by Sheri Hamilton
This year’s National Women’s Day was dominated by media headlines about the controversy of the nationality of one of the contestants of the Miss South Africa beauty pageant. As a result of mainstream and social media pressure incited by the new xenophobic Patriotic Alliance Minister of Arts and Culture, Gayton Mckenzi, and legitimised by the investigations of the DA’s Minister of Home Affairs, Leon Schreiber, the South African born Chidimma Adetshina of Nigerian and Mozambican descent, was forced to withdraw from the competition. Chidimma has now been rendered stateless – a non-person no different from the denial of citizenship by the apartheid regime to the Black majority.
In this article we are advocating for reclaiming National Women’s Day as part of reconnecting the struggle of women against GBV and femicide to a broader struggle against the neoliberal capitalist austerity that is the main cause of this scourge. We also draw the connections between women’s oppression and exploitation and the different forms of discrimination from race and nationality to genetic tests to which women are subjected based on western European constructions of femininity under capitalism. In the context of examining what are referred to as ‘feminist waves’, we draw attention to the often-neglected aspect of how historically and now, women’s struggles have formed part of the wider struggles of the working class from the Russian revolution in 1917 to the anti-Vietnam war and black civil rights movement of 1960s and 1970s. In South Africa, the Women’s march in 1956 formed part of the Defiance Campaign of 1950s against apartheid and capitalism.
There is limited support for xenophobic ideas as demonstrated by the ActionSA and the PA’s poor performance in the May 29 elections. Operation Dudula, notorious for mob action against African foreigners, did not win a single seat. But they have acted on McKenzie’s incitement to embark on a new round of xenophobic activities in Soweto and Cape Town.
The government’s utilisation of the annual Women’s Day events in recent years to focus on the struggle against gender-based violence (GBV) and femicide, was a meaningless and hypocritical ritual. Eleven women are murdered daily and one in three are affected by GBV in SA. Femicide means the intentional killing of women or girls by men motivated by a sense of ownership, power and even hatred. In addition, the number of women who die because of the ANC-dominated government’s dogged pursuit of capitalist neo-liberal austerity policies have added to these statistics. At the root of GBV and femicide that government hypocritically pretends to be committed to combatting, is its austerity measures ramped up in recent years to contain spending on essential services that women need.
The maternal mortality rate has increased significantly with over 1000 women dying annually from preventable conditions during childbirth. In the rest of the world, the leading cause of cancer deaths is breast cancer. SA’s leading cause is cervical cancer. Yet this can easily be prevented through early detection. But cancer treatment services have been cut. In Gauteng, the crisis is aggravated by incompetence, leaving millions of even these reduced budgets unspent, denying women lifesaving chemotherapy and radiation treatment.
Beauty pageants, genetic tests and women’s oppression
This year’s National Women’s Day events fighting GBV were completely overshadowed by the xenophobic attack on Chidimma Adetshina. SA born and bred, she has become the victim of a xenophobic mob, used to again inflame xenophobic sentiments through the false portrayal of African “foreigners” as the cause of South Africa’s socio-economic crisis.But, alongside xenophobia, another aspect of Chidimma’s persecution must not be permitted to be overlooked. Benign as beauty pageants may seem, the purpose they serve under capitalism, is to reinforce the patriarchy inherent in capitalism. This aspect of the role of beauty pageants is one that activists, feminists and socialists should draw attention to. The parading of women to compete against each other based on their physical attributes, to which lately has been added in a hypocritical “brains not just beauty” interrogation, and even a special pageant for “large” women and, as in the case of this year’s winner, the disabled, is in fact the objectification of women which is integral to their subjugation. It is against this that the struggle to emancipate women from oppression and exploitation should be directed.
There is some irony in the history of the struggle of women in South Africa. August 1956 not only commemorated the historic march against the hated pass laws. 1956 was also the first time that the Miss SA beauty pageant was held under apartheid – as a whites-only competition. This competition used “standards” of physical appearance and promotion of individual competition. Racially privileged white men constructed these “standards” to keep “their” women in their place of subordination. However Women’s Day is celebrated to honour the women of all races who marched on Pretoria. It recognises not only their contribution to the struggle against oppression and exploitation of all women but also of black men and national oppression as a whole. Until then, women, since the 1920s, had successfully fought off attempts to extend the pass laws from men.
The historic march on the Union Buildings occurred in the middle of the anti-apartheid Defiance Campaign of the 1950s. It was organised independently by women as a demonstration of non-racial unity of women in defiance of the institutionalised racial divisions of white minority rule and apartheid. This was the background against which the whites-only Miss SA pageant was held.
