Mmatshilo Motsei is a community organizer, author, poet and a mother of three born in Lady Selborne, Pretoria and raised in rural North West province. She started her career as a nurse and midwife at Masana Hospital (now Mapulaneng, Limpopo) and moved on to become a nursing lecturer, social science researcher (Wits University) and a psychology graduate (Unisa). She has over the past decade worked as a counselor, trainer, gender consultant and a rural development practitioner.
In 1992, she founded Agisanang Domestic Abuse Prevention and Training (ADAPT), an organisation using holistic healing methods to address violence against women in townships and rural villages. During her tenure as founder and director, she developed a Community empowerment model for addressing domestic violence. The model views the woman as a nexus around which family and community life revolves. As a result, the model argues for a comprehensive intervention that is rooted in local cultural beliefs governing the life of the abused woman, her family (partner, children, youth, and elders) as well as the entire community.
In 1995, she was seconded to the Office of the President to develop policy for women's empowerment focusing mainly on the establishment of the Commission on Gender Equality, Office on the Status of Women as well as the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on the Status of Women. In 1997 and 1999, she facilitated training on violence against women as an obstacle to development for women in Harare, Zimbabwe and Mogadishu, Somalia respectively.
In 2001/2, she was a consultant to RADAR (Burgersfort, Limpopo), a rural women and HIV project of the School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand. Her main task included designing interventions that integrates gender violence and HIV into microfinance programmes for rural women. In 2002, she was contracted by the Mineworkers Development Agency to undertake a community impact assessment aimed at identifying economic and social benefits of the commercialization of morula on women living in several villages around Bushbuckridge, Limpopo.
In 2003, she was assigned by Freedom Park Trust with a responsibility of undertaking research on the spiritual significance of rocks and water in african healing using individual interviews and focus group discussions with elders and traditional healers residing in villages across Limpopo, North West and Gauteng. The findings of her work was used by landscape architects to design a garden of remembrance and a memorial due to be unveiled by the President as part of tenth anniversary celebrations in 2004.
Through her work, she has traveled extensively across Africa, Europe, USA and Australia and has received numerous awards including the International Human Rights Award in New York as well as the United Nations Habitat Scroll of Honour Award for her work in involving men as part of the solution to violence against women.
Born of a family of spiritual healers, she was chosen against her will to continue with the legacy of healing. Entrapped by the ideals of a western education and the comforts of modern living, she made endless but fruitless attempts to disown the gift. After living and working in Johannesburg for over 15 years, she moved closer to rural communities to learn the teachings of elders as well as reconnect with Mother Earth thus responding to her deep-seated longing for spiritual recovery and discovery. Her current interest revolves around integrating ancient teachings in contemporary developmental models.
Other titles and editorial contributions by Mmatshilo
- Hearing Visions, Seeing Voices (jacana) 2004
- Name the Pain, Face the Shame: South African men speak out on violence against women.
- She is also working on: Healing the woman, her family and community: A paradigm shift in addressing violence in the home
- bosom of the goddess – collection of poetry.
- She has contributed numerous articles on spiritual politics, moral leadership, violence and healing in local papers such as Mail and Guardian, Sowetan, City Press and Sowetan Sunday World.
Her latest book – The Kanga and Kangaroo Court, Reflections of the Trial Rape of Jacob Zuma, interrogates truth to power -- not just male power, but political power, religious and cultural power, imperial and military power. By using the trial of Jacob Zuma as a mirror, the book reveals the hidden yet public forms of violence against women in their homes, marriages, churches and political organisations.
Her current work centres around integrating African indigenous teachings in modern innovations. She is based in Pretoria, running Moontime Wellness Centre, a wellness well designed to address spiritual drought common in contemporary African society.
