???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. Nosipiwo Matiwane is the Programme Coordinator at the Frederick Van Zyl Slabbert (FVZS) Institute for Student Leadership Development at SU. Using black feminist epistemology as a lens, Matiwane is passionate about developing critical scholarship and leadership programmes that foster student development.
What inspired you to pursue studies in Development and Environment and Social Anthropology?
I chose to study for a BA degree in Development and Environment because I wanted to hone my writing skills, and I knew that's what BA degrees encompassed. I also appreciated the opportunity to be taught by people who valued the opinion and critical thinking of young students. It was an enriching experience to be in lectures where I could deeply the challenge the content I was taught and the people teaching it. With this, it became clear that my interrogative nature would thrive in Social Anthropology, which is the reason I did my honours in it.
How do you incorporate gender activism in your work at SU?
In the work I do at the FVZS Institute, gender, like many social and political identities, is an important point of departure in conceptualising and coordinating leadership development programmes that interrogate the silences and silencing of what is at the margins of discourse in African leadership.
I coordinate the African Leadership Masterclass Series, and this year the theme is “Queering African Leadership," and to “queer" is to generate sites for transformation in our state of being and to speak to a politics of sexualities that is not based on a specific sexual practice but rather a critical examination of existing social and political norms.
So far, the masterclass series has looked at critical race theory to 'trouble' race and racism and embodied intersectionality and the body using poetic devices. My academic research feeds into my work, and vice versa. So, for me, gender as a point of inquiry is inherent in my academic and professional work.
Do you have a distinctive stance in terms of gender equality or feminism?
I use Professor Suki Ali on her use of postcolonial studies to critique linear time, a time that moves from an “unenlightened" to an “enlightened" present. In this critique, we cannot speak of a neutral or all-encompassing feminist movement that moves through a series of so called “developments" to reach a theoretical pinnacle in the present.
So, my alignment and insistence are on feminisms that centre marginal perspectives to challenge dominant epistemological positions that continue to subjugate knowledges and people in subtle and visible ways. My position is to speak from feminisms that centre lived experience and so I align myself with radical Black feminisms.
In its articulations, Black feminist epistemology is attentive to the political economy of knowledge production and consumption. In higher education, there exists a clear investment in maintaining Eurocentric ideals which are reproduced through a colonial, capitalist and patriarchal system.
Using a Black feminist epistemology, my research seeks to uncover the lives of subjugated people and the institutional conditions which reinforce oppression in education. This also means that I have a responsibility to make my research accessible outside of academia, conferences, journals and the like. The challenge is accessing resources that will afford people the opportunity to engage with our work far beyond the confines and privileges that exist in the academic bubble.
What has been your experience as a fellow of Ubuntu Dialogues, and how has it influenced your research and activism?
Ubuntu Dialogues was an interesting experience for me, in that it highlighted how differently we approach knowledge production and consumption in South African higher education compared to in America for instance. The level within which we engage with the educational and political project differs in that we come with an experiential lens and the freedom to critique institutions and structures for the betterment of society.
??What hobbies or activities do you enjoy outside of your academic work, and how do they help you maintain a work-life balance?
Outside of my academic and work life, I make an active effort to rest. Rest is important and is resistance against a capitalist system that uses our bodies for profit and production. We live in a culture where people's lives are completely consumed by their work with limited to no time for living. Our bodies are not machines, and the 'grind' is a toxic subtheme of a capitalist society. So, I rest and occasionally enjoy vegan gelato.
How can academic institutions better support and nurture the careers of women?
Academic institutions need to provide women, and particularly young Black women with job security, stability and clear prospects for career advancement. Historically white institutions need to be more intentional with hiring Black women in academia.
PHOTO: Stefan Els
