RETHINKING AFRICA

Title: Rethinking Africa: – Indigenous Women Re-interpret Southern Africa’s Pasts
Editors: Bernedette Muthien and June Bam
Publishers: Fanele
Reviewer: Nancy Richards
The essence of this book is wedged firmly in the title. It’s a thinking and rethinking book that offers much on which to reflect. At the same time, challenging on many levels. And so it would, because the contributors are all women who are not shy to state their cases strongly in their chosen fields. Ana Ligia Leite e Aguar is a professor of Brazilian Literature; June Bam heads the Khoi and San unit at 

UCT’s Centre for African Studies; Shelly Barry is a filmmaker: Diana Ferrus a poet and writer; Gertrude Fester a former Commissioner for Gender Equality; Sharon Groenmeyer a sociologist; Khadija Tracy Heger a poet; Robyn Humphreys has a BSc in human genetics; Babalwa Magoqwana is a sociologist-anthropologist; Sarah Malotane Henekman is a transdisciplinary practicioner-scholar and Sylvia Vollenhoven is a storyteller-playwright. All of them are so much more than these drastically redacted bios and I hope that as multi-layered activists they will forgive me.
Bernedette Muthien together with June Bam was the prime motivator for the book. An academic, poet, researcher and co-founder of the Khoisan Women’s Circle, she is every bit as multi-layered as the others. In fact she says, the contributors were in part chosen for their various skills, and that ‘herstory’ as distinct from history, needs to be told as much through the arts as academia.  Hence the opening chapter by writer, playwright Sylvia Vollenhoven is called Writing ourselves back into history: the liberating narrative of who we are. Likewise, the contributions from Ferrus, Barry and Heger are all poems and some photographs and artworks are also included.
But Bernedette’s own essay Rematriation: Reclaiming indigenous matricentric egalitarianism offers some especially pertinent thinking: ‘Indigenous societies have compassionate spiritualities at their core, with feminine or dual-gender deities, rather than a vengeful, raging, patriarchal deity that inspires fear rather than love.’ She goes on, ‘there is a distinct contrast between the patriarchal power over’ and the matricentric, egalitarian ‘power as a resource’, to be shared in abundance and with respect, like all other resources.’ You only have to look at the legacy of some of the so-called ‘strongman’ leaders around the world today, to see that there could be some lessons here.
As a non-academic, for me there were many lessons. First that from the lists of references and footnotes I learned that this is not a book that has been put together lightly. I also learned that ‘deep listening’ and ‘deep research’ are required if we are to reopen the door to shareable and fair power and rethink the way we live.
More simply I learnt the meaning of the words ontological (a philosophy based on the existence of things) and epistemicide (the killing of knowledge systems). As well, more tragically, that the  word ‘ausi’ meaning older sister or first born girl child, according to June Bam extends to ‘ausi-cide’ (attempted erasure of the knowledge and role of indigenous Khoi elder women. Much to make you think.