Emancipatory Feminism in the Time of Covid-19

Dineo Skosana, Busi Sibeko, Sonia Phalatse, Courtney Morgan, Jane Mbithi-Dikgol, Inge Konik, Samantha Hargreaves, Jacklyn Cock, Jane Cherry, Christine Bischoff, Asanda-Jonas Benya, Hawzhin Azeez, Ruth Ntlokotse, Vishwas Satgar

Description

This edited volume provides an eco-socialist feminist analysis of the current social reproduction debate in South Africa, outlining African and indigenous grassroot alternatives to mainstream liberal feminism.

The Covid-19 pandemic threw into stark relief the multi-dimensional threats created by neoliberal capitalism. Government measures to alleviate the crisis were largely inadequate, leaving women – in particular working-class women – to carry the increased burden of care work while at the same time placing themselves in direct risk as frontline workers.

Emancipatory Feminism in the Time of Covid-19, the seventh volume in the Democratic Marxism series, explores how many subaltern women – working class, peasant and indigenous –challenge hegemonic neoliberal feminism through their resistance to ordinary capitalist practices and ecological extractivism. Contributors cover women’s responses in a wide range of contexts: from women leading the defence of Rojava – the Kurdish region of Syria, to approaches to anti-capitalist ecology and building food secure pathways in communities across Africa, to championing climate justice in mining affected communities and transforming gender divisions in mining labour practices in South Africa, to contesting macro-economic policies affecting the working conditions of nurses. Their practices demonstrate a feminist understanding of the current systemic crises of capitalism and patriarchal oppression. What is offered in this collection is a subaltern women’s grassroots resistance focused on advancing and enabling solidarity-based political projects, deepening democracy, building capacities and alliances to advance new feminist alternatives.

Acknowledgements

Acronyms and Abbreviations

Introduction – Vishwas Satgar and Ruth Ntlokotse

PART I: Indigenous Emancipatory Feminism and Transformative Resistance

Chapter 1 Extractivism and Crises: Rooting Development Alternatives in Emancipatory African Socialist Eco-feminism – Samantha Hargreaves

Chapter 2 Jineology and the Pandemic: Rojava’s Alternative Anti-Capitalist-Statist Model – Hawzhin Azeez

PART II: Ecology and Transformative Women’s Power in South Africa

Chapter 3 Doing ecofeminism in a time of Covid-19: Beyond the limits of liberal feminism – Inge Konik

Chapter 4 ‘Our Existence is Resistance’: Women Challenging Mining and the Climate Crisis in a time of Covid-19 – Dineo Skosana and Jacklyn Cock

Chapter 5 Women and Food Sovereignty: Tackling Hunger during Covid-19 – Courtney Morgan and Jane Cherry

PART III: Economic Transformation, Public Services and Transformative Women’s Power in South Africa

Chapter 6 Quiet Rebels: Underground Women Miners and Refusal as Resistance – Asanda Benya

Chapter 7 Class, Social Mobility and African Women in South Africa – Jane Mbithi-Dikgole

Chapter 8 Government’s Covid-19 Fiscal Responses and the Crisis of Social Reproduction – Sonia Phalatse and Busi Sibeko

Chapter 9 Nursing and the Crisis of Social Reproduction - Before and During Covid-19 – Christine Bischoff

PART IV: Where to for Emancipatory Feminism?

Chapter 10 Crises, Socio-Ecological Reproduction and Intersectionality: Challenges for Emancipatory Feminism – Vishwas Satgar

Conclusion: Ruth Ntlokotse and Vishwas Satgar

Contributors

Index

Sujets

• Environmental Protection
• Environmental Conservation
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Marxism
• Liberal feminism
• Indigenous
• Food security
• Ecofeminism
• Nature

Informations

• Publié par: WITS University Press
• Date de parution: 01 août 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776148295
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Across the world, the work of caring for and maintaining life is devalued and outsourced largely to women of colour, who are poor and working class. Emancipatory Feminism in the Time of Covid-19 is a timely conversation with Marxist, eco-socialist and indigenous perspectives, analysis and practice. In the intersecting crises capitalism has catapulted us into, it shares powerful forms of solidarity, resistance and ways of being.
-Pregs Govender, writer and author; former union educator; MP and human rights commissioner

