The YWL Regional Conference in Johannesburg, South Africa

The YWL Regional Conference was full of meeting new, inspiring African feminists across different SADC campuses. We are so grateful for the opportunity the conference gave us to think through and explore different avenues for approaching sexual and reproductive health rights in our respective contexts.

Day 1 — On the first day each team had the opportunity to present the work their campus had achieved and what they planned to do for the rest of the year. The UCT team highlighted our achievements, such as presenting our action research at the Dreaming Feminist Futures symposium. We also shared our event plans for later this year, including the Queer Cultural Festival that will be held in September.

The YWL UCT presentation. Photo credit: Jan-Louise Lewin.

Getting a well-deserved break. Photo credit; Jan-Louise Lewin.

We also had a lot of fun getting to know one another through multiple ice breakers! A lot of dancing was involved.

Day 2 — The second day of the conference started off with an interesting class on action research methodologies presented by Peace Kiguwa. Afterwards, we separated in order to attend one of two workshops or a networking opportunity. The first workshop, ‘In Her Shoes’, spoke to wom?n’s everyday lived experiences of sexual violence. The second workshop, ‘Wanted and unwanted babies: Campus, fertility and fatality’, spoke to ‘baby dumping’ and its links with motherhood on campus. Each workshop gave space for the participants to share their thoughts and experiences around each topic. Thank you to the Wits team and University of Botswana team respectively for hosting the workshops.

Coordinating the workshops. Photo credit: Akuol Garang de Mabior.

Interesting conversation. Photo credit: Akuol Garang de Mabior.

To end the conference, we took time to pay tribute to Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who recently passed. Everyone wore black clothing, doeks and sunglasses. We watched some snippets from the PBS Winnie documentary, the Wits team read quotes from Winnie and we each shared our own stories of Winnie or people in our lives who represent Winnie. We also shared a moment of silence.

Posing for Mam’Winnie. Photo credit: Akuol Garang de Mabior.

Fists raised in honour. Photo credit: Akuol Garang de Mabior.

Thank you to all the campuses that gave their all at the conference. We highly anticipate our future individual and collaborative plans!