Phenomenal Woman: Lebohang 'Nova' Masango

Sweden-born Lebohang “Nova” Masango is a widely revered poet, writer and feminist. While Nova was mostly raised in exile, her fascination with books was aroused by her politically involved parents. Nelson Mandela's life, which became the basis of the opening tribute done at the Metro FM Awards 2014, Nova wrote, “Without you, without your brave peers, without my parents who fought too, without our people, without the tears and without the lifetimes and lifetimes of blood - I would surely be cleaning the house of some white family or teaching a Bantu Education syllabus to brown-skinned babies who would be forced to internalize the message that they were born to be servants.”  From an early age Nova’s main focus of her work was to teach and to heal. Her work and message has afforded her the opportunity to be featured in the book Twelve + One which profiles Johannesburg poets and their poetry. Named in Elle’s Top 40 Twitterfeeds You Have to Follow, you can follow Nova @NovaHerself and check out her blog www.novaherself.tumblr.com to see what the brown beauty gets up to.

1.       Who is King Nova and why does she insist on being addressed as a King and not a Queen?

I’m a brown woman who is in love with her existence. I am a writer of all sorts of wonderful things while negotiating a supposedly post-Apartheid experience of living in South Africa. I love women and the politics that love, strengthen and fight for us – I am a feminist. I am also a lover of the resilience of people of colour all over this planet. I am a lover of poetry and all the people who set their brilliance into art and make us feel.

About the ‘King Nova’ thing, I have never explicitly asked to be addressed as that, it happens to be my [former] Twitter handle (@kingxnova) and I guess that people just ran with it. My philosophy in that regard, however, is that the thing about being a queen is that it always leaves space for people to assume that you’re a supporting act to someone more powerful who sits beside you on the throne. However, there’s a sense of finality in being a king. I still don’t know why Beyoncé called herself a king when she released the ‘4’ album but perhaps it was for similar reasons. Either way, my life is a space where I am the most powerful entity so expressions of ultimate power are always attractive to me.

2.       When did you fall in love with poetry and what was the first poem you put in writing?

I first fell in love with poetry sometime between watching a film called ‘Love Jones’ and watching Lebo Mashile’s ‘L’attitude’ on SABC 1. These were my first encounters with how words could be expressed vocally in a way that was just as powerful as speech and song. I couldn’t help but be moved.

The first poem I wrote, that I actually liked, was when I was 15 years old and it was “Untitled”, (I used to be rather corny back in my day) and if I remember, it was about blackness – which has remained as a central thematic concern of mine – and grappling with the fact that I was a Rasta who actively did not smoke weed. I liked the poem back then but as it goes, I find it to be quite embarrassing nowadays.

3.   Do you think you have become more guarded of your writing since your work was plagiarized and available on a well-known publication (under someone else’s name)?

Definitely! I am way more guarded now. I was so shocked at the audacity of Nandi Khuzwayo to just steal my work from my Tumblr and just pass it off as her own to another, rather large publication that after that incident I just decided to put my work up only once in a long while. We’re living in an internet age where information is available so freely so I was highly annoyed by the sheer audacity of the act.

4.       Shortly after the incident you started writing for Rookie Magazine, how did that come about?

I’m sure you can guess. The young woman no longer writes for them.

5.       How does your passion for Anthropology influence your writing?

Anthropology has influenced, broadened and improved my worldview. Through my studies, I have been exposed to the intricate ways in which humanity thrives; in which people all over the world (regardless of geography or economic class) are busy producing culture (through food, dress, spiritual beliefs, political systems, gender relations – through living) and every single one of those cultures is important and deserves space and respect. Through studying History and just general knowledge as well, I’ve been compelled to notice that not all people have had their humanity respected and some people have colonised, oppressed, raped, tortured and murdered other people, systematically for centuries, solely for being different from themselves. That has led me to have a deep passion for social justice and for political schools of thought such as Feminism, pan-africanism and pro-blackness (which is not anti-whiteness) which aim to empower and love marginalised people.

6.       Pumla Gqola is a huge inspiration to you and your work in feminism, why is that so?

Firstly, she’s the whole deal and then some. Secondly, how could she not be anyone’s inspiration? She’s an intelligent, resilient and gorgeous black woman who is not scared to say what it is and what it is not and walk that same line. To paraphrase her, she’s “beautiful, brilliant and badly-behaved”.

Professor Gqola was my lecturer in African Literature and I admired how she used that syllabus to teach us something incredibly valuable beyond the literary world – instances of African feminism within our prescribed literature. At the same time, I was studying Feminist Theory with Dr Antje Schumann in the Politics Department so I was getting a broad feminist education from two different streams of thought. From all the amazing things that I have learnt from Professor Gqola, I think that the most valuable has been that African feminism has never needed a big bold banner or epoch marked in history because it has always been there, from the day we first breathed on this Earth as African women. It occurred and continues to occur in the instances of women displaying agency, subversive behaviour and political organisation, individually and collectively.

7.  You worked alongside Zonke in the Zazi campaign. Why do you think it’s important for the campaign to embody feminism as a movement?

Zazi is a media campaign that broadcasts positive messaging to young women focusing on sexual health education. Zazi is the Nguni word for “know yourself” and it is also understood as a message of empowerment that encourages us to be firm in who we are and not to compromise our goals and ourselves. Zazi reminds young women to choose to not engage in transactional-sex relationships, to not stay in abusive relationships, to always use contraceptives including female condoms and not leave it up to our sexual partners to carry condoms. Zazi also encourages a sense of goodwill among women and girls. It would be lovely to get to a point where girls know that they are able to seek advice and assistance from women in the community who are health workers or in the church instead of fearing condemnation.

