Speaking My Speak

In a quest for self-expression, this urbanized woman-child’s words flow from the heart of a creator to a page. After years of adolescent confusions I have found the means to speak my story and that of those close to me through pen, paper and a mic on an open stage. This voice claims its Rightful place in history.

I have seen beauty in its natural form, experienced self-love from a sassy sexy stare glaring from a magazine page. I read the caption promising everlasting exotic looks - it makes me recall those ‘virgins’ and ‘maidens’ described by the South African tourism industry in terms of an ultimate African aesthetic. I have flipped through hundreds of women’s magazines in my lifetime in search of an image of ‘self’ I can relate to. I am familiar with True Love and the women in power suits of Tribute(1) magazine. I once thought that a full-length feature about women in Tribute was a victory for the women’s movement; I have since come to believe that the power suits and ‘essence of independence’ which characterize these pages are merely another ploy to appease the women activists and to maintain the status quo. I have thus lost faith in mainstream magazines, and begun searching for images and content, which add value to my life as I, in my black woman’s body, negotiate a constantly changing urban landscape.

It is commonly accepted that women consumers support the glossy page magazine industry more than their male counterparts. As women, we feel a constant need for approval thus relentlessly search for ways and means to please. These glossy pages provide instant solutions with make-up tips and readily available and agony aunt columns. Who can blame us? After all, we occupy a world that rewards and celebrates a particular image of ‘beauty’, those of us who fall outside of this definition experience the exclusion that sets us apart from our waif-like, perfectly toned, perfectly branded sisters. I personally do not understand the idea of selling unrealistic images of women to women; I understand even less, why it is that women consume them. I guess challenging women’s self-esteem is a tool the cunning business of advertising stakes their survival on.

I don’t only look for images though...

I page through the magazines as fast as I can, hoping to find at least a page and a half of creative writing. I am unable to accept the fact that creativity is only aimed at the hip-kwaito, Y-magazine culture - the so-called urban youth with bank balances larger then their ages. I look for guidance from my elders, women forerunners in this race to pen words to paper. I relentlessly search for clues on how they negotiated their realities as women artists in such an unfriendly terrain. I do not care about the sentimentalities of the wanna be famous wanna be rich who pore over these pages to catch-up on the latest style trends. I want to open a readily available True Love magazine and read a poem by a 30-something-year-old African woman; page through Drum magazine and find a review on a book by an African writer. I do not think it is unreasonable to expect to read a well-crafted piece of creative writing in Bona magazine. I want to experience these pleasures with the knowledge that every woman who is reading, will read the same words and be inspired by them. Creative writing after all, is one of the mediums artists use to document society so that we as members of society can have a mirror of ourselves through which to view our successes and failures.

The publishers can keep their saucy cover pages, if it makes them secure in their product. I understand that the representations of women on these covers do nothing to challenge existing stereotypes, but reinforce them, reproducing dominant and destructive ideas about what our bodies ‘should’ look like, and that these images sell magazines. I cry, at the very least for substance between the glossy covers - written words that shed some light on the issues that we women face today. It is not as if South Africa is starved of skilled writers. What is the point of having creative work piling up at your desk, gathering dust while newsstands are overflowing with thousands of substance-less pages?
If you can imagine a place where women and men can be heard / A place where creative license belongs to everyone / Believe that social change and art are the harmony /
Driving us to be masters of our own destinies / The reason for our thirst for life / Giving us power / The soul inspiration of our mission / Guiding force of our vision / If you relentlessly search for a well spring of creativity / In the hum-drum of urban Africa / Then you are a visionary.


Apart from mainstream publications, if you read the academically acclaimed or independently published magazines and journals, the same acclaimed writers fill the pages with their (though well-crafted) inaccessible work over and over again. The gate keeping at play in commercial publications, merely has a different guise... When I read such, I am more convinced that publishing houses need to take a leap of faith and publish new voices - even if they do not have an academic verification, or long publication record as proof of their talent.

Talent is not confined to institutions of higher learning - especially in a country where the price of education is out of reach for large numbers. There are many writers in this country who have tapped into varied and diverse sources and knowledge’s, and produced sterling work (example?). These writers have their pulse on urban current issues; their writing is of relevance to a dynamic and changing South Africa. This is the kind of content that should be taking space in our printed pages – this is substance! As South Africans we should be realistically documenting our stories, not only to inform each other about our diversity, but also to record our own histories. The talented Drum magazine writers of the ’50s took social issues and crafted them in accessible and creative ways, a consequence of which was a South African public that was aware of social and political issues which informed their everyday lives. These days as we struggle to find an identity in a changing society, we could certainly benefit from a few cutting-edge, socially relevant information sources styled upon the publications of the 50’s. From where I stand, publishers are comfortable with the tried and tested copy they churn out, as the capitalist bosses are a conservative bunch. Driven by capital, they are not ready to take a leap of faith, not ready to trust the new voices and play it by ear so to speak.

So what options are there for publishing, especially for the so-called self-indulgent art of poetry? How do we find ways to subvert our exclusion from the mainstream?

Finding ways to ‘get our work out there’ has resulted in a shift from the printed page onto the stage alongside ‘musos’ and other performers. Young women poets, including myself, have donned a sassy attitude and taken to the stage to share our stories through poetry. The ‘spoken word’ is the term that has been given to this movement to revive oral poetry and take poetry back to the people whose stories inspires poets in the first place. The proponents of the spoken word movement have emphasized its roots being deeply embedded in African oral traditional performance and storytelling. Spoken word artists are reviving this tradition in a style and language that is understood by South Africa’s urban youth across the colour and class lines in some instances, which is a step in the right direction. In this post-apartheid era, we need platforms through which to addresses current issues in ways that are sensitive to our rich and diverse histories. We need to embrace the Sankofa(2) philosophy of looking back into our pre-colonial past in order to move forward to an African centered future.

On the flipside of this otherwise positive development, I am concerned by the shift in focus from writing and reading to rapping, the overemphasis on entertainment (without a responsibility to education) and the cattle parade sidekick that accompanies it. On that stage, on some days it feels like I’m part of a beauty pageant. While my purpose for being there may be to educate through entertainment (edutainment), I find that inevitably, the focus shifts from the words to the outfit and bum size. I have a sense that sisters on that stage gain credibility by focusing on issues defined by men as worthy of attention. But when they chant and rap about the issues affecting women and represent men in a negative light, they are not taken seriously. The applause is ‘hectic’ for attitude not for substance - it becomes about what you look like rather than your message. Ironic when one considers that the ‘spoken word’ has been a way to subvert mainstream practice...On such days the spoken word stage and those glossy magazines seem to be evil twin sisters.

From where I’m standing, the options for a self-respecting woman poet seem to be decreasing. The established publishing houses are hesitant to publishing a couple of pages of poetry as they keep their eye on the profit margin. They’d rather publish anthologies and the work of the same established poets, who have been in this game for years. Unfortunately, even when some brave publisher does publish a new voice; chances are it will be a male voice. These things make me wonder if the spirit of equality of opportunity and access that is so often bandied about, is merely lip service by policy-makers, or if some people are playing deaf.

Given these obstacles, the option of publishing your own work is very attractive - if you have the finances and contacts to unrepentantly distribute your own work that is. For me though, the need to give future generations of women writers a record of these times in which we occupy our ever-changing urban landscape, in our own words is motivation enough.


note: this piece has appeared in AGENDA-feminst journal and www.kush.co.za