Post-colonial Africa finds itself at a crossroads of opportunity and disaster. On the one hand, Africa continues to boast rich mineral resources, on the other African states are riddled by the paranoid leadership of corrupt post-liberation governments that do not exist in the interests of the people or African independence.

The diagnosis of a self-enriching and unimaginative emerging petite bourgeoisie post the struggle for liberation by Frantz Omar Fanon rings true. He wrote pointedly in the Pitfalls of National Consciousness that “The leader pacifies the people. For years on end after independence has been won, we see him, incapable of urging on the people to a concrete task, unable really to open the future to them or of flinging them into the path of national reconstruction, that is to say, of their own reconstruction; we see him reassessing the history of independence and recalling the sacred unity of the struggle for liberation.”

This is the reality of African states today. They are rooted in the romance of history but unable to reconstruct an Africa that competes in the global world. Poverty is rife, developmental and industrialization levels are low and African economies dwindle into nothingness decade by decade. This is primarily because we seek to undo colonial underdevelopment done to us as a collective, as isolated and individual nations

President Kwame Nkrumah famously emphasized the importance of continental unity at the height of imperial domination of Africa. Nkrumah led Ghana to independence, but he understood that to attempt to forge an independent Pan-Africanist agenda, one that would free Ghana from the grip of dependency and underdevelopment by the West required a broad united front of African nations. It required a consolidated effort and solidarity, where African resources were used to build African economic sovereignty, and place Africa as a global superpower.

Perhaps more importantly, in order to develop as Africans, grow our economies there needs to be an understanding that we must structure ourselves and our sovereignty in accordance to our developmental needs as a continent. Borders and regressive immigration legislation do not form part of any progressive step towards this needed alternative approach. This is because the disunity of Africa is of direct benefit to Western powers that seek the continued exploitation of our resources and our isolation from global commerce. Our participation in the global economy is one that is unequal, where we export our raw minerals, and import produced goods.

It is for this reason that we fail to build our own factories, create our own cars and expand our own industries. The ruling party has consistently failed to grasp the importance of a Pan-Africanist approach to development, and it is for this reason that they have recently adopted and signed into law a reactionary Refugee Amendment Act.

This piece will not focus too much on how this Act and its provisions were smuggled and signed into law in what seems to be a consistent cowardice of gazetting important legislation during the festive period. Rather, it will expose how the Act itself lacks coherence and political logic, how it seeks to regulate the impossible and how it is a detrimental effort to locate South Africa outside the problems of Africa and its people.

It is a piece of legislation that builds a political wall between South Africa and the rest of the people of the continent and is consistent with the right wing shift that characterizes the ruling party today. The Act, which focuses on refugees and asylum seekers is a fascist denial of the political rights of immigrants.

One of the provisions which may lead to the cessation of refugee status under the act is the seeking of consular services by a refugee at any diplomatic mission of their country of origin or applying for any documentation or assistance from such missions. This means that should a refugee in South Africa go to their embassy seeking documents such as marriage certificates, birth certificates or proof of qualifications in terms of education, they risk deportation.

The act goes further to say that should a refugee vote in any election in respect to their country of origin (rights availed by Embassies), or participate in any political activity that relates to their country of origin, the cease their refugee status and risk deportation. This is not only ridiculous but extremely counter revolutionary and against the human right to freedom of expression. It leaves room for despots who rule nations at the expense of human rights in Africa to exist without opposition or mobilization in the international community.

Ironically it is the ruling party that during Apartheid utilized political mobilization of the international community as a tool to fight the regressive Apartheid regime. Today, if a refugee in South Africa attempts to mobilize support against the monarchy in eSwatini, a monarchy that is repressive and led to them fleeing and seeking asylum in South Africa, such a refugee will be deported. What then is the point of seeking asylum if one cannot attempt to change the political conditions that led to their fleeing from a repressive state in the first place?

What is the political logic behind such a provision and why does South Africa not want its populous to be engaged by political refugees in particular around the conditions they face in nations they flee from?

The Act not only fails to unpack the logic of these provisions, but also does not provide a framework for what constitutes political activity that may lead to deportation. Political activity, particularly in the modern age of technology comes in many forms. Therefore would a Facebook post or twitter status by a Zimbabwean asylum seeker denouncing the government of Zimbabwe constitute political activity? Would a picture of Bobi Wine in the household of a Ugandan refugee constitute dissent towards the Ugandan government? The Act dangerously provides no framework, which makes it extremely undemocratic as it leaves determinations to the discretion of the Ministry.

