Born in East London, Eastern Cape in 1973, Monalisa grew up in the tumultuous political landscape of the time. She was politically active from a young age, organizing with fellow learners for the rights of students during the apartheid regime. In 1986 she had to flee her school because of riots, and completed high school in Dimbaza, where she continued her political involvement. Her political leadership led to her nomination as student representative on the school committee. Monalisa lived through the fear and trauma of the now infamous police raids on her home, punishment for her father’s political involvement.
Monalisa’s mother left when she was 3 months old, and her upbringing fell to her paternal grandmother. Believing that boys were more valuable, Monalisa suffered verbal and emotional abuse from her grandmother. This favoritism led Monalisa’s brother to believe he had power over her. He tried to force her to have sexual relations with his friends; when she refused, her brother stabbed her. Monalisa laid a charge against her brother for the assault, to the displeasure of her grandmother, who subsequently refused to pay for Monalisa to finish high school. Monalisa was thus forced to drop the charges. Despite this, in her final year of high school, her grandmother stopped paying her school fees. Monalisa was forced to take small jobs selling fruit in order to feed herself and to further her studies. However, despite her best efforts, she could not afford to finish high school.
Monalisa tried to leave home to escape the economic and emotional abuse; like so many women are forced to do, she moved in with her boyfriend and his family in the hope of finding financial security and a less abusive environment. When her boyfriend became abusive, regularly beating Monalisa, she felt she had nowhere to go. When she did return home, her grandmother laughed at her, and when she found work, her grandmother would demand all her money, while her brother destroyed any possession she tried to acquire.
After her father and grandmother died, the responsibility of her family of eight, including her three children, fell to Monalisa. She was also reunited with her mother, who she learned was HIV positive. Monalisa remembers that “AIDS was introduced to us as a monster”; her mother, a teacher, faced horrendous discrimination at work and in her community. This drove Monalisa to want to learn more about HIV/AIDS. So, in 2002, she joined the Treatment Action Campaign.
Monalisa joined the Masikhule Branch in Mdantsane. Her political acumen and fine intellect were quickly noticed, and Monalisa was appointed as an Education Officer, responsible for educating branch members on Treatment Literacy - one of the TAC’s core programmes. She then became a full time Treatment Literacy Practitioner, was elected to the Provincial Executive Committee as Secretary and served as the Acting Provincial Organiser for the Eastern Cape. Monalisa was nominated to the Women’s Reference Group, both provincially and nationally, and has completed the TAC and Gender AIDS Forum three-phase Women in Leadership training programme. Her work on women’s rights and gender has become a priority because “domestic violence, sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and rape are the daily realities we face as women in our community.”
As a vocal, committed activist and strong leader, Monalisa regularly represents TAC in local, regional and international forums. Most recently, she led a TAC delegation at the World Social Forum in Kenya, where her leadership and strategic engagement proved critical in raising key issues at the Forum. She is currently assisting the Eastern Cape TAC Office in organising the Provincial Imbizos designed to ensure critical input from communities into the National Strategic Plan on HIV, AIDS and STIs drafting process underway in South Africa.
Monalisa’s words
Addressing violence against women is critical because, combined with the realities of our patriarchal society and the crisis of unemployment and poverty, women are increasingly vulnerable to HIV.
Gender inequalities mean that the sexual autonomy of a woman is curtailed. Because of poverty and economic factors I have had to be with a man. I have experienced violence and abuse, in my home, by my brother, by my grandmother, by my boyfriend. On occasion, I have also experienced abuse in my place of work – because I am a woman.
We as women are more vulnerable to HIV, because of poverty, because of the unemployment crisis, because of social powers that exist in our society, because of patriarchy, because of violence against women. As an organisation dealing with AIDS, feminism is central to changing social factors which cause us to be more vulnerable to AIDS. I understand feminism to mean women leading with a transformative agenda that connects gender power and social change; it means women’s leadership to influence agendas with the formal power and capacity to leverage large scale changes in policies, legal rights, social attitudes and power relations. It is critical that we address our daily realities – domestic violence, abuse and rape – to build a competent society. Gender imbalances between men and women must be transformed to entrench women’s autonomy over our own health, bodies and lives.
Aluta continua! Not yet uhuru! (Uhuru – freedom, independence, equality)
Monalisa is a mother of two boys, sixteen and seven-years-old, and a five-year-old daughter. She lives in Amatole, Eastern Cape.
