Berenice Paulse-Lemba
I am one of the lucky ones. My life today is very different to its trajectory prior to 1994. If it was not for South Africa’s political transition, I probably would have ended up like the rest of the women in my family: either unemployed or relegated to a low-paying job for the rest of my life.
As a black woman, I find that I constantly have to assert myself, firstly because I am black, and secondly because I am a woman. But, I am not unemployed and I am not poor.
As I said, I am one of the lucky ones.
Before 1994, I worked for a very brief period for a retail chain, with franchise branches all over South Africa. You know, the one with the feel-good TV ads about how the local store helped build the local community; sponsoring all kinds of feel-good events. Remember the one where the owner/ manager drives kilometres to drop food for a family during a flood?
Wonderful stories, wonderful people – or maybe not.
I did all kinds of jobs during and after high school, wanting to believe that some day the impossible dream of a university degree and a career could be possible. I harvested onions on a farm in the Villiersdorp area, and thinned out apple trees on several farms in Grabouw.
The work on the farms was backbreaking and the overall conditions terrible. No toilets. No fresh water. Exceedingly long hours. The sun beating down on you all day. Unsafe and overcrowded daily transport to and from the farm. And, of course, there was the insecticide that was sprayed while the workers were still thinning the apple trees – clogging up your nose and throat.
What I most hated about working for this particular retail chain, as well as on the farms, was that the minute I entered “their” space, I ceased to exist. I knew I did not matter, I understood that they never saw me as a person with my own dreams and hopes for the future.
But, of course, then the political transition happened, and my life metamorphosed. Because I was in a better space, I assumed that the attitudes of employers across South Africa changed. This illusion was shattered on the second day of the 16 Days of Activism of No Violence against Women and Children.
A woman was psychologically battered at seven in the morning in a very public space. And I was a witness. She was a black woman employed in my local supermarket, who did or did not do something that provoked the ire of the store owner. The aggressor was her employer; a white male.
Towering over her, the swear words rolled off his tongue in Afrikaans. He did not even seem exceptionally angry, merely setting her straight. And he needed to humiliate, debase and denigrate her in order to get his message across. She accepted the torrent of abuse with her head bowed.
The incident transported me back more than 20 years ago when I was the one with my head bowed, powerless against the abuse. Gender activists tell us that abuse is about power and is the result of unequal power relations. Bringing up the issue of race will undoubtedly result in some readers rolling their eyes, sighing about the never-ending race card. But, the sad reality is that in South Africa, the most common basis for this power remains located in race, gender and class. The woman being battered was at the receiving end of power derived from a fusion of these three elements. The perpetrator, on the other hand, was casually displaying his absolute power. It was his casual arrogance that got to me. Clearly, this was all in a day’s work for him.
There is something quite ugly about power that is taken for granted and arrogantly displayed at will. There is something very wrong in our society when a perpetrator feels so secure in is power that he hardly expect reprisals for his abuse. There are some hard truths about how far we have come as a nation when black working class women remain as vulnerable to abuse as they did prior to 1994.
Psychological abuse is not often highlighted because the media tends to zoom in on the physical, more brutal acts of violence. But speaking about the psychological violence is important, because it creates the social conditions in which the more brutal manifestations of violence becomes possible.
l Paulse-Lemba works as a researcher with an interest in social justice, reproductive rights and international migration. This article is written in her personal capacity.