The Act goes further in its regression and reveals the real reason why it was smuggled while we were eating Christmas lunch. It stipulates a provision that prohibits the furtherance of the interests of any South African political party by refugees and asylum seekers.

This provision is in direct response to the resolution of the EFF to allow within its ranks the membership of all Africans and people of the diaspora.

The Pan-African character assumed by the EFF which was emphasized in its 2^nd National People’s Assembly led to the ruling party gazetting with haste an Act which had no drafts preceding it  that contained these reactionary provisions. The Act with the provisions would later be signed into law two days after being gazzeted.

The ruling party continues to place itself and our country outside the Pan-Africanist agenda championed by liberation heroes across the continent. It does this while auctioning our SOE’s and surrendering our independence further to capital.

The progressive left must therefore continue to not only mobilize itself within the country but across the continent, and undermine legislation that seeks to isolate and exceptionalize South Africa in Africa.

We must as a country root ourselves in the progressive history of solidarity with progressive struggles and not seek to undermine the political rights of those who seek refuge in our country.

I respect and have engaged most written arguments brought forward by EFF women who speak against the establishment of an EFF Womens’ Command. The most persuasive being a conversation with EFFSC Gender officer, ftr Siya Nyulu, who asserts that the Womens’ Command will, or might fall into the trap of being a space for cishet women as it is evidenced in the womens’ formations of various political organizations. 

In recent years, there was national conversation flowing from the ANC Women’s League (ANCWL) congress wherein a debate about the length of skirts as well as the ‘groundbreaking’ defiance by Palo who wore pants to an ANCWL event. This is one example of an instance that validates the argument propounded by ftr Nyulu. Cishet/feminine presenting women have grown fond of the political privilege of being the only political alternative to men. Our seat at the table is affirmed. A 50/50 gender balance is a constitutional position of the EFF and cannot be swayed away from, it continues to afford cishet women a progressive opportunity to counter male dominance. 

The 50/50 gender balance however, is an assertion in itself that imposes a binary that makes no room for other genders and for women who are not feminine. Cishet women in the EFF have not rejected this positional privilege in solidarity with gender non-conforming people, masculine presenting women, lesbians, trans women and queers. That heteronormative culture is a threat to queer existence and its unavoidable perpetuation by establishing a Womens’ Command, is a legitimate concern that I can entertain as being a sufficient reason on why we should not have a Womens’ Command. 

Many women equally reason that an EFF’s Women Command will be rendered ‘useless’ like the ANCWL. It is shallow to use one organisation as the yardstick for vying for our existence. Why not look at organizations like Soul City as an alternative yardstick? It is also unfair to erase the work done by the ANCWL and their political power in the space just because we do not agree with the current layer of leadership. The ANCWL has given us women we now claim as our political heroes, like Winnie Mandela. It is the ANCWL that had women, under the leadership of Gertrude Shope, organize and mobilize for international solidarity when the ANC was banned during Apartheid. And what do we make of the historical women’s march in 1956? 

It is also the ANCWL that led the Defiance Campaign in 1952. There would not have been women like Florence Matomela, Thandi Modise, Ellen Khuzwayo to name a few, and the woman my grandmother named me after, Nokukhanya MaBhengu Luthuli if there were no women like Charlotte Maxeke who fought for duality of women to exist in the ANC and in their own wing. We could even assume that the Bantu Women’s Organisation was a beautiful coincidence of resistance that made the women of the time realize the power of being an organized structure as women.

Women in politics undermine feminist privilege with which some of us have experienced having being born in homes that believe in women’s leadership, learnt in tertiary, or stumbled upon in a 2005 Seventeen Magazine article that spoke about sex and how women can also be Presidents. Feminism is not common sense for many women to date. That there are already EFF Women WhatsApp groups is proof that we desire and seek a space where we are organized by ourselves without male presence. What then of those who can’t access these side spaces we have created for our feminist plotting? 

