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Sexism and misogyny rear their ugly heads in the debate over Lindiwe Sisulu’s comments

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Xhanti Payi is a writer short of a few bestselling books and a Nobel Prize. He works as an economist, researcher and adviser to various institutions. A staunch believer in clever blacks and would-be clever blacks short of opportunity. Proper pronunciation of the click is optional.

I have been taken aback by the levels of sexism and misogyny which have emerged amidst the engagements both in mainstream and social media on the Minister of Tourism's views on the Constitution.

The critique and engagement of Minister Lindiwe Sisulu’s views should be welcome in a society such as ours, but the sexism and misogyny which have accompanied it are alarming, for the same reason.

I often think that had my mother been a man, she would have been a very successful businessperson. Growing up, she was extremely enterprising, hard-working, and determined. She had the stomach to leave her young children behind and go to work.

My aunt often told us how, when I was just a little baby, my mother went to work at a fish store in town. Some readers will know the Captain Dorego of the 1990s Queenstown. As my aunt recalls, at some point, I had been crying so much that they decided to fetch her from work to come care for me. That was the end of that job for her. I suspect that it was recognising the challenges of being a working mother of small children that led her to become more enterprising — making things, buying and selling things, and so on.

One time she took me along to the offices of what was then the Transkei Development Corporation (TDC), where she was part of their incentives programme. She had a knitting project in which she employed three to five other women at a time. I remember that she used to pay them R20 a jersey they produced, which was a percentage of the value of the jersey. In parenthesis, I should mention, with bitterness, that as part of the sales team and the debt collector, I was not paid a cent.

Anyway, periodically, she would complete the pages of these large books recording the transactions which were required to be submitted to TDC. On the day she took me along their offices, she was in her finest — wearing a green and white floral crimplene two-piece suit and high heels. Lalokhwe yokulila nokuhleka. I’m surprised that still today, she wears very high heels with ease.

At some point, she had to leave me in one office while she had to go to another office for something else. This was often the case in government offices — a thorough run-around where many times you were confronted by a jacket hanging on a chair, which suggested the official had just stepped out. Too often they would’ve been away for days. She left me in a chair there with the two male officials who had been attending to her.

I remember after she walked out one of them saying, “mhle yena usisi. Qha akho business inokuphuma kwi chops”. In other words, “she may look good, but no business can come from high heels”. That stuck with me for a long time, and informed how I thought about dress codes.

For my mother, business was a huge struggle, and she was often undermined and sabotaged.  Eventually, in 1998, she gave up business and found a job as a domestic worker.

I have always been sensitive to sexism and misogyny because while I walk the world with the privileges of a man, in many ways, my disadvantages have been because of the sexism that my mother had to endure.

Again it is worth repeating that Minister Lindiwe Sisulu is well critiqued for the article attributed to her appearing on the Independent Online website, but I have been taken aback by the amount of sexism and misogyny which has emerged amidst the engagements both in mainstream and social media. For transparency, I should disclose that I have previously served on the minister’s advisory panel. However, this will not be about that.

One prominent writer and activist tweeted: “The defender of African values in pink gloves showing the country how hard she works for the poor.” This tweet was in response to a video of an altercation the minister was involved in during a visit to an informal settlement some time ago. This tweet triggered the memory of how my mother’s work as a businesswoman was dismissed because she was dressed up and in high heels. Indeed, what work could come of someone in pink gloves? There have been others referencing the minister’s dress and hair to the same effect.

The sexism hasn’t been limited to just her dress. In the critique by ANC stalwart, Ntate Mavuso Msimang, he begins by noting that, “[Sisulu] is a person with an impressive track record that dates back to her training as an Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) cadre who specialised in security.” It is interesting to note that this characterisation has not stopped many people dismissing her appointment into senior government roles as owing to her father’s name, one prominent commentator noting how this happens when one’s legitimacy is owed to their parents.

Again, this is reminiscent of how women are often said to be in the roles and positions they occupy because of their parents or the men they have slept with. Anything but their own efforts. The same could not be said of men of course.

So while a woman leader whose father was a leader in the ANC could be called a princess, a man of similar heritage would not be called a prince. We can think of many comparable examples in our political environment. This insulting and derogatory way of viewing and assessing women’s roles and positions in business and politics of course is not limited to Sisulu. Many have noted how Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has constantly been spoken of as “Zuma’s ex-wife” despite her own political pedigree. Spectacularly, one leading newsman noted how she doesn’t smile. Again, reinforcing how women’s physical appearances have been weaponised against them.

As scholars have noted, attitudes and perceptions about women are integral to the violence they’ve been subjected to. In an article titled, “Dress and violence: women should avoid dressing like ‘sluts’ to avoid being raped, Sindi Kwenaite and Ariana van Heerden of Tshwane University of Technology argue that “violence against a woman is socially constructed to reflect her role in an attack against her, hence she shares the responsibility for her violation with the perpetrator”. The way women dress is an important determinant of the treatment they receive in society. “Dress is integral to visual culture. Judges, cultural vigilantes and in some cases, females themselves, have expressed or supported the notion that a woman deserves to be violated for her choice of dress,” Kwenaite and Van Heerden note.  

In my last conversations with the late Dr Thandi Ndlovu, she asked why I was so passionate about raising women’s issues. After a long discussion, she encouraged me never to lose the inclination to speak out. It is often dangerous to do so, she noted.

