20 SISTER NAMIBIA | JUNE 2014

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Although, of course, I am many other things, being Sandy Rudd’s daughter is a huge part of who I am. I tell people my childhood playground was the NTN backstage. Playing in smoky light beams and heavy stage curtains, I would watch my mother ‘direct’. Moms’ advocacy comes in many forms but here I will share how it is in her art and in the stories she tells. As I grew up and learnt more and more through my education, I became aware of the amount of thought she puts into her work. To use a recent example, she adapted the script of Mama Mia, not only to make it proudly Namibia’s Meme Mia, but she transformed the female characters to be stronger and indepen-dent, she showed men as kind and caring, and advocated for gay rights through clever scene adaptations. This is how she ‘works’ every script she takes on – and she takes it on with a feverish sense of responsibil ity, making sure she is not sending messages Namibia does not need to hear. I have spent many hours with her dissecting and discussing the nuances of how she wants to tell her stories. In her work, and in her life, she is a feminist who is devoted to making Namibia the equitable and fair society we all wish to live in, and, of course, these experiences have influenced who I am today. Brigit is a gender activist and the Gender Programmes Manager at LifeLine/ChildLine. She manages programmes dedicated to preventing and responding to GBV in Namibia.

By Brigit Rudd

What sayeth the children of Sister’s activist mothers?

Who thinks of their parents as activists? It’s certainly not the first descriptive term that springs to

mind and it would be strange if it was. My mother, Nicky Marais. is an artist, a feminist, an educator.

But she does not take a passive stance on any of these fronts. She’s active, By God is she active.

She never bloody stops. She also is pretty unrelenting on the stance that all of this is normal, or

should be. Basically she is an everyday activist, it doesn’t come in bursts, it’s a life style. So is she

an activist? Only in so much as she don’t take shit from no one.

By Helen Harris, Art student, UCT

Second generation activists

21SISTER NAMIBIA | JUNE 2014

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As a child I always went through pictures of us as a family. I saw many happy faces and a lot of act ivity, but the family I saw was not just those am related to by blood. They were women and sometimes men whose faces I didn’t always rec-ognise, but that I knew were a part of our l ives. Women and men who would say I was “this tall” or “just a baby” when I was last seen by them.My mother has always been surrounded by people. Teaching them. Support ing them. Net-working with them. My mother always worked, I don’t remember seeing her do anything else other than work, even in that informal way. We’d be at her office at the Legal Assistance Centre, outside playing with those l ittle yellow flowers shaped l ike bubble and we’d st ick around until she’d finish or get Uncle George to drop us off at home.

She’d always take off with a bunch of files and say she was heading to the office to make copies. And for a very long t ime as a child, I thought my mother worked so hard making cups or mug’s (which in Afrikaans are referred to as

‘beker’ or ‘koppie’). For a long t ime I never under-stood why my mom worked so hard. Why we were surrounded by so many people and why the phrase “stop the violence” was repeated on so many occasions and posters. So much so that when I got a spanking once I yelled out “STOP THE VIOLENCE” to my mother. So may-be I did understand i t and maybe that is why I am proud to say that Rosa Namises is my mother.

She has been unselfish in many ways and most certainly more committed and dedicated to protect ing the l ives of other human beings, especially women, more than anyone else I have ever met. These qual i t ies have made be-ing Rosa Namises’ daughter, a very important fact.

As a poet, mother, act ivist and woman the pressure is at t imes quite intense but then I feel that I owe i t to my mother and many women who have done and cont inue to do the work that she does. I commend them for their endurance, which is often my inspirat ion. I too want to work so the world knows the pl ight of many wome

Sister Namibia was home to me on many days after schools. I remember seeing wonderful

women gather in a l iving room that smelt of magaz ines, news pr ints, wooden cup-boards and wait ing for meet ings to end as the words ‘women’ and ‘feminism’ were spr inkled through the magaz ines I paged through while wait ing. I now love and cher ish the guidance that I received from women who at t imes didn’t know they were influencing me when they were. My mother gave birth to me long after I was born. The work she cont inues to do cont inues to make me bel ieve. To understand. To grasp. To

value. To be a sister.

By Nunu Namises, poet and gender act ivist