I received a few “happy Women’s Day” wishes this week, with slogans of how women are strong, beautiful, resilient and carry the world on their shoulders, etc. None of these moved me, except one: a quote from Burkina Faso’s slain revolutionary president Thomas Sankara, who met his death at the hands of his then-trusted friend and right-hand man Blaise Compaoré.

The Sankara quote was sent to me by a male friend and reads: “Comrades, there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women. May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence. I hear the roar of women’s silence. I sense the rumble of their storm and feel the fury of their revolt.”

Most who are familiar with Sankara’s legacy know he was a champion of women’s rights and of women’s empowerment. His approach to this is what gave me pause for thought. I found it interesting that a man born in 1949 chose such a progressive way to articulate women’s empowerment. He challenged the oppressive nature of patriarchal societies and their conditioning, and yet, in 2022, we are still met with regressive gender politics that, at their worst, manifest in gender-based violence that would have women be hardened and forced to take on descriptors such as “resilient” and “strong”.

If not that, women are still being silenced and stripped of their agency as equal members of society, as alluded to by Sankara.

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One of my go-to feminist thinkers, writer and activist bell hooks, says: “To truly be free, we must choose beyond simply surviving adversity, we must dare to create lives of sustained optimal wellbeing and joy.”

I fully agree with hooks. I find it not only patronising but insulting to have to accept that to be a woman is to be in a state of constantly overcoming adversity and pain meted out by a patriarchal society hellbent on our oppression. This is a distraction from the actual business of the day, which is to endeavour to live full, thriving lives that do not centre on being a receptor of violence and pain.

I tire of the Women’s Day and Month narrative that revolves solely around the survival of gender-based violence as if we are not whole people with aspirations that go beyond this. This continual discourse shows the dedication our patriarchal society has to our subjugation.

Sankara also alludes to a violent revolution that will come from women should we continue to be silenced. Though well-intentioned within the context of the time and quote, it again puts violence at the centre of the pursuit of emancipation.

According to hooks, however: “Contrary to misguided notions of gender equality, women do not and will not seize power and create self-love and self-esteem through violent acts. Female violence is no more liberatory than male violence.”

I have no desire for violence or to be labelled “resilient” or “imbhokodo” (rock). I would just like a chance to thrive. DM168

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R25.