Library BOOK DISCUSSIONS
Redi Tlhabi addresses Power Issues through her book Khwezi
From left: Dr Mispa Roux, Leila Abdool-Gafoor, Redi Tlhabi, Prof Shahana Rasool and Sr Rainny Nkhatho
The Library hosted Redi Tlhabi to discuss her book Khwezi - The remarkable story of Fezekile Ntsukela Kuzwayo. The discussion was co- hosted with the UJ Institutional Office for HIV & AIDS (IOHA), the Akani Ladies Day House and PsyCaD. Prof Shahana Rasool, HoD Social Work and Dr Mispa Roux, Senior Lecturer Faculty of Law, served as panellists. The book is an account of the life of President Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser Fezekile Kuzwayo. In sensitive and considered prose,
journalist Redi Tlhabi breathes life into a woman who, for so long was forced to live in the shadows. In giving agency back to Khwezi, Tlhabi is able to focus a broader lens on the sexual abuse that abounded during the ‘struggle’ years, abuse which continues to plague women and children in South Africa today. “Fezekile Kuzwayo represented something much larger than the life of a young woman”, Tlhabi writes. “She was not just Zuma’s rape accuser, although that
chapter should have been a salient one in the development of our nation. We should have learnt to interrogate the language of power. We should have walked away from her story with an understanding of the complexities of power relations and how they can destroy lives and contaminate the space for debate. We should have had a more cerebral and compassionate understanding about patriarchy as performed and lived by both the women and men who were intent on lynching Fezekile.”
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