We are a little older than the 20-year-old ‘democratic’ South Africa which is subjected to critical feminist review under this particular title. It is serendipitous that our 100th issue, a milestone in our herstory as a feminist media project, is published at a germane moment in the broader South African narrative. Our 100th issue appears at the end of the second decade of democracy when the lived experiences and material realities of the majority of our country's citizens, both men and women, have generated increasingly serious questions about the meaning and relevance of this concept for them.
Women in particular have increasingly realised that constitutionalism, on which this democracy is based, is no safeguard against patriarchy. The underlying democratic values of “human dignity, equality and freedom” implying a more equitable dispensation for women, ring hollow in a context of continuing high levels of violence and abuse against women and girl children in particular and persistent inequalities. For the majority, mainly poor black women who occupy the urban and rural margins of South Africa, endemic poverty and neglect in critical areas such as health, education, land and housing, and employment, to name a few examples, are the horrible residuum of the apartheid past that haunts their ‘democratic’ present. New laws in the pipeline, such as the Traditional Courts Bill, which re-invoke the oppressive power of traditional institutions over women, threaten the ‘gains’ represented by the equality provisions of the Constitution, and the extensive ‘gender machinery’ to safeguard women's rights.
AFM asserts that central to democracy is the power of ‘voice’, the freedom to express and use it in written, spoken and other forms, to make audible and visible suppressed voices and, more significantly, the human beings who own these. Voice is critical to shape, influence, challenge and define power and its mediation collectively in the quest for transformation towards an egalitarian and humane society. This perception of voice, in relation to women in South Africa, and the many barriers that inhibited its expression, was certainly part of the feminist pulse that inspired the creation of Agenda in the mid-1980s. The 1980s were a time of frenetic political activism in South Africa that foreshadowed the negotiations process which would lead to a ‘new’ South Africa. Agenda was formed in a climate to resist silence, marginalisation and erasure.
Agenda was one of many alternate publications that flourished at this time, providing platforms for debates and the exchange of information that shaped the politics of this era. Together with Speak, another women's publication, it was uniquely and unabashedly feminist at a time when anti-racism and anti-classism were pitched as the defining features of ‘the struggle’. The intersection of race and class with gender (and later with other forms of discrimination) and its impact on creating unequal power relations between men and women, was dismissed as reactionary by mainly male ‘revolutionaries’.
The founders of Agenda (hats off as we salute them!) were steadfast. The post-liberation experiences of women activists in other political struggles conducted in Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, who were relegated to the back benches or the political wilderness on the attainment of political independence, were illuminating for them. Agenda supported the feminist decision not to rely on male-dominated liberation politics for ‘women's equality’ in whatever new political dispensation that would come into being. Rather, we wanted to contribute to the debates of the time, impacting on political outcomes, by asserting the voices of women on prevailing issues. As boldly expressed in our founding mission statement, Agenda would be: “… as a feminist project… committed to giving women a forum, a voice and skills to articulate their needs and interests towards transforming unequal gender relations in South Africa.” Further, it aimed to “question and challenge current understandings of gender relations and how these are practised”. In particular, it aimed to “contribute to the capacity of women to organise themselves, reflect on their experiences” and most importantly “to write about this”.
Another significant feature of our organisation is that while our founding mission foregrounded the South African context, our wingspan has evolved to continental coverage. To this end, over our 28 years of publishing we have moved beyond our South African borders, embracing the fact that we are part of the continent of Africa (as our African Feminisms trilogies attest to) as well as of a very fluid international women's movement. Thus Agenda has been a meeting place for feminists of varying persuasions - black, socialist, African, Marxist, and eco-feminists to name a few, as well as those whose self-definition is a combination of several intersectional and multifaceted identities! Equally, we have featured womanists, gender activists, and women's rights activists who have shunned the title feminist, defining their activism on their own terms.
Whatever the designation and description, however, the basic campaign has been and continues to be to overcome the toxic mix of patriarchy, capitalism, racism, and imperialism, to ensure women's autonomy and independence.
This diversity within feminism is necessary, thought provoking and is to be celebrated. It has been a profound learning experience, and to use that very convenient word masking the difficulty of mediating often simmering differences, ‘challenging’. Walking the tightrope of the creative tension it generates, we daresay was much the norm in the external debates that occurred within both the burgeoning South African women's movement during the last two decades of the last century, as well as in the international women's movement. Certainly the Agenda Collective was wracked many times internally by stark questions such as which women's voices were reflected in its flagship product, the Agenda journal: white women's voices as opposed to black women's, academic versus activist, urban versus rural, etc. Several of our issues on differences and diversity capture this conundrum.
The personal, lived and experiential was and is indeed political, as we have discovered. These debates still continue and are predictable in a globalised world where neo-liberal macro-economic policies have created very unequal societies. It is the case, in our view, that the rich are getting richer, and the poor, poorer. Much of the neo-liberal development interventions have not fully eradicated these inequalities. Power, privilege and decision-making are now lodged not only within the old hierarchies, but also within newly created elites. Several issues of Agenda have highlighted how neo-liberalism, while creating opportunities for ‘advancement’ for many women, has at the same time been the source of the feminisation of poverty worldwide.
As a media project committed to giving women a voice, we have done quite well in nurturing and offering a space for new, young and emerging women writers, especially black women writers. Our journals reflect this endeavour. We have also provided space for writings on masculinities, homosexualities, and transgender concerns. Our themed journals are an indicator of the wide range of subjects that have provided a space for diverse authors. This is knowledge production at its most assiduous: Agenda remains an internationally accredited peer-reviewed journal.
As any other project, AFM also has its limitations. A journal, however valuable its contents, is not accessible to everyone. This has prompted other efforts to extend AFM's reach, such as fostering relationships with community radio stations, developing an updated web page, creating writing programmes to nurture new black writers, convening feminist dialogues in partnership with cognate organisations, making use of podcasts and other forms of new social media. It is of course, not enough. We would like to see a thousand other feminist media projects bloom! We welcome new ones that have been established.
For now, we are wonder-struck that we still exist. Many of our contemporaries, other publications, have – sadly – closed down. Our existence is precarious – make no mistake about that! If AFM has survived, it is because it is much more than the volunteers who constitute its editorial collective and management board. It is that vast community of unpaid writers, guest editors and reviewers who have kept the organisation alive over the years and who have imprinted their voices into the pages of AFM's journal.
We take this opportunity to thank them. We also thank that mixed bag of ‘blessings’ – donors. ‘Shukrias’ and ‘siyabongas’ are extended to Agenda staff past and present – directors, marketing, administrative and publicity staff. And finally, where would we be without those über-resilient, overworked editors who have been at the coalface of 100 issues of feminist publishing?
Agenda Feminist Media