Pregs Govender Quotes

In our country, as in all others, rape and sexual assault have been interwoven into wars of patriarchal conquest and colonisation, genocide, slavery, apartheid and capitalism. Religious texts justify violence against women and children

It’s really people who exploit the earth and humanity with fairly little consequence and then set themselves up as the people with the solution or who will fund the solutions

My father used to say the person who writes the story shapes our consciousness. So it’s not just about whose stories get told, but it’s about if you are writing the story yourself, if it’s your story, if it’s your experience, the power of that is enormous. Because our stories have been written for us and they’ve been re-written. And many times we’ve been written out.

Share [your] personal intergenerational stories of [your] forebears who had defied race, culture, gender and power

From love we can invoke the courage to dance with our fear. Inherent dignity is our individual and collective birth right that underpins substantive rights. When we forget our birth right, as we often do, we can look in the mirror of ourselves, of each other, or let the rising sun remind us of the radiance we were born with

God is male – male is god’ is deeply embedded in the human psyche. Those taught to be subordinate are female and those taught to expect subordination are male. The world order mirrors apartheid and has deepened inequality and poverty. Economic, military and religious fundamentalism have increased vulnerability to misogyny, and rape and sexual abuse will affect an estimated one billion women and girls over their lifetimes

The impending destruction of humanity and our planet, presented by climate scientists, does not penetrate the thick wall of denial and inaction, with devastating consequences for people who are poor, especially women

When we were fighting against apartheid, we recognised it wasn’t just a racist state. It was a racist, capitalist and patriarchal state. And we have to understand that. So how do we actually fight against that? How do we change that

There is wisdom in the everyday beauty of fragile complex beings grappling with contradiction

It’s about harnessing the power we all have within us and begin to practise moving that power. It’s about seeing the dignity in others and [seeing how] the quality of what we create together becomes substantially different

Power Systems work to fragment us. They fragment us as individual beings. And they set up these hierarchies – the hierarchy of the body, mind, heart, spirit; hierarchies of race, colour, and gender, and they set up these divisions within and between us

We can reclaim ourselves by recognising that love is intrinsic to our being. From it we can invoke the courage to dance with our fear

I want to incite insubordination against this in each of us. Like you, I have felt the fear and hate of subordination land on my skin, course through my blood, unsettle my nerves… its paralysis, impotent rage and helplessness

Some people said that apartheid disappeared after removing the signs that said ‘non-Europeans’ … but the structural institutional roots of it remained. When we begin to get insubordinate, we begin to get to the roots of things. Oppressive systems thrive in our subordination

That’s how Power Systems work. They set up divisions between us. One of the most powerful things is reclaiming that connection