abolished by the British in the Caribbean, millions of pounds sterling compensation or reparations was paid to the slave- owners in 1834, the perpetrators of the worst inhumanity of man to man. The victims, enslaved Africans, were paid not a cent. It is full time to correct that grave historical wrong. The colonization of the world by Europeans was not an act of Innocence. It was not a charitable act by any fantasy of the imagination or any objective analysis. Entire cosmologies were dumped on the trash heap of a crusading European ideology that meant to plunder, not only the peoples$B(B(B $Bmindbuthei(B $Bbodies(B $Bas(B $Bwell(B $B(Reading1950).(B $BThliberation(B $Bof(B $Bthmindof(B $BthAfrica(B $Bpeople(B $Bwill(B $Bbe(B $Btoughebattle(B $Bthan(B $Btheradicatioof(B $Bsettleregimes.(B $B[Editors(B(B $BnoteThis(B $Barticlis(B $Ban(B $Bextracfrom(B $Bmuch(B $Blonger(B $Barticle](B $BRACISMCOLONIALISM,(B $BANTHHERITAGE(B $BOF(B $BSLAVER(B $BBy(B $BYvette(B $BAbrahamsResearch(B $BCo-ordinator(B $B-,(Bhib Women's Centre In my work on eighteenth and early nineteenth century South African history, I have spent five years writing about the enslavement of the Khoekhoe (the indigenous peoples of South Africa) during this period. A volume later, it still seems to me that I have left much unsaid. What does it mean to be enslaved in your native land? What are the cultural consequences of this process, not only amongst the Khoekhoe themselves, but also in the society which has developed, and gained wealth upon their unpaid labour? Above all, what is the cultural legacy of two hundred and fifty year's of slavery? I have come to believe that the racist and sexist stereotypes developed during this formative period of South African history came to affect not only the Khoekhoe, but eventually all other Black people. Today, we would like to think slavery is over. We can believe this only because we are a society in denial about the racism which still exists. I would like to begin by defining slavery from a gendered perspective as a system of institutionalized rape. This is reflected in the legal system at the time, which defined slaves as property, that is, objects without a motive will. A slave woman could therefore, by definition, not be raped. She could not be raped because, by definition, she could neither consent nor refuse any use of her body. While Khoekhoe women were, by and large, not legally enslaved, but rather owned and used under a category of "prisoners of war", this legal definition of slavery tended to be reflected in the cultural and social systems in which the Khoekhoe also, perforce, had to live. Colonial society was one in which women of colour, Black women, could not be raped. Uses and abuses of their bodies, both as sexual beings and as free labour power, were part of the social fabric. What is the legacy of this system? First, there is the issue of the profits which were made off these women's unpaid work. Today one of the widest fault- lines between the races is that of wealth. The descendants of slave women are poor, the descendants of slave owners are rich. Because slavery was a system based on racial difference, this outcome is a clearly racist outcome. Second, the stereotype of Black women as constantly sexually available is one which is still with us in our mass media and literary culture. The woman who could not, would not, say no, is still a constant in the South African social consciousness. Regardless of the efforts of the women's movement in spreading awareness of the need for a human rights culture even for women, it is time that we realized we are up against centuries of history. We need to be realistic in our expectations of how long it will take to rectify that. Third, there is the issue of post-traumatic stress disorder. Rape trauma syndrome has been shown to affect individuals detrimentally for years, sometimes decades, after the traumatic event. Some women never really get over it. Now, think of this in terms of social psychology! It is not so that the women who lived through slavery were in any way treated for their trauma, on the contrary, in addition to their constant vulnerability to sexual violence, they had to work harder than any human beings should have to work. Yet it has been demonstrated that the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorders can be passed on from generation to generation. So what we can be said to have here is two and a half centuries of rape trauma syndrome, followed by the final land dispossession of the Khoekhoe, followed by segregation, followed by apartheid. Where has been the opportunity for us as a people to heal, not just the psychic wounds of our own time, but our legacy of generations of unhealed, festering, wounds caused by slavery as a system of institutionalized rape? Is it acceptable for leaders of this country now to turn their back on us, the descendants of slaves and Khoekhoe, and expect us to move on as if nothing has happened? How does our past history and our present abandonment affect us, our activism, and the possibilities of building a strong culture of human rights, when our right to a healthy mind was taken from us long before we were born? Finally, there