This volume illuminates the power of emancipatory feminist alternatives in a world of polycrisis. It reminds society that women-led agentic practices create transformative strategies for rethinking work, development and activism. The ideological resources it provides for intersectional movement building are invaluable.
-Khwezi Mabasa, lecturer, University of Pretoria; research associate at the Society, Work and Politics Institute, University of the Witwatersrand and at the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Institute South Africa Office, Johannesburg

Emancipatory feminist solutions are key to dismantle exploitative structures and systems by bringing in the voices, knowledge and innovations of those most impacted by crisis and pandemics like Covid-19. This volume provides inspiring examples of frontline transformative resistance by grassroots women.
-Dorah Marema, Senior Atlantic Fellow, Atlantic Fellowship for Racial Equity; President, GenderCC-Women for Climate Justice

Satgar and Ntlokotse bring us a stunning collection of essays on grassroots women-led political resistance. Liberal feminism has clearly failed - and with the patriarchal capitalist crises of social reproduction ever more intense under pandemic conditions, women continue to serve as shock absorbers for the status quo. Here is an emancipatory feminism, grounded in practical initiatives for women's food sovereignty, a climate justice charter and socio-ecological alternatives inspired by ubuntu, eco-feminism and jineology. Time for all to take note!
-Ariel Salleh, author of Ecofeminism as Politics (1997/2017); Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Queen Mary University of London, 2023
DEMOCRATIC MARXISM SERIES
Series Editor: Vishwas Satgar
The crisis of Marxism in the late twentieth century was the crisis of orthodox and vanguardist Marxism associated mainly with hierarchical communist parties, and imposed, even as state ideology, as the correct Marxism. The Stalinisation of the Soviet Union and its eventual collapse exposed the inherent weaknesses and authoritarian mould of vanguardist Marxism. More fundamentally vanguardist Marxism was rendered obsolete but for its residual existence in a few parts of the world, including within authoritarian national liberation movements in Africa and in China.
With the deepening crises of capitalism, a new democratic Marxism (or democratic historical materialism) is coming to the fore. Such a democratic Marxism is characterised by the following: Its sources span non-vanguardist grassroots movements, unions, political fronts, mass parties, radical intellectuals, transnational activist networks and parts of the progressive academy; It seeks to ensure that the inherent categories of Marxism are theorised within constantly changing historical conditions to find meaning; Marxism is understood as a body of social thought that is unfinished and hence challenged by the need to explain the dynamics of a globalising capitalism and the futures of social change; It is open to other forms of anti-capitalist thought and practice, including currents within radical ecology, feminism, emancipatory utopianism and indigenous thought; It does not seek to be a monolithic and singular school of thought but engenders contending perspectives; Democracy, as part of the history of people's struggles, is understood as the basis for articulating alternatives to capitalism and as the primary means for constituting a transformative subject of historical change.
This series seeks to elaborate the social theorising and politics of democratic Marxism.
Published in the series and available:
Michelle Williams and Vishwas Satgar (eds). 2013. Marxisms in the 21st Century: Crisis, Critique and Struggle . Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
Vishwas Satgar (ed.). 2015. Capitalism's Crises: Class Struggles in South Africa and the World . Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
Vishwas Satgar (ed.). 2018. The Climate Crisis: South African and Global Democratic Eco-Socialist Alternatives . Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
Vishwas Satgar (ed.). 2019. Racism after Apartheid: Challenges for Marxism and Anti-Racism . Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
Vishwas Satgar (ed.). 2020. BRICS and the New American Imperialism: Global Rivalry and Resistance . Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
Michelle Williams and Vishwas Satgar (eds). 2021. Destroying Democracy: Neoliberal Capitalism and the Rise of Authoritarian Politics. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
EMANCIPATORY FEMINISM IN THE TIME OF COVID-19
TRANSFORMATIVE RESISTANCE AND SOCIAL REPRODUCTION
Edited by Vishwas Satgar and Ruth Ntlokotse
Published in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg 2001
www.witspress.co.za
Compilation Vishwas Satgar and Ruth Ntlokotse 2023
Chapters Individual contributors 2023
Published edition Wits University Press 2023
First published 2023
http://dx.doi.org.10.18772/22023078264
978-1-77614-826-4 (Paperback)
978-1-77614-827-1 (Hardback)
978-1-77614-828-8 (PDF)
978-1-77614-829-5 (EPUB)
978-1-77614-830-1 (Open Access PDF)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.
This book is freely available through the OAPEN library (www.oapen.org) under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 Creative Commons License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
The publication of this volume was made possible by funding from the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.