The vilification of the Algerian female boxer, Imane Khelif, for her allegedly male genetic characteristics at the recent Olympics games in Paris, serves as a brutal reminder of the extremes to which the “standards” and measures to preserve the patriarchal capitalist domination can go.The very practice of genetic “tests” to determine the socially contrived traits of the female identity are degrading and inhumane. They should be regarded as a crime against humanity. What Caster Semenya was subjected to amounts to physical torture and a violation of personal privacy and bodily integrity no less barbaric than the forced sterilisation of black women under apartheid. She was forced to ingest harmful drugs despite their horrendous side effects to lower her testosterone levels to meet patriarchal notions of femininity enforced by the sporting authorities.
The common thread between the whites only beauty pageant of 1956 and the non-racial pageant of 2024 is that both are bound together by discrimination against women; then on the basis of race; now nationality. Both continue the discrimination and prejudice against and subjugation of women. McKenzie and his supporters’ actions dishonour the memory of the heroic women of 1956.
Feminist waves
The August 1956 women’s march and the first, whites only Miss SA beauty pageant occurred against the backdrop of the beginning of what many refer to as the second wave of feminism. The first wave focused on women’s suffrage and property rights in advanced capitalist countries at a time when in much of the rest of the world, men and women suffered under colonialism’s yoke. The first wave of feminism’s main victories was the right of women to vote: New Zealand in 1893, Scandinavian countries thereafter and the US and UK in 1920 and 1928 respectively.
The promoters of the notion of waves of feminism, however, treat women’s struggles as separate, apart from and independent of the working class-led struggles for socio-economic and democratic rights historically in which women played a prominent role alongside men. The first pre-WW1 and second post WW2 waves did not occur in a vacuum.
The most far reaching of the victories of women occurred in the Soviet Union. The Russian Revolution was started by women in February 1917 protesting against the monarchy’s imposition of food rationing war measures in World War 1. The October Revolution that overthrew landlordism and capitalism was a continuation of the February or Women’s Revolution. The fact that it was the first successful socialist revolution often overshadows its achievement in the emancipation of women. The Soviet Union was the first country to extend full equal rights to women. Beyond the right to vote, women won the right to divorce, to abortion, and measures to ease the burden of women’s labour through the introduction of subsidised community laundries, canteens, and childcare facilities to facilitate women’s participation in the world’s first ever workers’ state. In addition, discrimination on the basis of gender and homo sexuality were also outlawed. All these were achieved decades before they moved to the top of the agenda in the 60s and 70s “second wave of feminism”.
What set the victories of women in the Soviet Union apart from all the others in the “first feminist wave” was that they were the fruits of the October Revolution – a socialist revolution of the entire working class of men and women together. The foundation for those victories was the overthrow of capitalism and landlordism and the establishment of the first workers democracy – the greatest event in human history to date. Pre-revolutionary Russian capitalism had been presided over by a feudal autocracy buttressed by the church ruling on behalf of the capitalist class and the landlords. It is not an accident that one of the first casualties of the Stalinist political counterrevolution that crushed workers democracy, was women’s rights. These reverses have now been entrenched by the restoration of capitalism in the former Soviet Union.
The achievement of the “second wave” in establishing, amongst others, gender equality, reproductive rights and opposition to workplace sexual discrimination as legitimate mainstream political demands similarly occurred against the background of a generalised working class struggle. The Roe vs Wade abortion rights victory in the US was achieved in the context of the civil rights struggle and the anti Vietnam protest movement.
What is referred to as the third and fourth waves have resulted in the recognition of the necessity to fight for LGBTQI rights and that of the concept of “intersectionality.” That these have undoubtedly forced to the surface a variety of gender-related oppressions that had remained more or less hidden in the crevices of capitalist society, is a step forward.
However, because the “third and fourth wave” have come to be heavily influenced by middle class and even bourgeois women, the ‘new’ or ‘post feminism’ have become the conduit for divisive ideas. It has unleashed an Oppression Olympics that have created centrifugal pressures pushing the different categories of the oppressed into competition against each other, instead of uniting them against their common enemy – the capitalist ruling class.
They have also seen the rise of notions such as “‘girl power”, celebrated for its “empowering” of women through “sexy assertiveness” and other trends. These reinforce the physical attributes of women including through surgical enhancements and skin bleaching to attain the racist inspired Caucasian-defined standards rewarded in beauty pageants.
