Reflecting on the “What Does Feminism Mean to Womxn in Galeshewe?” Workshop: Challenges of Moving from Feminist Theory to Practice in a Post-Mining Township in South Africa

Baleseng F. Maeneche

doi:10.25159/2957-3645/17276

Authors

Baleseng F. Maeneche University of the Western Cape

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25159/2957-3645/17276

Keywords:

Galeshewe, township, feminism, decoloniality, autophenomenology

Abstract

This essay reflects on the affective and epistemic tensions of engaging feminist praxis within the context of Galeshewe, a township in Kimberley, South Africa. Using autophenomenology, the article traces the embodied and emotional topographies of my journey as a Black feminist activist–scholar navigating the possibilities and limits of institutionalised feminist theory. Rooted in a womxn’s only, community-based workshop in Galeshewe, this article explores how local concepts such as ho hata mabala and ukuzilanda offer affective and decolonial ways of knowing. These concepts reflect the age-old fluidity and living vitality of feminist thought embedded in the rhythms of everyday womxn’s lives. Initially entering the space with academic feminist praxis, the article lays bare the ways in which I was confronted by how institutionalised feminism was inadequate in holding the complexity, pain and matrixes of power that shaped township womxn’s experiences. The dialogue revealed that feminism, when used in Galeshewe, could not be adopted without modification from the simplified modes that it exists in the academy. This article offers a reflection that echoes Spivak’s caution that reminds us as the subalterns, who have accessed parts of the system, of the risk of reproducing the very systems we seek to dismantle and inadvertently severing ourselves from our communities. By foregrounding affect, memory and embodied knowledge, this article argues for a feminist activism and scholarship that is not only intersectional but deeply situated. It suggests a praxis that is fluid, grounded and committed to radical reimagining of feminist thought from the margins.

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