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There weren’t nearly enough men in the room for an event that needed them to be there to see, to hear, to empathise and, above all, to finally take action.
Is’thunzi Sabafazi (Dignity of Women), hosted at the University of Johannesburg’s Soweto Campus as part of the celebrations marking Nelson Mandela’s centenary, was convened by Graça Machel.
Machel said a celebration of Madiba’s century wouldn’t be complete without Oprah Winfrey – her presence, her voice and her power.
She also underlined the importance of placing the girl child, the adolescent girl, the young women, and the adult woman at the centre of the conversation.
She went on to say that all of them must be “inviolate in her own dignity”.
On the scourge of gender-based violence she said: “No one can say it’s not my business.”
This was the central message of an event that, though made to shine by Winfrey’s presence, resounded with the collective purpose of the audience and panel.
Wearing all white, Winfrey radiated confidence and resilience.
“Every time I enter a board room and I am the only woman, or when I am in space where I am the only person of colour for 50 miles, I always have to remind myself that I come as one, but I stand as 10 000,” Winfrey said, referring to one her favourite poems by late poet and US activist Maya Angelou, who penned the poem Our Grandmothers, which includes the line: “I go forth along, and stand as ten thousand.”
On this, her 36th visit to South Africa, she told the story of being invited to spend 10 days and 10 nights staying in Mandela’s house in Qunu back in 2002 when she came to South Africa to hand out toys, books and clothes to children.
She said she had 29 meals with him and Machel and during that time – she learned at every meal and it was where her academy was born.
Not everybody can build a school, she said, but you can offer assistance to those closest to you.
She said when she was at Madiba’s funeral “it didn’t feel like he had passed away from us, but that he passed through us… we are the children of Mandela”.
Machel, in conversation with panellists Mama Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and Josina Machel, said for the war on the bodies of women and children to end, we would need to see the acts of violence as a personal matter and a threat to the fabric of society. That when one woman or one girl is abused it must be seen as a criminal act on the body of women across the globe.
Josina related how she was subjected to violence twice, the second time at the hands of the system that is perpetrator-centric and how her mother, Graca, reacted when Josina first told her that she had been beaten.
“We do not face the sun the same way,” she said.
Mlambo-Ngcuka, meanwhile, was frank about the resources wasted talking to women who are victims when it is the men of the world who need to do the work.
“Men must end child marriage,” she said. “If men decide not to beat a woman – case closed.”
She went on to point out that women’s bodies around the globe are legislated and that men’s are not.
She also encouraged men to step up – “guys, you can do this,” she urged, while also wryly pointing out that we were all waiting for the men’s movement against gender-based violence to get going.
She also said she was disappointed by how few leaders led from the front of this issue and urged those present to join movements and to hold government to account.
