No-one is voiceless: although some still are silenced

This is a recent graduation message from Quote This Woman+ Board Chair to members of the QW+ Voices of 2024/25 Fellowship. It reflects on how women, and otherwise sidelined people,should decide when is the best moment to speak up – and when it’s better to defer to another.

I want to start off by saying congratulations to each and every single one of you. Having spent 2 months behind the scenes at Quote This Woman+, I know that this has been a very tough and challenging journey. It’s been a journey of finding balance, figuring out what opportunities people wanted, figuring out what they wanted to focus on, and really being able to craft and hone into and develop your own voices into what you want them to be. 

Women’s development is not easy work, because women always have many things that have the potential and the ability to distract us. I want to start off by asking, firstly, why speak out? Why use your voice to speak out? We all have voices; it’s a God-given talent. Well, not all people – there are people who cannot speak, but those of us who are lucky enough to speak have a voice.

And so one of the things I always talk about is that we don’t amplify the voices of the voiceless, because no one is voiceless. But we amplify the voices of the marginalized and the voices of those whose voices are deliberately silenced. We all have a voice, and with it we have the power and the ability to use that voice. The difficulty is in figuring out how to use that voice, who to use that voice for, when to speak, and when not to speak. And so this is when the challenges of having a voice come in, because not every opportunity to speak is a good opportunity to speak. 

Not every opportunity to speak is a strategic opportunity to speak, and not every word that comes out of your mouth is, or can be, the best word. And so the biggest challenge I’ve learned is learning when is the right time to speak and When is the right time to not speak.

Thinking about the words that you use when you do speak, and really thinking about who you are speaking to, who you are speaking about, and who you are speaking for, and being quite conscious in different moments that there will be times when you know you are the only black person in the room, and therefore you will speak for all black people. But there will be times when there are other black people in the room, and as a middle-class black woman, you will have to step aside and make space for working-class black women, and there will be times when you aren’t the only black person in the room, but then you can speak on behalf of all black women.

So a big part of being a speaker is being able to be reflective and reflexive. And that means really thinking about when my voice is warranted. When you are speaking, actually speaking over the very people that you want to represent and whose voices you want to be able to amplify, then you are not using your voice appropriately. If you are able to think through those very difficult situations and be able to discern when your voice is needed and when other voices need to be platformed over yours. When I put it the way that I’ve put it, it sounds like it’s an easy thing, but it’s a very difficult thing to think about and to come to.

One other thing I want to say is, now you recognise that you have the voice, and you’ve been given the tools to use that voice, and you’ve been given the powers and the ability to amplify those voices. But the other thing that this fellowship gives you, which you must not take for granted, is community; networked communities have power. Networked communities have the power to change policy and have the power to shift the ways in which policymaking in this country is done, the ways in which budgets are spent in this country, and the ways in which politicians and those who hold power are able to behave and are able to respond to the needs of ordinary South Africans.

And so all I want to ask is that as you carry on, and as you move forward, that you hold this name, Quote This Woman+, with grace, that you hold your voice with grace, and that you use the power that you have that has been invested in you in the most powerful ways, and that you hold it with respect and with grace and with a consciousness of what it means to carry this name and the power of this name and its ability to allow you to amplify yourself, not only in a South African context, but in a continental context and in a global context. Thank you.