What then of teenage girls who aspire to the proximity of power we have experienced who do not have a space to form their leadership voice void of toxic masculine bullying that we often complain of? Our unity as women of the EFF has not been demonstrated fully for ordinary women in townships and in rural areas. The Womens’ Command offers an opportunity for a women’s community which some of us have created organically over the years within the EFF, but one that is recognized and legitimate politically beyond status updates, marches, court appearances and seminars.

There are ways to suggest a truly radical and socialist feminist EFF Womens’ Command that will be able to serve the women of South Africa in the same way the socialist feminists like Lily Braun were able to usher socialist feminist victories we still celebrate to date. Socialist feminist victories like maternity leave, the subsidization of early childhood development by the state so that primary care is not a burden carried by women alone but shared with the state, child maintenance, and something which we think is ordinary today, but was not historically, which is being able to work, to be employed as a woman. 

These are victories won by socialist feminist movements and organizations. These are victories that should be carried forth by a socialist movement that will fight for and carry the realization of Economic Freedom for women, for Black and Colored women in particular. 

The feminist victories in Norway, are because of the existence of feminist movements within the political arena. I don’t think our anxiety should steer us away from realizing a movement whose sole purpose and existence is fighting for women on all fronts every single day without having to wait for a trending story or a 16 Days of Activism to assert its position on the question of gender, sexuality and the women’s struggle.

There are women who have gone through abuse at the hands of men, be it erasure and or sexual violence in the EFF (I’m familiar with those in the EFFSC). However, the mistake we constantly make, is that all women must stay and fight because some of us stayed and fought back. This is a horrible request we are making for women. We constantly advise women to leave abusive romantic relationships. What then of fighters who have been abused by branch leaders, members, regional, provincial and national leadership? 

Must they stay? Must they continue facing their sites of trauma just because they are fighters? Can’t we give them an opportunity to still choose the EFF while they wait for disciplinary hearing outcomes? Can’t they still be political in an EFF space that doesn’t hoard or allow their abusers access?

Women must know that they are not forced to share a space with EFF men if they do not want to, and this decision must not isolate them from EFF politics. Women must be at the liberty of wanting and choosing the EFF without having to choose EFF men. 

We saw over four provincial marches, two in Gauteng led by Chairperson Mandisa Mashego, in 2019. These marches were for the first ever of their kind, calling for peculiar transformation in our justice system as extrapolated in the memorandum. Women showed up. Women came with their children on their backs. I personally would love to be able to share a space where I am able to bring my three year old son with young girls in my community in Mamelodi, to EFF gatherings without having to fear for their lives just because there are men in the room. This because I know rapists don’t cease to be rapists just because they signed an EFF membership form. 

A Womens’ Command will also counter the culture of women depending on men for political expediency in the EFF when the question of leadership arises. Women are always brought to the conversation when it is too late and at the mercy of men. That two or three women are at the Centre of these caucuses is not enough for the rest of us. It is no secret that caucuses that forge the resolutions to be sought at EFF assemblies are led and initiated by men. 

There is power in devising resolutions of what to fight for as the women’s cohort at our own assemblies. It must be something to respond to that of all those who engage with EFF content, only a mere 25% are women. This fact is a crisis because we have been, for starters, the top political party that has advanced the women’s agenda in our manifesto for 2019 National General Elections (this according to report by feminist organisation, GenderLinks). Why should women leave the EFF when there can be an opportunity to leave EFF men and stay with the EFF?

Despite our progressive interventions in advancing feminism, there have been many gaps in covering women’s struggles by the EFF because the focus of the party is much broader and beyond women’s struggles. This is a gap I believe an EFF Womens’ Command, as an established wing of the EFF, will be able to cater for with commitment and determination.

I am eager to see the kinds of programs to emanate from an entire structure established to fight for women. I am keen to see how organized EFF women will respond to women going missing every waking hour, to the 100 rapes reported daily, to femicide, to shortage of rape kits, to the high infection rate rate amongst young teenage girls, to men who think the EFF belongs to them, to negotiating political power like how the ANCWL fought for a woman MEC in Gauteng. 

I want to see how the gigantic issue of erasure will be addressed by women who are entrusted with documenting our efforts and existence in the revolution. I want to be able to live in an era where for the first time, radical socialist feminists are organized within the EFF and politically in South Africa for the sole purpose of delivering Economic freedom for women in our lifetime. South African women deserve an EFF voice that does not include men.