Passive Consumerism

Next Tuesday is International Women’s day. One of my friends remarked how boring a topic this is when I told her I was considering it for today’s article. 

For my part, I was reluctant at first to write to this subject because I feel that I’ve been writing quite a lot to women’s issues over the past few weeks.

But sanity prevailed when I realized that for the first time since I started ‘teaching’ about Women’s Day over two years ago,  I have national reach through this column, to help correct the inaccuracies around Swazis celebrating ‘Women’s Day’.  

Yes, we seem to be the perpetual victims of passive alien culture consumption, leading us to celebrating historical events that have nothing to do with us.

Quite frankly, it’s been excruciating to observe practically the whole country – public and private entities, invest financial and emotional resources to commemorating Women’s Day on August 9 of each year.  

As, I recall, there was even a high profile and highly publicized awards ceremony which honored women considered to be the crème de la crème of Swaziland society on this day and throughout August which has over the years been boldly declared ‘Women’s Month’.

This has been embarrassing to say the least because it uncovers the depth of our society’s ignorance and readiness to consume anything from those we consider relevant (including mainstream media) without questioning; because the truth is that August 9 Women’s Day is a day exclusive to neighboring South Africa and South Africa alone.

I mean, I can understand how we end up with such a national embarrassment – it’s because we practically all live in South Africa. 

In as much as we are the first to laugh at the negative effects of South Africa’s kind of democracy like ‘EFF being disrespectful in parliament’ and protesting citizens torching public facilities, the truth is our lives are deeply embedded in South Africa’s systems and structures.

We easily send our children to their Cefups Academy and Matsulu high for secondary schooling, all the way through to their Rhodes and Wits Universities because they just have more options when it comes to the education system.

Heck, even some of our mothers make the great trek down to Piet Retief, Pongola, Ermelo, Ngwavuma et al to get monthly pension grants because they, like many even in high profile positions in the Swaziland government, are holders of South Africa ID documents; fully fledged South African citizens. 

We happily shop in Nelspruit, Jozi and Durban every other weekend with the South African Rands dispensed from our Swazi banks. 

Even our electricity, cellphone network and other commodities and luxuries like the television channels my mother watches, come from Mzansi.  

I could go on and on…

I fully understand that as Africans, we have a shared history strengthened by our solidarity against colonial forces, so I honestly do not see a problem in mirroring our Swazi identity on the heritage shared with South Africa. 

However, I think we have to be consistent; if we are choosing to continue to own South Africa’s August 9 women’s day, we need to at least make an attempt to own even just a fraction of what earned this day a place in South Africa’s national calendar.

What I mean is we need to understand the historical context of this day; that it is a day born of high grade political flavor, a day in 1956 when South African women of all races spoke truth to the ruthless power of the Apartheid government. 

They marched to the Union Buildings, risking their lives, to tell the inhuman government that they were done letting it continue to restrict their right to move freely across the country – August 9, 1956 was the day they chose to renounce Pass laws.

And if as Swazis we do choose to own this day in its historic entirety, I’d be curious to know if we’d be willing to consider commemorating other South African days with the same human rights advocacy element e.g. June 16, which commemorates the 1976 students revolt in Soweto, March 21 Human Rights Day which commemorates the day apartheid police killed defiant black people opposing pass laws, Freedom Day on April 27 which commemorates South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994.

Even the March 8 UN International Women’s Day which we Swazis have a right to commemorate by virtue of being a United Nations (UN) member state, has a history rooted in fighting for social and political freedoms including gender parity.

March 8 International Women’s Day was first observed in 1977 when UN member states including Swaziland proclaimed the day as ‘UN Day for Women’s Rights and World Peace’. Perhaps this brief history lesson is something to ruminate on as we get into the bandwagon of celebrating it on Tuesday.

What is the story of our current reality as Swazi women when juxtaposed with what this day stands for? Are we aligned? Are we happy? 

Is there cause for celebration when our elderly women still have to make an illegal monthly pilgrimage to South Africa to get an E1, 505.00 pension grant because the Swaziland version of this grant, a paltry E265.00 per month, is just too painful to even write on this paper?

Women are the pillars of our society and it is said that the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged best by the way its women are treated; can we say we are proud that our disabled mothers receive only E240.00 in disability grants from our taxes?

Related read: Related read, a blog post I wrote in August 2013: Women's Day: Blame Apartheid for Our Miseducation