is the crucial issue of reparations. For anyone not stricken with collective amnesia, it is clear that the legacy of slavery is still with us. To deny this legacy is to deprive our female forebears the respect due to them. They survived a system the inhumanity of which we are hard put to imagine today. To give just one example amongst many to make this point clear: there is a law firm, Fairbridge Arderne and Lawton, which owned slaves in the nineteenth century. This firm still exists; as a legal person it presents an unbroken continuity with the era of slavery. The profits this firm made from the unpaid labour of colonized human beings have either remained in the firm or been distributed to its partners over the past two centuries. The descendants of those slaves remain poor. The question I want to pose is: does this firm, and the many, many legal persons who have historically profited from slavery, have no moral obligation to make restitution? Should it not be making some contribution to a mental health service for the descendants of slaves? It is not a complex exercise to calculate the value of the unpaid labour, to say nothing of the human suffering, inflicted by this legal person. The issue of reparations is not about restitution - there can be no restitution for the suffering of our female ancestors. Their lives cannot be measured in money. Neither do I consider reparations necessary for punitive purposes. The harm that was done was done - there is nothing we can do to undo it. But I do believe that we need reparations to safeguard the future. This paper concludes by arguing that the only way we can build a human rights culture which is secure and stable for generations is to ensure accountability. To walk away >from our history in South Africa, to pretend that it is over when the pain and suffering of our history is still so obviously part of us, is the surest way to risk the proliferation of human rights abuses. People need to take responsibility for what they have done and what they have profited from. Only when potential abusers know that their abuse shall be tracked down to the last detail, no matter how matter over how long the centuries; and only when the last profit of human rights abuses is paid over to its victims; only then will we be able to rest at ease, secure in the knowledge that the girl-children yet to be born have a fighting chance to lead decent lives. =============================== Guerrilla reports: Our Guerrilla reporter, Elizabeth Araujo, asked people at the conference what their expectations of the NGO Forum were. Here is what they said: Our organisation is expecting to learn strategies for dealing with issues of racism at different levels. We want to find out what are the best strategies that others have adopted and to create as much awareness as possible. Racism is not an issue of Black and White. It exists even where you speak the same language and have the same skin colour. Barrister Oby Nwankwo Executive Director of CIRDDOC (Civil Resource Development and Documentation Centre ) in Nigeria, which addresses human rights violations. To now be free from the hands of the oppressor. The rights that have been denied us will be restored to us. Our presence here will be an eye-opener$B))(Buman rights going global is not an exception. Paul Anike At the conference with CIRDDOC We have to come out with very good visions to fight racism. Not only ideas, but actions. Omer Kebiwou Kalameu Consultant Researcher in Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Coordinator for International Service for Refugees and Peace I think there$BCM(Bl be some change, things like not to treat people badly, to treat people fairly, equally. We are the same. Osborne Gwala South African citizen I find it strange that in the year 2001 we$BCS(Be having a Racism Conference. In fact, that we$BCW(Be spent all these resources to get people here. It shouldn$BCU(B have been about colour; it$BCT(B a question of human beings getting along. It$BCT(B about tolerance, people trusting. Trust and love $B(B(B $Bhumaemotions(B $Bthat(B $Bhave(B $Bbeen(B $Bprostituted.(B $BConnie(B $BNagiah(B $BConference(B $BMediLiaisoTeam(B $BTo(B $Bease(B $Bthtensiobetweepeople(B $B(B(B $BBlack,(B $BWhite,(B $BColouredIndianmean(B $Bwomen.(B $BLe$BCT(B move away from that. People are people $B(B(B $Beach(B $Bto(B $Btheiowan(B $Blets(B $Brespeceach(B $Bothers(B $Bcultures$B(B(B $BE#(Basically people are people. Fikile and Sengetile South Africans at Conference I$BCN(B hoping for a greater awareness of issues. Erika Harriford Human Rights Advocates, Inc. [End of Intersections Issue 1 Part 1] --------------------------------------------- This message was sent using M-Web Airmail. http://airmail.mweb.co.za/ _______________________________________________ Wa-news mailing list Wa-news@womenaction.org http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/wa-news _________________________________________________________________________ fem-Women2000@jca.apc.org for Women 2000, UN Special Session on Beijing+5 Searcheable Archive http://www.jca.apc.org/fem/news/women2000/index.shtml visit fem-net HomePage for other mailing lists http://www.jca.apc.org/fem