This campaign embodies Feminist ideals by placing women, our health and well being at its centre and by encouraging mutual support among women and girls – we are certainly stronger, even as individuals, when we create those bonds amongst ourselves. Another aspect is that the media can encourage the boys and men in society to use condoms, for instance, but it also makes a whole lot of sense to give that same message to women and remind us to not be coerced into unsafe sexual practices.

It’s important that Feminism is embodied in this way by the campaign (although the campaign does not explicitly announce itself as being feminist) because most people’s impression of Feminism is negative – even people who have not done any kind of basic research on it. We live in a world that often encourages the idea that boys and men lead heterosexual relationships and that girls and women should “naturally” submit to that. We also live in a world that would rather encourage competition and suspicion among women than friendship and goodwill. Our campaign is asking us all to reimagine that paradigm.

8.   You’re signed under Motif Records; do you think it’s imperative for artists to be signed under a record label?

I don’t think it’s necessary. It all depends on a person’s vision for their work and the scale of the impact that they want, I suppose. Many poets are able to carry out their work without that kind of support.

9.       What does your mantra, stay low and keep firing mean?

It’s a line from a Notorious B.I.G track called “Kick in the Door” and it goes: “I was told in shoot-out’s to stay low and keep firing. Keep extra clips for extra shit”. How I interpret “stay low and keep firing” is that it’s a reminder to stay focused, keep doing my best and to not give up.

10.   When can we expect a book from Nova?

[Laughs] One of these good days.

Street Style: Neighbourgoods

The Neighbourgoods Market in Johannesburg takes place every Saturday from 9:00 to 15:00 in the creative hub that is Braamfontein. Held in a beautiful setting that overlooks Juta Street, the market offers an assortment of goods ranging from fresh foods, specialty goods, refreshing beverages and selected items of clothing from local designers. Neighbourgoods, as it is commonly referred to, is a meeting point for creatives, foodies, fashionistas and bloggers! The standard of style is inspired by the energy that the Neighbourgoods Market brings and market-goers put an effort in how they look. Prints, pop of colour and accentuated accessories were the popular choice on the streets. With hats, sunglasses, dungarees and denims becoming a big trend, it seems the 90’s are back in style!

WE SHOULD ALL BE FEMINISTS

[A transcript of the TEDxTalk speech] By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Gender is not an easy conversation to have for both men and women. To bring up gender is sometimes to encounter an almost immediate resistance. Some of the men here might be thinking, “Okay, all of this is interesting, but I don’t think like that.” And that is part of the problem. That many men do not actively think about gender or notice gender, is part of the problem of gender. That many men say, like my friend Louis, “But everything is fine now.” And that many men do nothing to change it. If you are a man and you walk into a restaurant with a woman and the waiter greets only you, does it occur to you to ask the waiter, “Why haven’t you greeted her?”

Because gender can be a very uncomfortable conversation to have, there are very easy ways to close it, to close the conversation. So, some people will bring up evolutionary biology and apes, how female apes bow down to male apes and that sort of thing. But the point is, we’re not apes. Apes also live on trees, and have earthworms for breakfast, and we don’t. Some people will say, “Well, poor men also have a hard time.” And this is true. But this is not what this conversation is about. Gender and class are different forms of oppression. I actually learned quite a bit about systems of oppression and how they can be blind to one another by talking to black men. I was once talking to a black man about gender and he said to me, “Why do you have to say ‘my experience as a woman’? Why can’t it be ‘my experience as a human being’?” Now, this is the same man who would often talk about his experience as a black man.

Gender matters. Men and women experience the world differently. Gender colors the way we experience the world. But we can change that. Some people will say, “Oh, but women have the real power, bottom power.” And for non-Nigerians, “bottom power” is an expression in which I suppose means something like a woman who uses her sexuality to get favors from men. But “bottom power” is not power at all. Bottom power means that a woman simply has a good root to tap into, from time to time, somebody else’s power. And then of course we have to wonder when that somebody else is in a bad mood, or sick or impotent.

Some people will say that a woman being subordinate to a man is our culture. But culture is constantly changing. I have beautiful twin nieces who are 15 who live in Lagos. If they had been born 100 years ago, they would have been taken away and killed because it was our culture, the Igbo culture to kill twins. So, what is the point of culture. I mean, there is the decorative, the dancing but also culture is really about the preservation and continuity of a people. In my family, I am the child who is most interested in the story of who we are in our traditions and the knowledge of ancestral lands. My brothers are not as interested as I am, but I cannot participate. I cannot go to tribal meetings, I cannot have a say, because I am female.

So if it is in fact true that the full humanity of women is not our culture, then we must make it our culture.

DIY: Strawberry Kale Salad with Nutty Granola Croutons

Spring has officially kicked off and what better way to enjoy this season with a light and delicious salad-without adding any weight to your body! I stumbled on the recipe on one of my favourite food blogs here and I had to try it! Although my pictures didn't turn out as stunning as Kate's I decided to use hers instead. If you're not big on strawberries you can use pineapples or mangos as an alternative. Check the full recipe on the link provided! Enjoy!