In commemoration of Winnie Madikizela Mandela’s 85th birthday on 26 September 2021, REABUA Critical Dialogues (RCD) seeks to revisit the legacy of ‘defiant women’ in order to reshape the narrative of women’s contribution to the struggle for liberation, justice and health equity.
It focuses on ‘Health Equity’ in order to unpack and examine how and where ‘health’ featured in the race-based political economy of Apartheid and how race, health, gender and inequality were inextricably linked.
The critical dialogues will explore the gendered dimensions of health inequality under Apartheid and their impact on the lives, aspirations and potential of women and girls. It will explore the unseen but critical connections between health, equality, social justice, as well as the ongoing struggles to overcome past discrimination, unequal provision of resources, and the obstacles to the attainment of health equity as envisaged by the South African Constitution.
We will explore the historical, political, social and economic context for the well-known trajectories identified for black women under Apartheid: ‘teacher, nurse, factory worker’. The dialogues will trace the economic, political and social imperatives that drove women into ‘care work’ and how they utilised their power and positions to advance the cause of liberation and equity in the context of ‘care work’ and how they subverted the aims of white-supremacist-heterosexist patriarchy in doing so.