VISIBILITY IS POLITICAL

Sunshine Fionah Komusana on Making Womxn Visible

What happens when the people who shaped our movements, communities and histories are missing from the record? When womxn’s lives, work and knowledge exist in our memories and in the stories passed down through generations, but not in the places where the world goes looking for knowledge?

Who gets to be remembered and who gets to decide?

At the Weavers Forum 2026, I sat down with Sunshine Fionah Komusana, an Afrikan feminist lawyer, writer, researcher and activist from Uganda, to talk about visibility, knowledge and erasure.

Sunshine is Co-Lead of the Decolonising Wikimedia Program at #WhoseKnowledge?, a global campaign working to challenge the systemic gaps and biases in whose knowledge is represented and recognised online. Her work sits at the intersection of technology and knowledge justice.

Through #VisibleWikiWomen, she challenges the gender gaps in open knowledge and asks us to confront why those gaps exist in the first place. This year’s theme, “Whose Data Tells Our Stories?”, takes that question further: who collects our data, who controls it, whose stories does it tell, and who gets left out?

Invisibility is rarely accidental, as it is produced through systems of colonialism, patriarchy, and racism. When womxn are left out of the archive, their absence can begin to look like proof that they were never there.

Sunshine is working to change that.

This is a conversation about reclaiming whose knowledge counts, whose stories are preserved, and who gets to be seen.

Making womxn visible is not an act of charity, it is an act of feminist resistance.

Follow @WhoseKnowledge? on Instagram and learn more about the work to make knowledge more inclusive, representative and accessible.

What happens when a deeply personal experience becomes a call to change the lives of others?

Onthatile Wesi is a kidney health advocate, community health leader and a woman whose own experience of kidney failure transformed into a powerful commitment to public health advocacy.

In this episode Onthatile takes us beyond the diagnosis. She speaks about living with kidney disease, navigating dialysis and the healthcare system, patient dignity, the realities of access to care, the importance of early detection, and what it means to care for the whole person,  body, mind and spirit.

Her journey is about  advocacy, community and the power of lived experience to create change.Through Onthatile, we open a wider conversation about kidney health in South Africa: what we know, what we overlook, who gets access to care, whose voices are heard, and what needs to change.

The collaboration will culminate in the Kidney Awareness and Wellness Event in Bloemfontein, where Speaking Through My World will host a Pop-Up Podcast Studio. The studio will bring together patients, healthcare professionals, advocates, community members and participants to capture the voices and experiences emerging from the day.

A Storytelling Partnership for Kidney Awareness & Wellness

Speaking Through My World with Rosie Motene & Feminist Frontlines is proud to collaborate with the Onthatile Wesi Foundation in support of its upcoming Kidney Awareness and Wellness Event.

At the heart of this collaboration is Onthatile Wesi, whose lived experience of kidney failure has grown into a powerful journey of public health advocacy. Through a series of podcast conversations, we will share her story and explore the realities of living with kidney disease, the experiences of dialysis patients in South Africa, access to healthcare, patient dignity, early detection and holistic wellness.

As part of the event, Speaking Through My World will also host a Pop-Up Podcast Studio, creating space for conversations with healthcare professionals, patients, advocates and community members. These voices and reflections will extend the conversations beyond the event itself, contributing to ongoing storytelling and awareness around kidney health and patient advocacy.

The Onthatile Wesi Foundation works to raise awareness around kidney health and amplify the experiences of people living with kidney disease, advocating for greater dignity, care and understanding.

Day 2 of the Weavers Forum invited us to imagine economies and futures rooted not in extraction, but in care, reciprocity, sovereignty and the sustaining of life.

We were welcomed and held in the protective care and guidance of Nyamal  Biel Tutdeal, a space grounded in ancestral wisdom, power and remembrance. This grounding set the tone for a day of deep reflection, questioning and collective imagination.

We also came together around the Tunisian documentary 'Standing in the Shadows' by Kadija Zammouli, which opened further questions about whose stories are made visible, whose labour is remembered, and whose lives and contributions are pushed into the shadows.

From there, the day unfolded through a series of breakaway sessions, each offering a different entry point into feminist economics, care, sovereignty, creativity and power. Together, these conversations asked us to look beyond the economic systems we have inherited and to imagine what becomes possible when we place life, dignity and collective wellbeing at the centre.

At the heart of the day was one guiding question:

What could our economies look like if they were designed around life rather than extraction?

We explored this question through conversations on Holding the Land: Indigenous Women’s Reparative Economies of Care, Memory & Sovereignty, examining the relationships between land, memory, repair and collective care.

Other sessions unpacked the economics of erasur to the blueprints for life beyond GDP.

The conversations also turned towards feminist culture and creativity, exploring how art, imagination and cultural practice can become tools for building care economies and rethinking social reproduction.

Across these different sessions, the threads kept returning to one another: care, land, memory, creativity, sovereignty, power and the possibility of building economies that sustain rather than extract.

Day 2 was ultimately an invitation to weave differently, to recognise the economies that already exist within communities, to honour the knowledge carried across generations, and to imagine feminist futures where care is not treated as an afterthought, but as the foundation of how we organise our lives, our communities and our economies.

This episode takes us through those conversations, questions and moments of collective imagination from Day 2 of the Weavers Forum.

There are some voices you hear, and there are others you feel.

During my time in Windhoek, Namibia, for the 2026 Weavers Forum, I encountered one of those voices: Damn Etu — Frieda Etuhole

A Namibian spoken-word poet, writer, editor and performance artist, Damn Etu brings a rawness to her work that refuses to allow words to simply sit on a page. Her poetry carries memory, vulnerability, politics, womanhood, identity and the complicated realities of being seen, heard and silenced.