Neoliberalism and postmodernism
The “fourth wave” or ‘new feminism’ has in fact risen against the background of the adoption of neoliberal economic policies of the free market. The middle class and bourgeois women who tend to dominate these “waves” have become the transmission belt for the ideology of neo-liberalism – postmodernism. This fact is a reflection in the ideological sphere of the neo liberal assault beginning in the early 1970s against state intervention in the economy following World War 2 in the advanced capitalist countries. These post-modernist “values” of “individualism”, “sexual subjectification, self-surveillance, and the valorisation of choice and individual empowerment through consumption are part of the co-option by the global patriarchal neoliberal hegemony”(1).
They ideologically complement and fuel the assault on the social gains of the working class in the advanced capitalist countries made in the post WW2 boom. They are useful instruments to sow disunity in the struggle against both neo-liberal socio-economic attacks and capitalism itself.
The consequences of the neoliberal economic policies adopted two years after the end of apartheid were the rapid transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. This conferred on SA its status as the most unequal country on the planet. However, a minority of black mainly middle class women were able to gain some advantage from affirmative action into the upper echelons of the corporate world and government. Half of the top ten richest women are African, Coloured and Indian. Increased access to tertiary education exposed many “born frees” to identity politics and intersectionality especially at historically white universities as seen during #FeesMustFall student protests. These ideas do not promote class unity in struggle.
The position of working-class women at the bottom of capitalist society’s social pyramid has been entrenched by neoliberalism. According to the Institute of Economic Justice (IEJ), 62.6% in SA live in poverty, 11.7m are unemployed. 77% of those still actively looking for jobs are long-term unemployed. The burden falls most heavily on the shoulders of black working class women amongst whom unemployment and poverty are the greatest. The budget cuts this year, as over the last decade, will continue to shut the lid firmly on any possibility of escape from social deprivation. According to the IEJ, R270 billion will have been cut in budget expenditure between 2019/20 and 2026/27. They calculated this translates into 23% less spend per person over the 8 years from 2019/2020 to 2026/27.
Social spending cuts hit women hardest
Women will bear the brunt of the consequences of cuts in critical and social care services where e.g. it is estimated that R518 less per health care user will be spent over the next 3 years despite huge doctor and healthcare professional shortages in a collapsing health care system. Women subjected to physical violence and beating by male partners must wait for hours for emergency vehicles to transport them to hospitals. When they arrive, they routinely wait several hours in emergency waiting rooms before receiving attention. Many female headed households depend on childcare centres to be able to work and support their families. Yet, despite a slight increase in the Early Childhood Development (ECD) budget allocation this year, women still struggle to find affordable child care. This is because this year’s allocation still only represents less than half of what was budgeted for this critical service. Moreover, budget cuts to services provided by Non-Profit Organisations (NPOs)and the Department of Social Welfare increases the already heavy burden women carry when NPOs providing care for children, the disabled and aged are forced to return them to their guardians who are almost always women.
Yet, the rich in South Africa continue to amass their billions on the back of major tax cuts that they have been gifted since the end of apartheid, amounting hundreds of billions according to IEJ estimates. Corporate income tax has been reduced from 52% under apartheid to 27% at present. The same applies to individuals earning over R100 000 and more per annum whose personal income tax has been significantly reduced. These transfers of wealth from the poor to the rich comes at the cost of massive cuts in social expenditure and infrastructure maintenance as the state prioritises debt repayment incurred from this self-created budget deficit consuming 20% of the annual budget. It also comes, with the notable exception of those higher up in public service like the cabinet and MPs, stagnant wages at best, and cuts in real terms for most workers in the private and public sector. The level of violence and femicide that ranks SA as among the most violent countries for women in the world flow from these policies.
The struggle for women’s emancipation means a struggle for socialism
Women’s rights cannot be achieved without addressing poverty, unemployment and inequality. The common argument that the government lacks ‘political will’ is mistaken. Any government’s “political will” is determined by the class interests it serves. Defeating poverty, unemployment and inequality requires a struggle based on a programme to unite the working class majority to counterpose the collective will of the majority against that of the capitalist minority.
The complete emancipation of women from oppression both economically and culturally cannot be achieved without the eradication of the conditions that give rise to them: capitalism and the institutionalisation of cultural oppression. That means, in the final analysis the overthrow of capitalism and the socialist transformation of society. To bring society to that point requires struggling for reforms without any illusion that they are sustainable under capitalism.
It is no accident that worldwide today, the assault on women’s rights including the gains of women and LGBTQI rights are occurring against the background of the worst crisis of capitalism since the 1930s. The immediate target of the US Supreme Court decision to reverse the right to abortion is of course women. But it is part of a broader offensive against the working class and democratic rights. The reversal of Roe vs Wade after 50 years, the so-far unsuccessful attempt to reintroduce Female Genital Mutilation FGM in Gambia, the banning of women from school and work in Afghanistan show that women’s rights cannot be guaranteed under capitalism. A number of African governments have introduced a ban on same sex marriage. In SA these ideas are finding their voice in parties like Al Ja-ma, the MKP and African Christian Democratic Party.
