Toward a So women's n WOM

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tional secretary of the Workers Organization for Socialist Action (WOSA), a South African revolutionary group. Andrews recently completed an 18-city speaking tour of North America, which was sponsored by the Democracy in South Africa Tour Committee and endorsed by Socialist Action and other organizations.

The following interview with Andrews was conducted prior to the tour by Catherine Rosehill. It first appeared in the French feminist magazine, Cahiers du Feminism. This English-language version is taken from the April 13, 1992, edition of International Viewpoint.

Question: What are the main features of Black women's lives in South Africa, both in the families and in work places?

Mercia Andrews: I think that the idea of the liberation of women from oppression in the home as well as exploitation in the workplace is at different stages in different circles. Debates are occurring but mainly within certain political organizations. It certainly hasn't reached townships or rural villages, where it is in its infancy.

In this country, there has never been an autonomous women's movement amongst the oppressed women. Women's organizations have been mainly linked to political organizations.

Because of this, they were never free to follow their own agenda. Women's organizations have neglected the whole issue of gender and of the position of women in our society. Mainly, they were the support mechanisms for political organizations. So, I should say, as in the rest of Africa, there is no real grassroots movement of women.

Over the last 10 years women have become unionized, but even here they have had to battle for positions of union leadership. A classic example is of the South African Catering and Commercial Union (SACCU), one of the unions which has won the most gains for women in the workplace but where very few of these women are represented in the leadership.

Another example is the teachers union, where 70 percent of the membership are women but very few are represented in the leadership. The legacy of these organizations was the idea that first we must build the organization before gender issues could be taken up.

Within the home, I think the traditional role of women is the same. Even for young women, it hasn't really changed. Women still play the role they have always played, providing services for their husbands or for their children.

The church has played an important role in tying a rope around the necks of women. Things like wearing jeans are taboo in many Black communities. Most women, even those who are in the trade-union movement or who are in leading bodies, still object to women wearing jeans.

If you look at a simple thing like abortion rights, everybody is afraid to put it on the agenda—political organizations as well as the women's movement. In fact, it is quite ironic that women in the [ruling white] National Party have taken this up before the liberation movement has done So.

To sum up, as in the rest of Africa, very little progress has been made in liberating women from the home and giving them leadership positions within political organizations.

In the workplace, some gains have been won such as paternity rights and so on, but Roger Meintjes intie education, has been only for a very small percentage of women.

Question: What is the proportion of women involved in wage labor?

MA: By 1989 (before these last two years of recession and lay-offs) it was up to 48 percent of urban women. But these figures are not accurate because they exclude women in the so-called Bantustans, and it does not include under-employment. There are hundreds of thousands of women in the informal sector.

Question: What are the biggest sectors of women's employment?

MA: Commercial and catering food industry work, domestic work and garment work—in the traditional female sectors. In the metal and electrical industries, there are very few women. In mining, there are no Black women. So women are concentrated in the traditional health and service sectors.

Question: What has been the role of women in the most recent major struggles?

MA: This question needs to be approached at a number of levels. If you take community struggles, economic issues, housing issues and so on—in the neighborhood organizations and in civic associations—ordinary women have played an important role.

They have fought battles with the municipalities, with the authorities, and with the police and against the state. Often they have to take the lead because they have been driven to do so by the economic situation.

So, the struggle for improved housing, for electricity, or for education, has been predominantly fought by women. Within the trade-union movement both men and women have been involved in struggles. Here, women have often been a little more reluctant to lead these struggles. this has been consolidated into women leading organizations.

Mostly, they fight the battles and then return back home to the oppressions within the family-of their husbands not allowing them to attend meetings. During the day when the husband is at work, the women are in the battle field, and at night the men go to meetings and the women stay home.

Also, I think in many organizations like the civic movement and the neighborhood movement, the majority of members are women, as is the case in the unemployed and cooperative movements.

In the church the women are also the bulk of the membership. Overall, women in this country have played an important and major role in building organizations and in the struggle for a new South Africa.

Question: There are in this country two different types of division: the apartheid division into racial groups and the division between social groups.

