By Lindiwe Sisulu
Professor Rushiella Nolundi Songca, I am greatly honoured, deeply privileged and simply overjoyed to be among the first to congratulate you on this extraordinary achievement: your inauguration as Vice-Chancellor of Walter Sisulu University.
I speak today as a member of Cabinet, one who seeks to serve our people in every way I can. But I speak also as a woman, sharing with you the challenges, the battles, the mission of womanhood in our country and our world today.
Politics is a male-dominated, male-directed, patriarchal world, where for women, every day is a fight for dignity, respect, and recognition of her worth.
In many ways, the world of academia is no less so. It is no wonder that South African academia today is being confronted and challenged, rife with those all-important struggles for decolonialty, Africanisation, and African plurality; struggles in which our young students have so admirably taken the lead. But all those struggles go hand-in-hand with the struggles for gender justice and equity.
Our universities are slowly beginning to realise that our campuses are more and more diverse, and they are trying to respond and come to terms with the presence of Black students on a massive scale. That is admirable. But our academic institutions have not even begun to grapple with that other fact: the overwhelming presence of Black female students on our campuses, the difference that makes, the particularity of their presence, the challenges that brings, and the opportunities that offers.
So I greet and congratulate you today as a sister in that struggle. What you are achieving today, is of course important for you as a person, as it is important for this institution. But it is even more important that you stand here today as a symbol for all of us, a breakthrough personified, a model that embodies the struggles, the aspirations, the hopes and the possibilities of all of us. Every girl, every young woman, every female student shines in your presence today, revels in your achievement, bristles with the possibilities of a tomorrow whose doors you have just opened for all of them.
We are in a struggle for women: for the freedom not just to be seen, but for the right to be recognised; not for permission to be heard, but the right to be acknowledged. Not just for the indulgence to be allowed to participate, but for the right to lead.
Your academic qualifications are beyond doubt, your academic record is proven, your abilities in leadership are beyond dispute. From a male point of view, you “tick all the boxes,” as they say. But from our point of view, from the world’s point of view, you know we must not just tick all the boxes. We must redesign those boxes, so that those girl children who come up behind us, do not have to fight those battles over and over again.
This is not just empty sloganeering. Enshrined in the Beijing Declaration, women’s right to participate in all aspects of public life, including the executive and the judiciary, has been internationally recognized as a fundamental human right. This particularly recognizes the significance of women’s empowerment and their full participation based on equality in all spheres of society, including participation in the decision- making process and access to power, as foundation for the achievement of equality, development, and peace around the world.
Women’s right of equal participation is also firmly anchored in other international instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action as well as in United Nations General Assembly resolutions such as resolution 66/130 on women and political participation.
But there is another reason why I am so happy today. This university is named for my father, but what you are doing is fulfilling the hopes, dreams, and the life’s work of my mother, Albertina Sisulu. You are the first woman to be appointed the Vice Chancellor of an historic Black university.
That is not just participating, that is leading. Albertina Sisulu would have been so proud today. She would be proud, but she would also tell you, and us, that we must not now rest on our laurels. There is still so much to be done.
There is an urgency to this moment that we must see, and grasp. When she was marching with the other women in 1956, and they sang that famous song to Strijdom, she knew it. When she was in the forefront of the United Democratic Front, she sang with the youth, Sekunjalo! Now is the time! She would be singing that today.
The 2020 Oxfam Report makes for grim reading for those of us who care about the situation of the world and the situation of our people.
However, the Report places special emphasis on the plight of young girls and women, saying that the inequalities in our world are “out of control” and these inequalities have an especially devastating effect on women.
So the Report urges the citizens of the world to engage in the struggle for justice, dignity, and equity for women with an urgency that matches the seriousness of the times.
Still the Report refuses to give up hope. “A fairer world is possible,” it says.
A more just, more equitable, more dignified, more human world is not outside our reach. But, the Report insists, “It must be a feminine world.” A world in which women have taken their rightful place, and where the leadership of women is acknowledged to be the urgent answer to the many challenges our world is facing today.
I share those sentiments completely. An academic world, an economic world, an ecclesial world, a political world, a world that is a true home for women with strength, with aspirations, with gifts and talents, with vision, with a sense of compassion and a commitment to justice, and with unhindered leadership.
All of this is symbolised in your achievement today. Congratulations and God bless you my dear sister in the struggle, leader in academia, and Vice Chancellor of Walter Sisulu University.
*Minister Sisulu delivered this message of support yesterday (9 October) at the inauguration of Professor Rushiella Nolundi Songca as the first female Vice Chancellor and Principal of the Walter Sisulu University (WSU)
