Celebrating Madiba, restoring dignity to young women

I’m doing Trek4Mandela so no school girl misses a day because of she is menstruating

AS SOUTH Africa marked the 28th anniversary of his release on February 11, 2018, memories of that day, in 1990, moved me to make a decision.

I made a commitment to join the 2018 Trek4Mandela – a challenge to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, in support of Caring4Girls, a project that aims to provide sanitary towels for young girls in school.

Delivering his first speech at the end of his 27-year prison sentence, our most venerated statesman, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, reminded the nation that although the edifice of the apartheid state was crumbling, the construction of fully realised freedom for all those living in South Africa could now begin.

In this speech, Mandela paid tribute “to the mothers and wives and sisters of our nation”, whom he described as “the rockhard foundation of our struggle”.

As a 15-year-old girl at the time of his release – I remember that this moment ignited a sense of hope within myself, and my fellow citizens.

Of the many goals shared with us at the start of our “irreversible” march to freedom, I remember Madiba’s commitment to the plight of children.

Looking back, I remember the hope that children would be able to access the kind of basic education they had been denied for so many decades; that access to quality health care would be within reach for everyone who needed it.

While we were invited to dream with Madiba, I did not envisage a country in which nearly 2 000 new HIV infections per week were among girls my age and up to 24 years of age. I did not envisage a country where girls missed up to 20% of the school year because of lack of access to sanitary towels.

I grew up in Soweto at the height of the armed struggle against the apartheid government. In this nation of my split reality, school was often interrupted because of strikes and stayaways.

My parents, envisioning an education for me that was not hampered by a lack of access to adequate resources, enrolled me in a private institution.

While my days were spent in relative material privilege – I still came home at the end of the day to a township engulfed in the flames that resulted from citizens demanding equal access to opportunity through protest.

As a young woman navigating her way through this dual reality, I have been able to experience our country’s material inequalities as they have affected me on the basis of the race, class and gender demographic categories I occupy.

The particular effects of material deprivation for young black women growing up in the South Africa of “two nations” has meant that while I was able to enjoy the best education that my parents could afford for me, this sometimes meant that they couldn’t afford other basic necessities for their young daughter.

While I have memories of the dignity afforded by my education, I also recall the indignity of not having access to sanitary towels, and using tissue paper to manage the biological process of my coming of age.

It is an indignity that I would not wish on any young woman and I am determined that this should not ever be the case.

This is why I have chosen to take part in the Kilimanjaro expedition, to play a role in ensuring that young women can be shielded from this indignity as “the 2018 climb aims to raise enough funds to ensure that 500 000 girls will not miss a day of school due to menstrual challenges”.

Trek4Mandela will be a personal challenge but it is also a celebration of the life of this country’s most beloved leader. The expedition aims to summit on what would have been his 100th birthday on July 18, 2018.

And as we celebrate Madiba on the Roof of Africa, we will take a moment “to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds (us), to look back on the distance (we) have come. But (we) can rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and (we) dare not linger, for (our) long walk is not yet ended.”

To support the Caring4Girls campaign visit the SECTION27 page. http://section27.org. za/donate-to-section27/ and select Trek for Mandela