Sisters are doing it for themselves, and the rest of us

These are the women I celebrate: women whose grace owes nothing to 16 days of activism and the ANC's annual tea party

ANOTHER 16 days of activism has quietly rolled around, another pitiful politically correct nod to "our" country's deep gender issues. Yawn.

The minister of women and all sorts of minors will - as is her wont on these occasions - have a tea party of sorts to launch the day, exhorting South Africans to take care of their female adults and children.

Don't beat them, don't hurt them, don't be mean to them, she'll say.

I'm all for gender equality, for men who beat women to be donnered into oblivion, for those who harm children to be banished to our own version of Siberia.

But this political correctness gets to me.

I have met women who do so much with just so little, who will not wait for 16 days to help them escape the misery of their lives.

Some years ago, when I worked at the Daily Dispatch in the Eastern Cape, we set about marking the 16 days of activism. From that campaign - stories of 15 women and one man - I have beautifully photographed portraits in my home.

There is the researcher who stands with her shoulders straight and stares into the future. She had been raped, assaulted and left for dead by young thugs while she was doing research.

Next to her is the mother from Pedi with the baby girl who she believes God blessed her with as a replacement for the three-year-old who had gone missing and whose body was never found.

From another wall stares an unsmiling, fierce matriarch from Mthatha who runs an orphanage for children who have been damaged by adults.

Then there is the anonymous man with his back to the camera. He used to beat his woman until he realised that he had pummelled himself into a dark, mean and menacing space. He stopped.

One woman I'd have loved on my wall is Totsie Stowman, who was part of the campaign. She has spent years waiting for the government to help finance her hospice for men and women rejected by their communities after they contracted Aids. She has built a fortress of love in Parkview, Johannesburg, with the help of friends. She feeds the hungry children of the neighbourhood after school, and cajoles everyone into helping. She allows strangers to be brought to her hospice to die in a neat bed, surrounded by caregivers who pray for their souls.

These women move through their lives and the trauma that inhabits their souls with grace and fortitude. Their attitude is: do what needs to be done.

Their redemption does not lie waiting for an ANC government whose betrayal of a better life stalks their lives and the lives of those for whom they care.

Their grace is not rooted in a broken-down Eastern Cape provincial government that has, since the advent of democracy, spectacularly failed to uplift a region that gave life to so many ANC leaders.

And so, as Lulu Xingwana and Gauteng premier Nomvula Mokonyane hotfooted it to Saulsville Sports Arena in Atteridgeville, Tshwane, on Friday to kick off their 16-day empowerment jamboree, I wondered how those formidable women of the Eastern Cape were doing.

For a moment, as I looked around my living room, my heart lifted with pride because I had been privileged to meet some of these women - women who shrug off accolades because they just do what they can.

I, in my comfy middle-class cocoon, don't want 16 days of activism to protect me. I'm not interested in words bereft of meaning, or patronising sounds of empathy for whichever rocky spot my life might be in. I'll sort myself out. And I demand 365 days of respect.

Unfortunately for Lulu and Nomvula, opening a victim empowerment centre is not going to make a fundamental difference. To make a difference, they'd have to ensure that police officers are trained in dealing with sexual crimes and understand that domestic violence is not an unfortunate spiteful spat between two lovers.

They'd have to convince young girls to believe that they don't have to sell their bodies to teacher-pimps for plastic hair and taxi fare.

They'd have to teach a woman that she does not have to "put" out for unprotected sex with a husband who sleeps around.

How is Lulu, who was lacklustre as an arts minister and hasn't exactly rocked my world since moving to her current portfolio, going to comfort a woman who only wanted to be a good wife when she contracted HIV from her husband?

Because it is all of these extremely uncomfortable things, often called unAfrican - and compounded by layers of economic, social and political oppression - that Lulu will have to eradicate.

And this poor woman, who couldn't deal with lesbians in her previous job, will have to show that she means it when she condemns corrective rape.

I'd much rather walk through my home, surrounded by the courage and bravery of women who did not wait for Lulu to transform their lives. Instead, they cloaked themselves in their pain, the anguish of their battered bodies and the resilience of their spirits to emerge as powerful human beings.

They are the women I want around me.