Women Authors From South Africa

"When you go to certain schools and live a certain life, you’re going to have blind spots. Kelz helps me identify my own blind spots"

"I’m not thin. Being in this industry and being told ‘it’s difficult to imagine you in any role because you’re not thin’ was quite frustrating."

"We were some of the experimental kids of the new rainbow nation and we battled a lot"

"I think it gave me my voice because I learned very quickly there isn’t a lot of help. We learned how to speak up for ourselves and how to identify micro-aggressions."

"I think it’s easy to see when someone says the k-word or when someone is outwardly racist. Micro-aggressions are very difficult to pick up on."

"That’s what I try to do with Kelz – expose the racism that doesn’t sound like racism."

"You have to build your own confidence and you need to do what you are passionate about, that job you would still do even if you were not getting paid to do it."

"I wake up at 4am every day; that is my work ethic. There are many things stacked against women in the workplace so we have to work doubly hard to prove ourselves."

"I became an overachiever because of my experiences of the mud. So I feel that my roots are firmly in the mud because those are the experiences that shape me…I hold the commitments that I have to gender justice, social transformation, to economic justice for women in particular…because of, and not in spite of, the muddy experiences."

"I went to stay with an older sister who lived in better circumstances. Her son was only three years younger than me so I essentially became like a daughter in the house."

"I confronted the man who had abused me. He denied abusing me, so I took him to court."

"Gender violence should be seen as a patriarchy control mechanism, since it is systemic and rooted in sexist cultural practices and perspectives and it leads women to adjust behavior in order to avoid violence"

"Christian idea of sin — that tragic flaw at the core of human experience provides one of the best tools for understanding the evils of sexism, patriarchy, and traditional sin-talk itself."

"I hope of course that the women will be inspired by the lessons offered by those who are walking the path with them, and that networks of solidarity and connection would develop from this meeting. Practically, I am keen to work on a publication that would capture the insights and wisdom that emerged from the gathering"

"Two years ago, I began to speak to friends who were editors of poetry journals, to get an idea of what was involved. I made the financial decision to go online with a simple, quality website. I do the html coding myself, so it costs me two weekends a year, with no overheads other than the cost of bandwidth. The benefit of online is that I can use images as well, and allow them to interact with the poetry – which has fascinating results."

"To go back to Venice. My son Michael and I backpacked for three weeks across Italy four years ago, staying in youth hostels. Italy was rewarding beyond description, but Venice was a moving and intense experience. It was fading and old and beautiful and I loved it. I would go back there given half a chance."

"We live in a different time than we lived in a year ago. And I wish we were sitting here talking about this dystopian fictional world, and how glad we are that we’re not intent."

"Equip yourself. I believe that knowledge is power. If you want to engage power and authority you need to equip yourself with knowledge. Don’t be ashamed of the knowledge that lives in your body. Equip yourself with book knowledge but also embodied knowledge."

"There were times during my marriage that I wanted it all to end. I wrote a poem in one of my most tortured moments about the peace I would find if I walked into the sea and breathed. It was years later that I realised how close my life story was to Ingrid Jonker’s. I had been born just after she died. Somehow, I survived, against all odds. I felt connected with her, and wrote about it. I like to think that she knows that I wrote about it."

"It is a first collection, and there are no South African publishing houses that can afford to take risks on poetry collections anymore, let alone new poets. I believed in the work and wanted to put it out there."

"I feel injustice deeply. I thought I would get over that as I grew up. I never have. That’s how “Nam” was written. Both of those incidents happened to me just as they are written, and I was unable to forget them. And when I saw the facile comments on the travel show, I had to put my anger down on paper. It just never ends. We don’t learn. As a mother I am now even more outraged by senseless slaughter ordered by men who are never themselves in danger. And whose motives are based on greed and power-seeking."

"As a poet, I am as I am in every other sphere of life. I’m real and flesh and blood. I don’t write to impress people or use clever allusions or references. I did all that when I was still at university, and it was rubbish poetry. Now I write only because the poem needs to be written. And it has its own life and its own personality—with its whimsical little in-jokes and its musicality. And if someone else likes the poem, then it’s probably because, at the bottom of it all, we have a shared human experience."

"The most important thing I’ve learned from motherhood is to love your family and your friends as much as you can and let them know as often as you can. Parenting keeps you humble and grounded."

"When I was a child I used to say, “I am going to write a poem”, and my mother would ask me what it would be about, and I wouldn’t know until it was done. I’d just have a welling-up pregnant feeling inside me. That still happens."

"People have responded that the collection chronicles a journey through suffering into new life, and that it was thought-provoking. And that is what I wanted to express. That there is hope for new growth, for freedom, for change. For so many people who have suffered. And especially for our country. I really believe that."

"I married very young – to a brilliant and immensely destructive man whom I met at university. Twelve years of that marriage nearly destroyed me. I chose to end the marriage and to survive."

"Someone has to do something about the pain and the poverty, and I’ve been given a good set of resources to do it. So I get stuck in and I get very motivated by watching the change take place in people’s lives."

"As I grew in my spiritual journey and I came to know what true and unconditional love was, I came to see that what I had was not what marriage should be. I chose life. I staggered/crawled away from the devastation and it took years for me slowly to become the person I was meant to be. And life has been deeply rich and rewarding in every possible way since then."

"I love Grahamstown. I wanted to move here years ago when I was a theatre publicist, but the time wasn’t right. When my son was awarded scholarships to St Andrews College three years ago I jumped at the chance to move down. My friends thought I would struggle to settle down in a small town, but I’m a very gregarious person. I love having four people hoot “Hello” as I walk down High Street. I am guaranteed to meet at least five friends or colleagues when I go to Pick ‘n Pay, which is our village marketplace."

