The spectre of Margaret Thatcher is haunting Britain as that country prepares for Liz Truss as prime minister. In Italy, another woman, Giorgia Meloni could become that country’s prime minister. It shouldn’t be a problem. Or should it? Well, yes, maybe. No, maybe, but seriously…

Axiomatically stated (albeit with heavy caveats) there’s nothing a man can do that a woman cannot. I feel silly just writing that; it’s stating the bleeding obvious, innit? There are, of course, important physical and biological differences which separate the binary of male and female bodies. The fact remains women can be as good or bad as men when it comes to anything intellectual or… Suzanne regularly beat me at tennis. I really should stop.

Politically, especially when it comes to things like national pride or patriotism — two of the things about public life I detest — women can be as cruel, insensitive, brilliant and visionary as men. We (the media and especially men) simply hold them to a different standard.

The most recent example of these double standards — or as I would have told my students more than a decade ago, “common sense made under conditions of male hegemony” — was the case of Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin who dared to be normal (cuss words deleted).

Also, I have yet to hear evidence of a female soldier refusing to fire a weapon at an enemy target simply because that enemy in the crosshairs is a woman. You don’t have to be a feminist to accept any or all of the above. Unless of course, you believe, as one person in the Twitterjaya has suggested (and trust me, having spent time among evangelicals in the Upper Midwest of the United States, there are very many who share the belief) that the Bible is or at least should be the ultimate arbiter of human relations.

Rise Georgia Meloni and the Brothers of Italy

What am I banging on about? Well, away from democratic Britain, there’s a very real chance that a woman, Giorgia Meloni of the political party, Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) will be democratically elected to the highest offices of power in Italy later this month. A cause for celebration, right? Well, not so fast.

Meloni represents the far-right with ideas about women, god and the family that are not terribly different from the Twitterjaya’s “feminist turned housewife” — as noted above.

Meloni has claimed that there was a war against what she described as “natural motherhood” as part of the destruction of Christian civilisation: “LGBT lobbies want to beat down our sexual identity with gender propaganda in schools, in the media, in institutions, with the ‘selfie’ principle of ‘I am not what I am, but what I feel,’ which mainly hurts women’s rights and achievements. Our spirituality, our sense of our sacred and Christian roots are under attack in the name of absolute relativism and aggressive atheism.”

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Meloni has at various times been described, not without some justification, and depending on who you want to believe, as having fascist roots or as not actually a fascist, but… Meloni has previously said that the Italian Fascist leader, Benito Mussolini, was a “good politician” and “everything he did, he did it for Italy. There haven’t been other politicians like him in the last 50 years.” 

With the wave of ethnonationalism and ethno-chauvinism sweeping Europe, and across Asia and in South Africa (mutatis mutandis), Meloni has been in lock-step, displaying her xenophobia (especially targeting black men and Muslims) following the rape of a Ukrainian woman in Piacenza, Italy.

“One cannot remain silent in the face of this atrocious episode of sexual violence against a Ukrainian woman carried out in daytime in Piacenza by an asylum seeker… A hug to this woman. I will do everything I can to restore security to our cities,” Meloni wrote.

To be clear (explained David Broder, a historian of Italian and French communism) “rape and femicide are certainly no foreign import to Italy: up till 1981, a rapist could evade prosecution by marrying his victim, and until 1996 rape was considered a crime against ‘public morality’ rather than the victim herself. Yet, Meloni and her party constantly present violence against women in racialised terms.”

We’re actually quite fortunate in South Africa in that the founders of our democracy placed gender front and centre of public policies, state and society. Sit down at the back! I know there is a veritable war against women underway in the country, and that patriarchy has probably never flourished as well as it currently is.

However, there are women across sectors of society who are exceedingly progressive and who can lead this country as well or better than any man. (The South African presidency is a poisoned chalice, though). From my high horse, I feel confident to say that my favourite candidate for president, very early on in the democratic era, was the late Albertina Sisulu. Speaking of a Sisulu — for every Andile Lungisa, there is a Lindiwe Sisulu, for every John “Wife as Roadkill” Steenhuisen there is a Helen Zille, and for Nelson Mandela, there was Albertina Sisulu.

I have wandered like a rhizome a bit — the mind does what the mind does best — but the point is that we need better leadership in the world. From Finland’s Sanna Marin, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern, and looking back to Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway, Mary Robinson of Ireland and Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, women have been great examples of outstanding leadership — if only men would step aside (cough). It all starts with dismantling the “common sense” and the “normality” of male leadership.

The main obstacle is not political, but social. I often use social to encapsulate political, economic and society in general, but socially and culturally patriarchy and “accepted” roles of male leadership (I think I am expected to add “cis” somewhere, but angazi) especially orthodox religious teachings that may insist that women are merely baby-making machines.

I don’t know where all this is going to, but a couple of weeks ago I walked past a mosque on Long Street, Cape Town and muttered to myself: “Maybe I will come and check out this mosque when the imam is a woman.” DM