TRUTH BE TOLD
ALL THAT TALK AND IT’S STILL TOUGH FOR WOMEN
Image credit: NATHAN DUMLAO on Unsplash.
By DR VICKI BISMILLA
Journalist Shanthini Naidoo has written a book titled Women in Solitary: Inside the Female Resistance to Apartheid (Tafelberg, 2020, Cape Town, South Africa).
The writer interviewed four women, now in their eighties, who, as young activists, were held in solitary confinement in South African prisons in the 1960s for resisting the racist apartheid system of government.
Their memories chronicle the horrendous conditions of their solitary imprisonments lying on cold cement floors, where the meagre food they were tossed was rotten; where, when menstruating, they were told to cup their hands to gather their blood, a dirty blanket, a bucket as toilet in windowless cells, with ants and cockroaches as their only “company”.
These unimaginable experiences were repeated over and over again in South African prisons where another woman in solitary confinement, in her nakedness, used a plastic bag to make panties to cover herself before she was shot dead by security police (Devi Rajab: The Mercury, October 5, 2020).
In the fight for human rights around the world women have struggled against personal atrocities like rape, child marriages, acid attacks, physical violence, bondage, mutilation, starvation, trafficking... the dehumanizing list is long. They often have no allies and no help.
Women have no other means to fight for justice other than through resistance movements against gender violence, repressive policies, racial prejudice, trafficking and the expropriation of indigenous rights and freedoms.
There are documents like Women’s Rights Are Human Rights (United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, New York and Geneva 2014), which are impressive but toothless and do nothing to protect women and children against violence and eroded human rights in an increasingly cruelty-dominated world.
Atrocities are being committed not only in war-plagued countries but in the apparently pristine, human rights ensconced western world. Movements and marches like the recent #MeToo movement to reclaim women’s bodies from the clutches of abusive men have their moments and some court victories, but has abuse against women and children abated?
Many women suffer in silence.
A colleague only very recently confided about the infidelity and abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband in all of the years of her marriage. She has only spoken up nearly a decade after her husband’s death.
Why do women remain silent? In my past work with women’s centres I discovered that most women cannot speak about their suffering.
Their reasons are as diverse as are the women themselves. To protect their children, to avoid further violence, “shame”, not having the financial means to escape, family pressure to keep silent, fear... and the list goes on.
I remember, when I was an executive in an educational organization, I was asked to assist a young woman enrolled in another organization.
Her uncle had seen her, books in hand, at a bus stop talking to male class peers. As soon as she got home she was locked in a closet to protect “her honour”, and kept there for weeks.
She managed to get word to a past teacher who managed to negotiate her release, whisked her into a shelter and secured a placement in our organization so she could continue her studies. Sadly, she was once again captured, sent to family “back home”, married off and raped by her groom’s brother. Her story had a somewhat salvageable ending, one that was made possible by her indomitable spirit – she escaped, returned to Canada under protective custody and thankfully her family, contacted by folks “back home”, wanted nothing to do with her, regarding her as “tainted goods” for leaving her marriage.
She lived.
Millions of women do not survive.
Dr Vicki Bismilla is a retired Superintendent of Schools and retired college Vice-President, Academic, and Chief Learning Officer. She has authored two books.