How have these two lines of division affected the possibility of building a genuine grassroots feminist movement, feminist consciousness, and women's mobilizations?

MA: Firstly, because of the legacy of apartheid and of tradition, you find that many Black working-class women from the townships have very few of the skills or education of their white and middle-class women counterparts.

Therefore, in many of the organizations the debates around gender issues do not take place at the grassroots level, because people have not been exposed to these questions. The idea of a discussion around sexism is difficult.

I find this in my own work. It will take a long time to be able to say to women that they have a different role in society. We need to find a mechanism to take these debates to ordinary women.

An example is the big gender conference that was organized in mid-1991. Invited were feminist academics, and activists in political and other organizations, some grassroots women as well as some interational guests.

At this conference, 80 percent of the women were either white intellectuals or middle-class coloreds or Indians. Ten percent were women from political organizations, and there was a small percentage of women from grassroots organizations.

All these academics bad papers to present. By the second day, the 20 percent of activists who were Black women and rural women stopped the conference. They said "we are sick and tired of you academics and white feminists coming to give papers on us, Black women. You do research on Black women in rural areas, Black women in the factories, but you never taught us the skills to do this.

"You never taught us the skills to talk about our own lives, to control our own lives. You want to write on our backs and often it is not even to make a contribution to our liberation but to make a contribution to your academic qualifications and we object to that". . So they stopped the conference.

That was the start of a revolt against the circles that make decisions and carry out the debates around working women. So the point I am making is that unless we politicos find a new vehicle to take some of these issues to rural and working-class BEBONGWI women, we will not have a real feminist movement in this country or a movement that is going to be able to speak about the interests of working class women.

We will have a petty-bourgeois feminist movement that will highlight irrelevant issues.

So, we will have to grapple with this. We don't yet know how to do it. Many of us political activists have neglected these issues and have instead built political organizations at the expense of building a women's movement in this country.

Opinion: What are the specific concerns of young Black women involved in social struggles?

MA: There are a number of issues that are coming to the fore. One of them is the concern that women often make up the bulk of the membership of organizations but that they are not in the leadership.

There is also a desire to understand politics. Women have often been pushed to sing songs and shout slogans without really understanding the political issues. In our own organization there is the desire to set up study groups and debate the political issues raised by the feminist movement internationally.

There is also a demand for a different approach to education. People want to go to school, to educate themselves.

So, people want all the things in the new South Africa that have been previously denied to them. They want the fruits of their struggle, to go to school, to have work.

There isn't a specific issue of what women want as women except the question of violence against women. In 1991, there were many protests against this violence and women are saying that this is a political issue and that they want greater safety.

There is also a very strong anti-labola feeling. Labola is the traditional way of buying a bride-an arranged marriage between two families. Women are saying that they do not want to be bought and sold like cattle. Working women in the trade unions have taken up this question.

Opinion: In a country where people are

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I think it is because of the maternal The working women see it as part of instinct that asks: if I lose my job who their lives, and even if they fight back, there isn't a political consciousness about will provide for the family? But in many cases, as in the SACCU strike, as well as it. Another example is that in many of our played a leading role. woman marries the chief, he is allowed to So, I should say that over the last 10 have three or four more wives, and she years the role of women in fighting for lib- must accept that. This is part of the tradieration in this country has been very tion and culture not only amongst significant. It is unfortunate that none of Muslims but amongst Zulus as well. this has been consolidated into women Over the last two years, a gay and lesleading organizations. bian movement has emerged. In 1990, Mostly, they fight the battles and then there was a march in Johannesburg, but return back home to the oppressions within most of those marching wore a bag over the family—of their husbands not allowing their head because it is against the law in them to attend meetings. During the day this society to be gay. And to be gay in an when the husband is at work, the women African township is even worse because it are in the battle field, and at night the men is seen as being sick. int role vomen. boo in romen, rodies, = aborit it on as well it, it is ruling his up s done a, very erating 3 them 1 orgae been on, but emplo

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communities it is still the case that, if a the nurses' strike last year, they have