Myth and myth-making can be traced back to the origin of our species and is the archetypal language through which our spiritual and creative selves make sense of our world and fashion meaning. The mythic imaginary though, is not entirely free of religious or political bias. While certain archetypes are common to the collective human […]
Gillian Schutte
Feminist, filmmaker, writer, poet, activist and author, Gillian Schutte has a degree in African politics, an MA in Creative Writing and a Film Director's qualification from the Binger Institute, Netherlands. Winner of the Award of Excellence for her documentary entry to the Society for Visual Anthropology Festival in Washington, 2005, and author of the novel After Just Now -- Schutte fearlessly and creatively tackles issues of race, identity, sexuality and social justice in her multimedia work. She is founding member of Media for Justice co-owner of handHeld Films. and co producer of the online Reality TV series
The Schutte Singiswas'.
Posted inNews/Politics
‘You are killing your children’
November 13 was a cool summer’s night. Students and university workers gathered in the park over the road from the University of Johannesburg to partake in a peaceful vigil against police brutality and in continuation of the #FeesMustFall protest. They hoped it would not rain as the vigil was to last a few hours. A […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, News/Politics
Neoliberal capitalism is a violence against women (16 days of activism)
Sixteen days of Activism for No Violence against Women and Children is upon us again this year. As usual it will come and go but very little will change for the majority of women and children in South Africa. The middle class will be a little more aware of the heinous gender-based violence statistics that […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, News/Politics
Decolonisation and the end of white male hegemony
Western civilisation has, since the dawn of patriarchy, privileged white masculine reasoning and meanings and depreciated the experience, knowledge and voices of women. With the advent of colonialism people indigenous to the Americas, Africa and other colonised lands, were also brutally constructed as less than human, “othered” and devalued by this monolithic white masculinist logic. […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
A New Year’s epistle to whiteness
Dear white people, There is no kind way to put this so gird your loins and swallow hard. All whites are racist. Some may not practice racism and many may be anti-racist. Others may mistakenly believe that we live in a non-racist epoch. Some may be left wing and others may be moderate or right […]
Posted inLifestyle, News/Politics
Brett Bailey’s human zoo and discourse bunfight
Brett Bailey, an award-winning South African theatre director and artist, thought it would be a brilliant idea to recreate a painful period of colonial history by reconstructing what turns out to be a human zoo as a traveling art installation. In his mind this was going to be a smart aesthetic reminder to the world […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Marikana widows shed tears in Women’s Month
This Women’s Month marks two years since the Marikana massacre. The widows of the workers killed by the South African Police Service in 2012 have since received their deceased husband’s provident fund dues, but still wait for justice while the media and public attention has long since transferred from their plight to the Farlam Commission. […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Mandela Day – a neocolonial exercise in the commodification of the good black
While every other black leader in a post-1994 South Africa has been constructed as an inferior “other” by the dominant discourse, Nelson Mandela has been deified as a saintly black and is held in high esteem by whiteness. He has been hailed as a decent and rational African by the moderate liberal white discourse and […]
Posted inEquality, Media, News/Politics
Mr X versus the Marikana miners
The mysterious Mr X has been testifying against the striking miners at the Farlam Commission for the past two months in which he claimed the miners engaged in murder conspiracies and flesh-eating rituals. But Geoff Budlender has questioned parts of Mr X’s claims and provided evidence that disputes his claim that Association of Mineworkers and […]
Posted inEnvironment
‘F*ck for Forest’ – a film review
This documentary introduces us to a whimsical, restless and sensitive Norwegian youth, 23-year-old Danny. He is a former Olympian equestrian star who dresses in discarded thespian clothing with felt hats, feathers and velvet cloaks over T-shirts, jeans and tackies. He speaks in poetic and quirky phrases peppered with eccentric humour. Danny is in angstful conflict […]
Posted inEquality, News/Politics
Of clowns, covert racism and whitewashing black concerns
The furore over the cartoon depicting the ANC parliamentarians and their electorate as a bunch of inept clowns is indicative of how far we still have to go in terms of embedded and unconscious racism in South Africa. There is nothing wrong with critiquing government in satirical depictions, but there is something horribly wrong when […]
Posted inEquality
Leering glances: The silence on sexual harassment is untenable
Sexual harassment on the streets is a pervasive phenomenon that women from a range of racial and cultural backgrounds as well as social circumstances experience in daily life. Most men, even educated men from so-called respectable backgrounds belittle women’s experiences of sexual harassment. Internationally, this has led to a spate of new films and campaigns […]