Project manager: Inga Norenius
Copyeditor: Inga Norenius
Proofreader: Lee Smith
Indexer: Margaret Ramsay
Cover design: Hothouse, South Africa
Typeset in 10 point Minion Pro
This seventh volume in the Democratic Marxism series is dedicated to Fikile Ntshangase who paid the ultimate price in the struggle for climate and, more generally, environmental justice. She was gunned down in her kitchen in front of her 11-year-old grandson on 22 October 2020.
CONTENTS
TABLES
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS Introduction
Vishwas Satgar and Ruth Ntlokotse PART ONE: INDIGENOUS EMANCIPATORY FEMINISM AND TRANSFORMATIVE RESISTANCE CHAPTER 1: Extractivism and crises: Rooting development alternatives in emancipatory African socialist eco-feminism
Samantha Hargreaves CHAPTER 2: Jineology and the pandemic: Rojava's alternative anti-capitalist-statist model
Hawzhin Azeez PART TWO: ECOLOGY AND TRANSFORMATIVE WOMEN S POWER IN SOUTH AFRICA CHAPTER 3: Doing Eco-Feminism in a Time of Covid-19: Beyond the Limits of Liberal Feminism
Inge Konik CHAPTER 4: Our existence is resistance : Women challenging mining and the climate crisis in a time of Covid-19
Dineo Skosana and Jacklyn Cock CHAPTER 5: Women and food sovereignty: Tackling hunger during Covid-19
Courtney Morgan and Jane Cherry PART THREE: ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION, PUBLIC SERVICES AND TRANSFORMATIVE WOMEN S POWER IN SOUTH AFRICA CHAPTER 6: Quiet rebels: Underground women miners and refusal as resistance
Asanda-Jonas Benya CHAPTER 7: Class, Social Mobility and African Women in South Africa
Jane Mbithi-Dikgole CHAPTER 8: Government s Covid-19 fiscal responses and the crisis of social reproduction
Sonia Phalatse and Busi Sibeko CHAPTER 9: Nursing and the crisis of social reproduction before and during Covid-19
Christine Bischoff PART FOUR: WHERE TO FOR EMANCIPATORY FEMINISM? CHAPTER 10: Crises, socio-ecological reproduction and intersectionality: Challenges for emancipatory feminism
Vishwas Satgar CONCLUSION: Ruth Ntlokotse and Vishwas Satgar
CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX
TABLES Table 0.1: Unpaid care and domestic work in households during 2020 Table 8.1: South Africa s R500 billion Covid-19 relief package
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
T his volume owes a special debt to the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (RLF). Without the support given by the RLF it would have been impossible to hold an online contributors workshop during the Covid-19 pandemic, and ensure the manuscript was prepared for publication. We are also grateful for the support given by the Co-operative and Policy Alternative Centre (COPAC), which played a central role in organising the online workshop convened with contributors and activists from various social movements. The support given by the RLF has enabled this volume in the series to be published open access. The Emancipatory Futures Studies in the Anthropocene project at the University of the Witwatersrand also provided support for the research and writing contributions by Vishwas Satgar. Moreover, it is important to acknowledge the editorial assistance provided by Jane Cherry from COPAC. Her efforts were crucial for keeping things on track. The efforts and inputs from Michelle Williams, Courtney Morgan, Awande Buthelezi and Charles Simane are also appreciated. Finally, our sincerest appreciation to the team at Wits University Press, particularly Veronica Klipp, Roshan Cader and Corina van der Spoel, for supporting this volume and the Democratic Marxism series.
ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS Cosatu Congress of South African Trade Unions CRAM Coronavirus Rapid Mobile Survey CSG Child Support Grant Denosa Democratic Nursing Union of South Africa DRC Democratic Republic of Congo EN enrolled nurse ENA enrolled nursing auxiliary GDP gr