From Apartheid to Rebirth
Des Lee Scholar and activist Rashida Manjoo brings lessons of the South African experience

Rashida Manjoo is a human rights lawyer and scholar

Rashida Manjoo, Webster University’s 2008-09 Des Lee Visiting Scholar for Global Awareness, has lived the story of South Africa.

“In the ‘60s, we didn’t know when the next bomb would be placed,” Manjoo recalls.

That was because a previously non-violent struggle against South Africa’s crude-yet-codified racial and ethnic stratification had become violent.

“The government responded with greater oppression and segregation, which only made things worse,” she says. “Life under apartheid was a daily struggle for survival, a daily struggle to avoid dehumanizing experiences.”

Indignities included attending segregated schools and universities, plus crude tests to determine one’s racial category – such as by observing the size and shape of one’s lips, or submitting to a “pencil test” to see if one’s hair could hold a pencil without it falling. A third-generation South African of Indian descent, Manjoo had to apply for a permit to attend the “white” university that was closer to her home. The permit was only granted if one could show that the university offered a needed course that the nearest “black” university did not.

Constitutional democracy finally emerged in 1994 “not out of kind hearts, but because the state was becoming ungovernable,” Manjoo says.

But after decades of economic disparity, apartheid, and suppression of women’s rights, the arrival of democracy was no instant cure. There were ashes to sift through, habits to correct, reconciliations to be made. There was even tension to soothe between the oppressed who had escaped – to live a freer life in exile, albeit one separated from families – and those who stayed behind and suffered through the violence.

As a scholar, an activist, and a lawyer, Manjoo helped the country make these uncomfortable transitions by playing a variety of high-level roles.

She was a member of the Commission on Gender Equality (CGE), a constitutional body mandated to oversee the promotion and protection of gender equality, and served for five years as the Parliamentary Commissioner. Prior to being appointed to the CGE, Manjoo was involved in social context training for judges and lawyers where she has designed both content and methodology during her time at the Law, Race, and Gender Research Unit at the University of Cape Town and at the University of Natal, Durban.

Manjoo also helped set up both a national and a provincial network on violence against women. She is the founder of the Gender Unit at the Law Clinic at the University of Natal and also the Domestic Violence Assistance Programme at the Durban Magistrates Court – the first such project in a court in South Africa.

With so many different ethnic groups in South Africa – there are 11 officially recognized languages – there are many diverse cultural norms to consider when establishing nationwide standards and policies that are respectful to all.

The process involves a necessary recognition about diversity: “An important principle is that tolerance is not enough,” Manjoo says. “Tolerance does not equal respect for human rights.”

Equality Issues in South Africa … and the U.S.

As such, while South Africa’s still-young democracy has sought to enable the various customs of its different cultures (everything from rural tribal laws to marriage and funeral customs can vary by region), it cannot allow any custom or tribal law to trump the principle of equality.

That means equality among races, but also among genders. The rate of violence against women and children in South Africa is the highest of any state not at war. Recognizing this “deep, systemic, structural legacy of a problem,” Manjoo says, the Commission on Gender Equality that she participated in was established separately from the constitutional Commission on Human Rights.

But those are the problems and needs of South Africa. Things are different in the United States, right?

“I came to the U.S. with deep experiences of race and gender inequality,” says Manjoo, who also spent two-plus years as a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School. “So I quickly understood how it still exists here.”

“It’s human nature,” she says. “We very quickly take things for granted and see them through our own lens. So gender inequality is more invisible in the U.S., because there is a perception that men and women have equal rights. As in: ‘We’re a 232-year-old democracy. We’ve already been through that.’ But it still exists, and while this is a shame, it is a wonderful opportunity for dialogue and open discussion.”

Variety of Des Lee Activities

Among her activities as Des Lee scholar at Webster, Manjoo taught classes in human rights, women’s justice, and truth commissions. She also moderated the College’s major conference on American Exceptionalism and Human Rights, and she ran a weekend seminar on truth commissions with Debbie Pierce of Webster’s Center for International Education.

Truth commissions are formed all around the world to discover and record what went wrong within a society, and they serve a more significant role than they’re sometimes given credit for.

“Truth commissions are not about revenge, and they’re not necessarily about prosecuting the perpetrators,” Manjoo explains. “Each governing body decides the objective of their own commission, of course, but they can be very important in developing a more accurate record of history, and preserving the lessons of what happened in institutional memory.”

For a woman with Manjoo’s life experience and passion for equal rights, those lessons cannot be underestimated.

“I try to blend theory and practice when teaching these subjects,” she says. “I try to teach my students that to make progress, you have to start at the point of what is, not at what should be. We owe this to the next generation as human rights activists and advocates. Hopefully my grandchildren live in a better world than I.”