Research Fellow in the Office for International Affairs at the University of the Free State and lead editor for “Rethinking Africa”, Bernedette Muthien, says for the first time ever in Africa, they have a book written with and for indigenous South African women from women centred societies.

“This is about scholars, artists and activists reclaiming our indigenous wisdom and creativity,” Muthien said.

She added that indigenous people in the world are often socially and gender equal, women-centred, less violent and ecologically sensitive.

The book, conceived at the start of the pandemic in lockdown and produced in less than a year, critically opens new pathways for de-colonial scholarship and the reclamation of indigenous self-definition by women scholars.

“It is long overdue that, as indigenous women, we write our own ‘herstory’ [history], define our own contemporary cultural and socio-economic conditions, and conceive future visions based on our lived realities, which are social and gender equality, matricentric, beyond-heteronormative, based on non-violence or peace, ecologically responsible, and goddess-loving,” she says.

She added that all chapters in the book historicises civilised histories and how we have come to understand their African pasts, how to rethink that discourse and provide new and different historical/“herstorical” lenses, methodologies and interpretations.  

Through this publication, she mostly wanted to convey that women are central to indigenous societies and that our environment is alive and worthy of respect. In Muthien's view, humans, animals, plants, and the planet should not be exploited but imbued with dignity.

Muthien's commitment to her women ancestors and contemporary communities inspired this work, correcting misinterpretations of indigenous knowledge, women's role in society, and colonially influenced patriarchy in our urban areas.

She also believes one needs women at the centre of societies, co-creating social values and practices that are humane and nonviolent, that nurture and foster individual and collective growth, that heal and care that do no harm, and definitely do not exploit.

Furthermore, she added that the book includes iconic written poetry too.

The book is available at bookshops and the internet.

OFM News