Feminine Africa Voices: Puleng Matthews | Mother and Director
Women still are the custodians of the land, right. They are still the people that work the land, but they do not own it. This notion of ownership is a very colonial concept by itself, but in the context of the 21st Century, especially if we talk about things like redistribution and we talk about taking the land back, it cannot go to men. It cannot go to the same me who do not work the land and that beat their wives. We cannot give it over to new systems of patriarchy. I don’t think there is a point in being anything but an optimist. I think an optimist is an imaginer who is willing to do something, or I hope so. You don’t want to be an armchair optimist. That’s not very helpful. I think it’s our to actively recreate, the world, and I think that is our project and that is what our children deserve. We would be such a wasted species if this is how we went out. The ability of this species to create and recreate, imagine and make manifest things is phenomenal. Our curiosity is phenomenal. We’ve been gifted sentience and consciousness and a phenomenal planet that should have the ability to sustain and grow us if we were conscious enough to understand that we are part of it and above it and not on top of it and not aside from it but a part of it, and that I think, is what women understand innately. I think the ability, and that doesn’t always have to manifest, but the ability to bring life into the world, the ability to nurture life, the ability to sustain a child from my own body, means that I think there is a deeper understanding …