))))))In support of #ForBlackGirlsOnly(((((

Written by Maleke Montshiwagae

it is only through history that one is able to put the present into context. .

to set the record straight, Africa really only became Patriarchal through the external influences and interaction with Europe, or what Cheik Anta Diop referred to as the North cradle. and this fact can be demonstrated quiet readily. . i wrote a bit about this in my one article titled "A multi-layered complexity of the echoes of Sarah Baartman".

yesterday when I read and really listened to Panashe Chigumadzi around the #ForBlackGirlsOnly question it was painful to hear how black women still have to explain to the white world why it is necessary for them [black women ] to gather and reflect on their experiences and to find ways of how to move forward as black women in accordance with their own terms. White women sees this as exclusion and they argue that they, together with black women should work together to resolve the issues of women! Panashe makes an interesting point similar to Steve Biko's take on the question of whites who says they want to "help" black people, she says that "nobody says we want in into your[black women] oppression, but as soon as we stand up everybody wants to join"

it was interesting that even black men and their related liberal feminists had issues with #ForBlackGirlsOnly, some even suggesting that the name should be changed to something more accommodating to white women. These black men are a reflection of the impact of Patriarchy upon matriarchal Africa, a question of anti-black power reflex, and these Patriarchs, together with their liberal feminists do not understand that black women do not share the same gender with white women in terms of their historical experiences in space and time dimensions.

One must remember that for example during slavery, Patriarchal white men treated their women as jewels who needed to be protected and who exemplified high levels of purity and perfection and was close to being an angel. So all the dirty work was therefore left to a black slave woman, in fact according to Edward Bynum [phD ] in his book "The African unconscious", these Patriarchs saw black women as "sexual beasts" who were always hungry for sex due to their uncivilized, primitive and promiscuous nature as theorized by them [Patriarchs ], hence the perception that white women where oppressed too as they were not allowed to participate in certain activities, but it was because of this "protection" by the Patriarchs! So because of this sexual view of black slave women, the Patriarchs when they came home stressed and often drunk from their gatherings, they would unleash their stress and sexual hunger from drunkenness to black women slaves as she was viewed as always ready for sex whatever the circumstances. in a nutshell, a black woman was reserved for dirty behaviors of the white Patriarch, hence Patriarchy is a discharge of anti-blackness.

this is just one example, another quick example is of a black nanny in the free state in South Africa whom some Patriarch white boere "Bass" used to sleep with until she got pregnant with his child. When this child was older while living in the farm, he used to watch how his white father and his wife and their children would play as a family while he and his mother had to face the daily struggle in the absence of his father. This is an example in which the dirty sexual desires of Bass are discharged to the black nanny who is eventually left alone to raise a child while Madam continues to enjoy the family bond and structure while remaining "protected"

All of these are examples of anti-black power reflexes appearing through Patriarchy. so the black Patriarch in a similar way as a white Patriarch under slavery regime protects the interests of white women while seemingly ignoring anti-black oppression of black women.

so the liberal feminists and their related black Patriarchs must allow space for #ForBlackGirlsOnly independent of white interference, because the argument of including white women into black women issues in the interest of the rainbow nation is flawed, because as can be seen, they do not share the same gender given their historical experiences because as one scholar argues, gender is not pathological but rather a function of time.

........... Mosia Motobatsi. ..

#ForBlackGirlsOnly. .....

I hope we can see how this thing of a woman must stay at home while a man goes to work came to be within Africans! ...it was never our thing. ..