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The Rural Women’s Assembly (RWA) is a movement of rural women, small scale farmers, peasants, farmworkers and fishers from across 11 countries of the SADC Region. Our members are from South Africa, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Mauritius and Madagascar! In existence over sixteen years, RWA sees itself as a Pan-African movement. As a regional movement we know the challenges and dreams of rural women across the region – wanting land with water for livelihoods and food and our seeds for food sovereignty! And like their South Africa counterparts, the women in the region also demand access to health-care, to housing, to education and schools for the children, to decent public transport, work and jobs for all and most importantly, a demand for an end to violence, corruption and repression across the region.
Our members, like those in South Africa, also finger the elite capture of our resources, as well as the historical and still ongoing exploitation and grabbing of the wealth, land and natural resources of the region and Africa by multi-national companies and their local cronies.
Our national borders were imposed during colonial partition to serve the interests of empires. South Africa’s mining, agriculture and wealth were built with hard labour of African workers – a story told by our beloved Hugh Masekela through the unforgettable song Stimela (coal train).
Our current pain of poverty, unemployment and increasing inequality in South Africa, is shared by others and it is clear that we have the same struggles and same needs!! This is why we think we must not misplace and direct our anger and pain towards our sisters and brothers. RWA rejects the current waves and daily threats of vigilantism, hate-speech, violence, human rights violations, terror, unfolding across South Africa. We reject this behaviour as a shameful blight on our country and its people. Afrophobia and xenophobia has to be challenged.
The deep socio-economic, political crisis, the high levels of unemployment, deepening poverty collapsing public services, and savage inequality have shredded the social fabric of poor and working-class communities across this beloved country. Today the crisis is fuelled on by lies and misinformation that have to be dispelled. It is essential that we name the real enemy of the poor! Migrant communities cannot be scapegoated for deep-seated socioeconomic and structural crises. This situation is a result of neo-liberal policies that continue to concentrate wealth in the hands of a small minority.
Therefore, as RWA, we believe strongly that as a movement our task is to build an alternative path to the multiple global crises. In SADC we have to demand a new regionalism that is based on a common struggle for justice and dignity for all in the region. This demand is a universal one rooted in internationalism and African solidarity and as the core principle we defend as a foundation of our democracy and ubuntu.
