Say No, Black Woman: The Giant is Falling and the erasure ...

1 Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found by: [The Library, University of Witwatersrand]Date: 25 November 2017, At: 04:02 AgendaEmpowering women for gender equityISSN: 1013-0950 (Print) 2158-978X (Online) Journal homepage: Say No, Black Woman : The Giant is Falling andthe erasure of Black women in South AfricaSimamkele DlakavuTo cite this article: Simamkele Dlakavu (2017): Say No, Black Woman : The Giant is Falling andthe erasure of Black women in South Africa, AgendaTo link to this article: online: 14 Nov your article to this journal Article views: 18 View related articles View Crossmark data Say No, Black Woman.

2 The Giant isFallingand the erasure of Black women inSouth AfricaSimamkele DlakavuThe narration of anti-capitalist and anti-whitesupremacist struggles in post-apartheidSouth African public discourse generatedby events such as the #FeesMustFall move-ment and the marikana massacre havetended to privilege certain voices. Theyhave fallen into malestream Africanhistory , characterised by the silencing ofwomen s voices (Zeleza,2005:207), a ten-dency seen in previous anticolonialstruggles in the country.

3 After experiencingand witnessing this gender bias in thefightagainst apartheid, South African artist andactivist Gcina Mhlophe penned a poem in1983 titledSay No,where she remarked:Say No, Black WomanSay NoWhen they give you a back seatin the liberation wagonSay have previously written (Dlakuvu,2015)onthe ways in which Black women in #Fees-MustFall took up Mhlophe s call and said No to their invisibilisation within the nar-ration of the #FeesMustFall movement byrendering their struggles, voices, labourand impact visible in our public November 2016, when I attended thescreening ofThe Giant is Fallingby SouthAfrican Emmy award-winning documentaryfilmmaker Rehad Desai.

4 The significance ofMhlophe s words found meaning Giant is Fallingis described as adocumentary which takes a close look atrecent years and events in South Africawhen things fell apart (Desai,2016).Events looked at include the Marikanamassacre as well as the ways in whichSouth Africans as a collective haveresponded to inequality and the ANC sfailure to deliver on its promises (Desai,2016).What I witnessed and experienced in thedocumentary was another instance of Blackwomen being given a back seat in the liber-ation wagon in South Africa s political land-scape (Mhlophe,1983).

5 Desai reflects themasculinist historical trends whichMhlopheand many Black women haveobserved by contributing to placing Blackwomen in the back seat when telling anation s story. This is despite countlessrecorded attempts to challenge the Giant ,that is, the ruling African National Congress(ANC). Black women have been at the helmof challenging the Giant that is the ANC,along with multiple efforts to contest unjustinequalities that are an ongoing feature ofSouth Africa s reality. Additionally, Blackwomen s efforts to create a more equalsociety through resistance were Giant is Fallingbegins with an imageof a Black woman carrying a bucket of waterin an informal settlement.

6 She does notspeak, and we do not hear her voice. She isnameless and voiceless. Desai, the narrator,uses her image to speak to and over theracialised inequalities that persist in SouthAfrica two decades after democracy. Likedominant representations of Black womeninfilm that continue to persist, Desaidenies Black women their subjectivity andpolitical agency and relegates them tomute objects. Moreover, from seeing thefilm a person unfamiliar with South Africa spolitical discourse may correctly assumethat Black women have a limitedAgenda 2017 ISSN 1013-0950 print/ISSN 2158-978X online 2017 Simamkele 1 7film reviewDownloaded by [The Library, University of Witwatersrand] at 04:02 25 November 2017 engagement in political struggles to chal-lenge the ANC and the prevailing unequalsocio-economic status quo.

7 Similarly, onemay assume that South Africa has anabsence of Black women who are politicalanalysts, economists and struggle the many commentators in thefilm,including politicians, activists, lawyers, jour-nalists and economists, onlyonewoman isgiven a voice. Fiona Forde, a white woman,is the only woman given a platform toprovide analysis. Desai s forms of erasurefilm review2 AGENDA2017 Downloaded by [The Library, University of Witwatersrand] at 04:02 25 November 2017 and historical amnesia in relation to Blackwomen characterise thefilm screening in JohannesburgSouth African activist Sekoetlane Phamodirose to question and challenge Desai sblatant erasure .

8 Phamodi stated: [Thefilm]does not show a single [ Black ] womanspeaking about the experience of womenduring this difficult time (Kemp,2016).This is crucial because this is not thefirsttime Desai has been challenged for hiserasure of Black women s political actionsand agency while narrating South Africa spolitical history. There is a record of feministresponses to his Emmy Award-winningfilmMiners Shot Down,which detailed theevents of the marikana massacre, a labourdispute in 2012 against unjust wages whichresulted in the death of 34 mineworkers atthe hands of police of the feminist responses toMinersShot Downcame from South African activistandfilmmaker Gillian Schutte (2014), whowrote.

9 The fact that there is not one voice of theMarikana women in thisfilm. One wouldthink that this community is only madeup of men that it was only men whowere impacted by this historical feminist scholar and activist PumlaGqola has noted (2010:8) that memoryresists erasure , and Black feminist aca-demics, artists and activists in South Africahave been working to challenge represen-tations of nationhood, political history andmemory that place Black women at themargins. Through extraordinary researchSouth African academic Asanda Benya con-tests the dominant representation of theMarikana massacre as a moment in SouthAfrican history that only affected men.

10 Sheworks to memorialise the experiences ofwomen working in mines as well as the pol-itical mobilisation of Black women in Mari-kana during and after the massacre. It isworth quoting Benya s work (2015:555)InInvisible hands: Women of Marikanaatlength:..In the early stages of the strike, prior tothe massacre in August 2012, often Mari-kana women s involvement was tosupport the women whose husbandswere not coming back at night, hidingfrom police harassment, and to supplyworkers who were on the hill with foodand credit to make phone calls.