As Tracey Malawana was growing up in Tembisa, a township outside Johannesburg, South Africa, the public schools she attended didn’t always have functioning toilets or sinks to wash her hands.
Now, as deputy general secretary at the nonprofit organization Equal Education, 25-year-old Malawana is helping students advocate for access to the basic resources they need.
A community and membership-based movement, Equal Education organizes students, parents, educators, and community members to address injustices in South Africa’s education system.
When girls don’t have access to proper sanitation facilities in schools, they are at a higher risk of experiencing gender-based violence, and can’t safely manage their periods. In South Africa, the stigma and taboos around periods stop girls from attending school on a daily basis. As a result, girls who don’t receive the same education as their peers might have a harder time finding employment and escaping poverty later in life.
In the fourth episode of ACTIVATE: The Global Citizen Movement, a six-part documentary series developed by National Geographic and Procter & Gamble and co-produced by Global Citizen and RadicalMedia, Malawana shares how she’s working with students to fight for menstrual equity. She revisits Tembisa to advise a group of schoolgirls, also known as “equalizers,” to demand dignified sanitation from their school’s administration.
Malawana spoke with Global Citizen about working with youth advocates, how others can support girls’ education, and more.
Global Citizen: Why did you start working at Equal Education?
Tracey Malawana: Getting an education from a public school and having to travel once in a while to go to town, or visit other schools, you see the inequalities within the education system in terms of infrastructure, and the buildings, but also the sports facilities are not the same. That's where my consciousness started.
I started questioning: Why do I have to go to a school that is dysfunctional and why are other young people going to schools that are well resourced? I realized that I have the power to make a difference. And sometimes making a difference is not you know, changing the entire school.
I was born an activist. When I was young, I'd question things. I'd resist. I’d say, "I can't do this. I won't do this. It's against my principles,” even though I didn't fully understand what principles meant.
I get to work with young people on a daily basis. And young people are, you know, the future leaders of this country.
Can you tell me a little bit about what you specifically do at EE?
The beauty of my story is that I started off as an equalizer. The following year, I decided to take a gap year. I volunteered at EE for a year and in 2013, as a volunteer, I was facilitating young people. One of the key campaigns that we did during that time was a poor sanitation campaign. I was doing a lot of work around that, doing surveys in schools, and sometimes you find out that there's no soap, there's no toilet paper. You also find that there's no access to like sanitary pads and schools.
"The impunity that is attached to the use of violence by state officials creates extremely grave danger for society as a whole and it destroys eventually the rule of law. It destroys the trust, the bond between the people and the state and it undermines any kind of democratic institution.”
Scorpio
