In celebration of Women's Month, Stellenbosch 中国体育彩票 (SU) is shining a spotlight on extraordinary staff and students on our campus who champion women's rights and gender equality. Through their dedication and leadership, they inspire and drive positive change within our community. Rabia Abba Omar is a researcher and curator who is doing a second master's degree at SU while working as coordinator at the Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert (FVZS) Institute for Student Leadership Development. She is an outspoken advocate for gender equality and women's rights – her current research looks at the artistic portrayal of violence against women in South Africa.
Can you tell us more about your area of research?
A constant thread through my research is trying to make sense of the past and how it unfolds in the present, and looking at how we stitch together our lives/worlds in the afterlife of violences. Very broadly, I like thinking of/with the ocean, memory, feminism, archives, histories of enslavement, social media, and object histories.
In my current master's research, which I'm doing as a joint-fellow between the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest at SU and Exeter 中国体育彩票's Imagining Futures of Un/Archived pasts project, I look at a way of thinking about bodies as archives, and how the work of Gabrielle Goliath and Judith Mason artistically portray the long history of violence against women in South Africa. This work brings together a lot of the topics I enjoy researching – archives, feminism, embodiment and affect, histories of violences, and visual arts. The research I do in my role as the Coordinator for Citizenship Engagement at the Centre for Student Life and Learning's is also something that excites me. I get to research about how people are working to make our world better through the lenses of social justice, human rights, and democracy.
What do you think are the main obstacles to solving gender-based violence (GBV) in South Africa?
An unwillingness to change and challenge patriarchal and misogynistic beliefs which shape rape culture in South Africa is one of the largest obstacles to solving gender-based violence. Part of this is unlearning our ways of thinking about and relating to others, and relearning different, nonviolent ways of existing. And these can be the small thoughts that we have about people that we do not challenge, such as policing the way people dress or behave as 'asking for it', to the very explicitly violent acts of raping and murdering someone. If we are not going to fight against a violent culture that perpetuates an idea that someone is 'asking' for violence because of their race/class/gender/sexuality or how they dress or act, then we will never be able to win the fight against GBV in South Africa.
How can academic institutions better support and nurture the careers of women, particularly in advocacy roles?
For me there are two clear things: Firstly, it is important to nurture younger staff, this includes making funding for permanent positions available which give younger staff the ability to grow within a role and environment. It is impossible to properly support and nurture the career of women if we are only going to get short-term contracts. Secondly, childcare should be made freely available to all staff (including at all post-levels), women should not have to feel like they are torn between the (often) unequal family care burden placed upon them and their careers when deciding to have children. Thirdly, research work done by non-academic staff, who often do a lot of advocacy work within the university, should also be acknowledged and supported.
What are your future research plans or projects you are excited about?
At the moment, I am most looking forward to finalising and submitting my Master's degree. My Master's project has moved me to think more slowly and carefully about how we visually (and sonically) represent violence and the long history of gender-based violence in South Africa, so once I submit and graduate I would like to work publishing my work in academic and non-academic formats.
I have three projects that I need to get to ASAP! One is co-writing a chapter for an upcoming book on #FeesMustFall and the other is a chapter about the Real Housewives of South Africa series for an anthology from the Burning Down the House conference. I also want to give back to the Imagining Futures of Un/Archived Pasts project by contributing some findings from my master's degree to the repository.
How do you celebrate Women's Day and Woman's Month?
This Woman's Month I am most excited for our annual FVZS Honorary Lecture – I will be moderating the conversation between the honorary lecture speaker and Nobel Prize Laureate Tawakkol Karman and Prof Cheryl Hendricks, the Executive Director of the Institute of Justice and Reconciliation at SU. Namatai Kwekweza, who won the inaugural Kofi Annan NextGen Democracy Prize, was meant to be our second speaker for the honorary lecture but she has been detained for her work as a Human Rights Defender in Zimbabwe and is now unable to be here. I am also excited that this year's FVZS honorary lecture is part of the 6th International Youth Think Tank and Nobel Symposium, the first International Youth Think Tank on the African continent, and that the FVZS Institute is a partner on the project. My last week of August will be filled with learning from and working with many inspiring women.
What does work-life equilibrium mean to you, and how do you achieve it?
My research often bleeds into my 'everyday' life - they seem too closely related, too important, and too personal to be clearly separated. The biggest lesson I've learnt is that showing up a little bit every day is better than not showing up at all, and that this also applies to taking care of myself and the people in my life. Every day on my to-do list I always add two things that are important to living – sometimes that is something as simple as taking a lunch break to walk and get a croissant, to intentionally setting aside time to make soup for a friend when they are sick.
PHOTO: Stefan Els
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