"Some people find the goldfish bowl difficult to live in – I thrive in it. There is no peak hour traffic. The cathedral bells ring on Sunday and Thursday evenings in the mist. The sunsets are spectacular. You can find a donkey cart (with a set of donkeys) parked neatly in a bay between a BMW and a Golf, and there are often cattle in my street. Cattle have right of way."

"God is a great recycler – he took a broken, shattered woman and slowly breathed life into her again. I began to trust people enough to make some wonderful friends. I began to believe in myself again."

"What excites me? Now that I am beloved, I am a joyful and irrepressible woman, I do not laugh quietly and I’m always the last person on the dance floor at one in the morning at university functions. And I am not waiting to be old to wear purple. What inspires me? Humble people who just get on with helping to make a difference in this world. And who do it out of love, not self. So often people help others for reasons that have everything to do with themselves and nothing to do with those they are helping."

"The eighties were exciting and challenging times to work in the theatre, particularly at the Market. I worked under Mannie Manim, with John Kani and with Alan Joseph, who is greatly missed. We were pushing the envelope all the time, challenging the government. I worked with Athol Fugard on two productions. He was a very private person with a delicious laugh. I’ll never forget Janet Suzman’s Othello with John Kani and Joanna Weinberg in the lead roles—Across the colour bar, In bed together, Kaal, Sowaar! Imagine! The Market staff could swear that throughout the run, security police got to see a lot of Shakespeare. Which was a good thing."

"My mother started her Eng Lit studies when I was nine, which continued until she got her doctorate when I was in high school, so our house was filled with literature. Literally. Piles of books and the sound of method actors intoning on vinyl. I grew up saturated in words – I remember everything from Shakespeare, Hopkins and Chaucer to Bosman, Conrad and Plath. Unisa was very tolerant. I’d sit quietly at the back of lectures and seminars and drink it all in. It was a rich childhood."

"Festival time in Grahamstown is always reunion time—I see many of the actors I used to work with. I saw Janet Suzman this year, and I see Mannie Manim from time to time. Every year I see Mandie van der Spuy, who headed Drama at PACT when I was there and now manages Standard Bank’s jazz sponsorship. And of course, I see Lynnie Marais very often in Grahamstown—she moved from PACT to the Monument to head up the festival many years ago."

"The first poem in my childhood notebook was written when I was eleven. It was a poem about the conflict I felt when my cat had slaughtered a bird. I don’t remember much about my writing before then, just that I always escaped into words."

"I was a solitary child who lived in a world of words and music, of imagination and the arts and I felt keenly the vast divide between myself and the children about me. It felt very much as if I’d been absent on the day they gave out the handbook on how to relate to other children and how to be a part of the group. It was only as an adult that I found other people who saw and experienced the world as I do."

"I remember being read to as a child. I read to my own son every night until he was able to read books for himself. I confess that I enjoyed it as much as he did. I did all the voices."

"What I really appreciate about working with homeless people is that when you get to that basic level of survival, all the human pretence is stripped away. There is no bullshit. You are who you are."

"From love we can invoke the courage to dance with our fear. Inherent dignity is our individual and collective birth right that underpins substantive rights. When we forget our birth right, as we often do, we can look in the mirror of ourselves, of each other, or let the rising sun remind us of the radiance we were born with"

"Without seeing the dignity in those who bear the brunt of gender-based violence, the result will be a narrow focus on the criminal justice system and not the root causes of the problem, and how we have to address this to change the reality of our own country and our world"

"We’re living in a time where changing technology challenges us to stay relevant almost on a daily basis."

"Some people said that apartheid disappeared after removing the signs that said ‘non-Europeans’ … but the structural institutional roots of it remained. When we begin to get insubordinate, we begin to get to the roots of things. Oppressive systems thrive in our subordination"

"We can reclaim ourselves by recognising that love is intrinsic to our being. From it we can invoke the courage to dance with our fear"

"It’s about harnessing the power we all have within us and begin to practise moving that power. It’s about seeing the dignity in others and [seeing how] the quality of what we create together becomes substantially different"

"Without a doubt the power the internet gives to the average individual is challenging all sorts of gatekeepers for better or worse. People can now contribute to reporting by means of cellphone photographs/video and the secrets of politicians are now open for all to see through WikiLeaks; but at the same time, one can also read nauseating hate speak, prejudice and uninformed opinion on online fora and news page comment facilities. And, frankly, that open access is a double-edged sword."

"The most important part of my ministry to homeless people was knowing their names and their stories and loving them just as they were. Counselling the homeless couple whose baby died before his first birthday. Listening to yet another long, wheedling scam story from a guy asking for money for a train trip to a new job. Laughing with him that he thought the story would actually work on me. And then helping him in ways that were better than giving him money to buy skokiaan at the shebeen on the streets amongst the corporate headquarters in Rosebank."

"This is where depression regularly ends in suicide and there is no place to run for women, girls, transgendered and gender non-conforming people"

"God is male – male is god’ is deeply embedded in the human psyche. Those taught to be subordinate are female and those taught to expect subordination are male. The world order mirrors apartheid and has deepened inequality and poverty. Economic, military and religious fundamentalism have increased vulnerability to misogyny, and rape and sexual abuse will affect an estimated one billion women and girls over their lifetimes"

"The impending destruction of humanity and our planet, presented by climate scientists, does not penetrate the thick wall of denial and inaction, with devastating consequences for people who are poor, especially women"