It should go without saying that there is nothing wrong with engaging a woman’s expressed views. However, it should not be so easy to use the violence of sexism and misogyny or overlook it as so many have during this debate. Importantly, we should also realise that our worst traits and our most vile selves come out when we feel affronted. The affront many feel from Sisulu’s views has once more revealed our inclination for violence, and the status of women in our society. DM

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  • Heinrich Holt says:

    In my previous life as a business leader, I found women to be pivotal to team success. Generally they are better organisers than men and also more thorough. I attribute most of my achievements to the exceptional women in my teams. I would love to have your mom on my team. I agree that it is unfair to use LS’s gender as the reason for her incompetence. I think she is just as incompetent as her fellow cabinet cadres, male and female. Nothing to do with her gender. She is just incompetent. Period.

  • Viviana Smith says:

    As much I agree that gender should have nothing to do with Lindiwe Sisulu’s well-earned criticism, I must say you reap what you sow. Sisulu is happily using vile, insulting and unjustifiably biased terminology to reduce the targets of her nonsensical article to non-human. This is shameful on the best of days, but when it comes from a black woman who was part of the struggle it is downright disgraceful and indicates exactly how far down the RET rabbit hole Sisulu has plunged in a shameful grab for power at any cost, including the livelihoods and wellbeing of the South African people at large. Sisulu is now a larger perpetrator of bigotry than a victim.

  • Dennis Bailey says:

    Is this about your mother or Sisulu? I’d like to meet your mother. I have met Sisulu and gladly won’t knowingly again. Perhaps that’s the reason why CR won’t sort out LS’s newly discovered RET mouth.

  • Elmarie De Bruin says:

    What crap.

  • Russ H says:

    Misogyny is always vile. A full frontal attack on the judiciary (allegedly loaded by ANC cadre deployment) from somebody whose party is responsible for destroying the economy purely based on outdated policies and corruption and plain ineptitude is revoltingly hypocritical, period !

  • Bruce Q says:

    A very poorly constructed article…more about your clearly talented and hard working mother than the reason for the article – a bitter and sadly incompetent political minister who has clearly and publicly broken her Oath Of Office.
    Your attempt to classify the public’s outrage at this action as being simply due to sexism and/or misogyny is a poor attempt to misdirect.
    The example you give that had she been a man, the comments of her “success” being attributed to her father would not have happened. How can you miss the obvious example of “Prince Duduzane Zuma”? He is a male. He has also been mocked and vilified in the press and social media for being a recipient of his father’s largesse. No-one has ever commentated on his business acumen nor his stellar insight into economics! His wealth has clearly been attributed to his father and his Gupta buddies.
    But of course, I seriously doubt you would pick on a man like him. He’s obviously one of your ‘untouchables’.
    All objective and unbiased thinking people will clearly see the article this minister wrote as being a direct attack and insult to the South African judiciary and its extremely well respected Constitution.
    Minister Sisulu does not deserve her place in government, nor the ridiculously large salary she earns for doing absolutely nothing for the poor of this wonderful country.
    A poor article, badly constructed.
    It’s no wonder you are “short of a few bestselling books and a Nobel Prize.”

    • John Strydom says:

      Couldn’t agree more.
      One detail caught my eye in this silly article (muddying the waters by using the mom-story): that Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s unsmiling mien was “spectacularly…weaponised” when referred to by a journalist.
      What utter nonsense!
      What about her ex-husband’s “He-he-he” which, together with to the showerhead, has become his trademarks? No “weaponisation” here?
      Another tedious woke rant, though the story of the writer’s mother deserved being told.

  • Gerrit Marais says:

    What Ms LS misses is that this country is in the s*** because of 27 years of ANC abuse. Abuse that she was very much part of and I am pretty sure she benefited from. Now she is looking for scapegoats. We are now poorer than we were 27 years ago and the blame for this can only be laid at the feet of this impossibly incompetent and corrupt government.

  • Ian Callender-Easby says:

    Ye shall reap what you sow….

  • Rod H MacLeod says:

    Well, at least the misogyny and sexism card you’ve played isn’t the hackneyed ol’ race card …

    • Rod H MacLeod says:

      … and, of course plagiarism is not an exclusively race or gender thing, so if we call her a plagiarist, we cannot be accused of misogyny, sexism, or racism, not so?

  • Jennifer Hughes says:

    Excellent commentary, thank you.

  • David Bristow says:

    Corruption, theft of public assets and imperial attitudes to the poor – such as this honourable minister has displayed – know no gender of chauvanistic bounds. In short she is a liar, a thief and a political opportunist with no policy or ethical base. She is a shame to her family name, male, female or gender-fluid.

    • Kanu Sukha says:

      I love the reference to “gender fluid” … the only problem is that this ‘clever’ author will probably appropriate it in his next ‘clever’ diatribe, to deflect attention away from the real issue in this matter, in the hope of continued ‘patronage’ (which he tried to minimize in his article) from a despicable individual !

  • Libby De Villiers says:

    Then let us refer to her only as a privileged, dishonest, misinformed, incompetent, power hungry, attention seeking, opinionated, delusional, lazy, corrupt individual that has steals from the poor and has not contributed one single thing to alleviate the lives of the people of this country while receiving a salary as a fake government official.
    Better?

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