At the same time worldwide, women are rising in resistance against the rotten ruling capitalist elites. In India, at the time of writing countrywide protests against the rape and murder of a female doctor are continuing and have evolved into a wider movement for equality. The oppression of women, like racism has been a critical tool in the infinitesimally small parasitic capitalist minority’s strategy of divide and rule from birth.
Today the task is not only to defend past gains against the offensive by the capitalist ruling class. For the overwhelming majority of women there has never been an end to wage discrimination. Therefore, the demand for equal pay for work of equal value must be stepped up alongside other demands: for the provision of adequate social services on the basis of needs determined by women themselves, for shelters for abused women, child care, proper training for social workers and police officers in the handing of GBV etc. But in the struggle for such reforms, it must be understood that any gains made one day will be attacked again tomorrow as long as capitalism continues. Only the overthrow of capitalism itself and the socialist transformation of society can guarantee the complete eradication of women’s oppression.
It is understandable that beauty pageants may be seen as offering an equal opportunity for women to launch their careers that could lead them on to a path of fame and fortune while doing charity work. The reality is that the competitions are costly and therefore not equal, some of them demand contestants raise funds for charitable causes as part of the qualifying criteria. In addition to contributing to reproducing the patriarchal culture, pageants serve as a major distraction from the problems that confront especially black working-class women. The furore surrounding Chidimma Adetshina’s nationality throws more dust into the eye. Blaming African foreign nationals for society’s ills encouraged by the media, draws attention away from the real source of the problems – the neo-liberal capitalist economic policies the ANC will continue as head of the GNU.
The government‘s focus of Women’s Day on individual, mainly middle class and bourgeois women’s “achievements” like corporate CEOs, board and parliamentary positions is consistent with the class interests it represents. It raises false hopes of working class women that equality lies on the road of such “achievements.” In fact it celebrates the “achievements” of a tiny minority in a system that reproduces inequalities impossible to eradicate under capitalism. But most importantly, it buries the long history of women’s struggle for the rights women have won that only a few are able to access.
Working class women must organise themselves independently to honour the legacy of the women of 1956. This will enable them to become a fourth theatre of struggle alongside communities, youth and organised workers to create a mass workers’ party on a socialist programme. Only in this way can the plight of the millions of working-class women living in abject poverty, eking out an existence in the informal economy, as hawkers, waste pickers, domestic and farmworkers, in the lowest paying jobs to supplement the negligible social grants that some are able to access, be placed at the forefront.
Equally important is the need to expose the threat to the hard-won albeit mostly paper rights of women that some of the political parties who form part of the GNU pose. The threat of the MKP to exile pregnant teens on Robben Island may be laughed off as a joke but the tolerance for such bigotry and misogyny represents the thin edge of the wedge that allow ideas harking back to apartheid and colonialism reinforced by customary laws to gain ascendance. The seriousness of the crisis that teenage pregnancies represent in SA is shown in the country’s ranking as among the highest in the world. One in four teenagers fall pregnant before the age of 20 years. Most of these pregnancies especially those of girls under 16 years are the result of rape. They are not, as MKP implies simple cases of juvenile delinquency or the breakdown of pre-capitalist tribal culture. They are part and parcel of the GBV scourge women and girls suffer under. Therefore, the MKP’s policies of imprisonment amount to criminalising children who are victims of rape.
The parties that are represented in the GNU have been rejected by the majority of the working class. We need a party that will serve the interest of the working class, women and people who identify as non binary or LGBTQI. The MWP has consistently campaigned for a mass workers party on a socialist programme to unite the struggles of the working class in the different theatres of communities, youth, workers and women. By uniting the localised efforts of women in a struggle around for example, gender based violence, cuts in social services for care work or health services, or for housing, we will be building a women’s movement from the ground up drawing them into a united struggle to take up immediate issues they identify as priorities. Such a struggle will honour the legacy of the women 1956 and take it much further. The gains won in the past can only be extended and guaranteed through the socialist transformation of society.
Such a society will of course not immediately rid itself of the prejudices and practices rooted in patriarchy that predate capitalism. But with the resources of society under democratic collective control it will provide the material basis for their eradication. This will lay the foundation to build the kind of society that will guarantee women their economic independence. It will be possible to put in place the social and physical infrastructure for housing, childcare, restaurants, laundry and other services that will minimise the burden on women and enable them to pursue their full potential as equals.
(1)Ref Boshoff, P (2021) Media and Communication Vol.9, Issue 2