On love: speaking at the DSG Matric Dinner

Last night I spoke at the Diocesan School for Girls in Makhanda. Here's a copy of the speech. I like to think of this post in conversation with the previous one about the art of loving. 

I’m going to start with a poem written by my friend Makhosazana Xaba: (read here):

As tempting as it is for the English teacher in me, I won’t break it down like I would in an English lesson. I’m just going to leave it in the moment and let the women’s names linger in the air.  Hopefully by the end of this speech you’ll see why I started with this poem. I want these women’s stories to be in the room today as we share your rite of passage which marks the end of your time in high school.

I was supposed to speak to last year’s matrics and it didn’t work out so Mrs Frayne said I would come this year. So I’ve been carrying you in my heart since then. Luckily I’ve heard stories about you and had a chance of spending time with you in a workshop at the end of your Grade 11 year. So for a change, I’m speaking to a crowd I have a sense of. I have a sense of some of the challenges you’ve faced. I have a sense of the anxieties you deal with. I have a sense of who you are because I’ve also been in a girls’ school and I taught at a girls. My life is all about what it means to be a woman. I was raised by women. Strong, loud, broken, praying black women. I spend most of my time writing about women and what it means being in this body at this particular time in history.

And I’m sure you’ve already figured out that it isn’t easy being a woman in 2018. It isn’t easy being a black woman in 2018. If you don’t believe me, look across the world; Hillary Clinton does not have a job she is qualified to do. It was given to a man who joined politics as a joke. Serena Williams is depicted as throwing a tantrum by an Australian cartoonist because she stood up for herself. Diane Rwigara was imprisoned for inciting insurrection because she dared to confront Paul Kagame in the  Rwandan elections last year. Nude photographs of her were released shortly after she announced her candidacy.  In South Africa the ANCWL said South Africa was not ready for a woman president. And now we have Cyril Ramaphosa who was implicated in the Marikana Massacre which killed 34 miners in 2012; the largest massacre in a democratic South Africa which brings back memories of the 1960s Sharpville Massacre. I could tell you about the statistics of femicide and gender based violence in our country, I could tell you about stories about women’s livelihood who do not make it into the news cycle. But that would defeat the object of what this day represents; a new season for you.

I guess it’s difficult to think about this season without thinking about what you need in order to survive in the world outside DSG. I could tell you to believe in yourself. I could tell you to speak up for yourself. But instead I found myself thinking about love. I've been going through a season of learning about love: loving others and loving myself. I have a friend who has a deep understanding about his purpose in life which is all about love. He talks about love in relation to institutions all the time. All the time. I have a tattoo on my arm about love because love consumes me even though I feel like I don’t understand what it is most of the time.

Last month I attended the inaugural lecture commemorating the life of Fezekile Ntsukela Khuzwayo; the woman who pressed rape charges against Jacob Zuma and lost and ended up in exile. When Fez returned to South Africa I met her through an organisation, 1 in 9 Campaign which had supported her during the rape trial. Fez and I became friends until she died two years ago. At the inaugural lecture, Pregs Govender was the speaker. Pregs used to be a member of parliament and is the author of the book Love and Courage. In her attempt of remembering Fez she spoke about love. She said that in a world of hate love isn’t taken seriously. She also said love is the quality of our being. She asked two questions I’m still trying to answer:

• What will we do to remember our wholeness?
• How do we sustain ourselves?

Our lives as women in 2018 are intricately linked to a history that has asked these two questions of women since the moment a need arose for women to find a way to survive. I don’t want to believe that patriarchy and misogyny have been a part of our lives since the beginning of time. I want to believe that there was a time of peace and people flourished and lived their best lives and patriarchy and misogyny began as a result of clambering for scarce resources. Some argue that patriarchy begins with the Adam and Eve narrative because Eve is used to justify women’s oppression. No matter where and when patriarchy and misogyny began, it is here now but I don’t believe it has to be a reality forever. And love is one of the ways to respond to this. And by love I’m not talking about a feeling. I’m talking about an existential and metaphysical orientation if we are to keep ourselves whole, if we are to sustain ourselves. By love I'm referring to a practice that reminds us of our humanity: ubuntu bethu.

Once upon a time people believed that racism as a system was inevitable but through the civil rights movement in America, people challenged this idea and pushed the imagination. One of the leaders of the civil rights movement, John Lewis, referred to the civil rights movement as a love movement. He says “The movement created what I like to call a nonviolent revolution. It was love at its best. It’s one of the highest forms of love. That you beat me, you arrest me, you take me to jail, you almost kill me and in spite of that, I’m still gonna love you”. I find this very difficult to believe: that love can be an appropriate response to systemic oppression and dehumanisation. But the results of the civil rights movement are still being felt in America and in places across the world which find inspiration in movements and work which challenge us to make the world a better place.

We can’t make the world a better place without love. One of my favourite poets who wrote in the 1920s, Nontsizi Mgqwetho wrote about making the world a better place and my favourite line from one of her poems is “Asinakuthula umhlaba ubolile” translated into English as we cannot keep quiet while the world is in shambles. Your DSG world is different to the real world. If you haven’t already, you will encounter a world that is in shambles. And there’s no running away from the fact that it’s not your fault that the world is what it is; but it is what you are inheriting.

When I was in high school I discovered the word idealism. I think someone used it against me to insult me because I wasn’t a realist. I latched onto the word because it pointed in the direction of something I believed at the time: that the world is not good enough and we have to make it better. I still believe that. We have to make it better, mostly because our lives are at stake. Quite literally, our lives as women are at stake.

I’ve never known what it’s like not to be thinking about the world and how to make it a better place. Growing up poor and black and having the opportunity of going to a good school and having a loving church community—with all the problems and complexities churches and schools have—I began to see how having loving communities in the form of some of my teachers and friends and church helped me survive poverty. My life changed because I had teachers, friends and church family who loved me. My sister and I have a dark sense of humour when it comes to our childhood; we always laugh and think how did we survive? Statistically, I shouldn’t be here but that’s a story for another day. But I am here because people loved me. They made choices to share their time, resources, homes and an endless list of things that it takes to humanise someone. Because poverty dehumanises. So because I am a survivor I believe in love. I believe we can make the world a better place. And that’s what I ask you to do as you transition into an ugly world. Choose yourself. Choose community. Choose life. Choose love.

I started with a poem and I’m going to end with a poem by Alice Walker that she shared with students in 1972: Be nobody’s darling...

Be nobody's darling; 

Be an outcast.

Take the contradictions

Of your life

And wrap around

You like a shawl,

To parry stones

To keep you warm.

Watch the people succumb

To madness

With ample cheer; 

Let them look askance at you

And you askance reply.

Be an outcast; 

Be pleased to walk alone

(Uncool) 

Or line the crowded

River beds

With other impetuous

Fools.

Make a merry gathering

On the bank

Where thousands perished

For brave hurt words

They said.

But be nobody's darling; 

Be an outcast.

Qualified to live

Among your dead.