I first experienced her powerful presence at the opening of the Weavers Forum, a Pan-African feminist convening held in Windhoek from 5–8 August 2026 and co-convened by FEMNET, Nawi Afrifem Collective and Akina Mama wa Afrika. The Forum created a space for feminist thinkers, organisers and creatives to imagine economies rooted in care, justice and collective sovereignty and poetry and creative practice were deliberately recognised as part of that political work.

As I watched Damn Etu perform, I was reminded of something I deeply believe:

Art is not separate from our politics.

Sometimes a poem can say what a policy paper cannot. Sometimes a voice on a stage can reach the places that theory struggles to enter. Sometimes storytelling gives us the language to name what we have inherited, what we have survived, and the futures we are still trying to imagine.

Damn Etu's creative journey reflects this power. Her work has appeared in Doek! Literary Magazine, and she has built an independent creative practice that brings poetry and performance into living, breathing spaces.

In this episode, I sit down with Damn Etu to explore the woman behind the words.

We talk about poetry, performance, vulnerability, memory, womanhood, identity and the courage it takes to reclaim your voice. We explore what happens when the things that once silenced us become the very material through which we create, speak and resist.

This is a conversation about what it means to take up space through art.

To turn pain into language.

To turn memory into story.

To turn a voice into resistance and to understand that our creative work can be both deeply personal and profoundly political.

This conversation stayed with me long after the Weavers Forum ended, because sometimes the first act of resistance is simply refusing to remain silent.

When a woman speaks, the world has no choice but to listen.

Follow Damn Etu and explore her work:

Instagram: @damn_etu
Website: Damn Etu

Day 1 Part 2

In this episode, I reflect on an intergenerational conversation at the Weavers Forum 2026 exploring African feminist memory, political economy and our collective futures. 

We gathered the threads of wisdom from generations before us while asking what we need to carry forward, what we need to challenge, and what new pathways we can create.

The conversation explored feminist memory, agency, inclusion, accountability, the politics of silence, the professionalisation of gender politics and the importance of documenting our movements and histories.

We also turned the feminist gaze inward, asking how we sometimes reproduce the very patriarchal behaviours we seek to dismantle.  through silence, exclusion, harmful narratives and the ways we treat one another.

At the heart of the conversation was a reminder that the personal is political, but so is how we hold one another's stories, how we critique each other's work and how we build collective knowledge.

We also explored economic sovereignty and why it must be central to feminist organising and our vision for the future.

This episode is ultimately a reflection on memory, accountability, intergenerational knowledge and the responsibility to weave differently.

We inherit the threads.

We add our own and then we pass the weaving on.

Philiswa Lila- When Art Becomes Part of the Political Conversation- 

In Day 1 | Part 1 of my Weavers' Forum 2026 reflections, I explore how art became part of the political conversation through the work of South African multidisciplinary artist, curator and scholar Philiswa Lila.

Drawing on her powerful presentation, Behind the Needle, this episode reflects on the politics of making, the value of process over productivity, and how beadwork becomes a language for memory, identity, trauma and collective resistance. It also considers why the metaphor of weaving is central to the Weavers' Forum and what it teaches us about feminist organising, care and transformation.

Sometimes the most radical work is not in the finished piece, but in the patient, deliberate act of weaving something new, together.

The Weavers’ Forum 2026 is a space bringing together African feminists, activists, economists, artists, thinkers, movement-builders and practitioners from across the continent and the African diaspora.

I’ve created a pop-up studio for Speaking Through My World to document this important feminist space. Through dedicated episodes, I’ll be sharing some of the conversations, reflections and knowledge emerging from the Forum, bringing the voices and ideas from this room beyond these walls.

This is the Introduction to The Weavers’ Forum 2026.

Let’s weave...

THE FINAL EPISODE IS HERE

Episode 4: Choosing Yourself Without An Apology

What happens when you stop apologising for choosing yourself?

After four deeply personal conversations, I close this series not with the pain of what happened, but with the possibility of what comes next.

I've spoken about leaving.

I've spoken about what my body carried.

I've spoken about the cost of staying too long.

Now, I want to speak about reclaiming yourself.

Choosing your peace.

Choosing your joy.

Choosing your boundaries.

Choosing your voice.

Choosing rest.

Choosing a life that doesn't require you to abandon yourself to belong.

This final episode is about clearing space for the next season, forgiving yourself for staying, releasing what no longer serves you, and allowing yourself to dream again. Choosing yourself isn't selfish and you don't need to apologise for protecting your wellbeing.

You can take the wisdom without taking the wound.

As we close this chapter, I leave you with the question that started it all:

Where is your heart today?

In this episode of Speaking Through My World, I examine the detailed findings of the independent investigation commissioned by Kaya FM into allegations against former Managing Director Greg Maloka.

Drawing directly from the investigation report, I unpack the testimonies of six women who came forward, the workplace culture they described, and the investigator's conclusions that allegations of sexual harassment involving at least six women, as well as professional discrimination against women who did not reciprocate sexual advances, were substantiated.

In the context of this investigation, “substantiated” means that the investigator concluded that the evidence gathered through interviews, witness statements and the investigation supported those allegations.

The episode asks a difficult but necessary question:

What does accountability look like when an independent investigation substantiates serious allegations, yet the person at the centre of those findings is later given a “homecoming” into the same corporate ecosystem?

This conversation is not only about one individual. It is about power, workplace culture, institutional accountability, and what believing women requires of us when the evidence has already been examined.

Special Note:

This episode examines the findings of an independent investigation commissioned by Kaya FM into allegations of sexual harassment, abuse of power and related workplace misconduct.

The discussion is based on the investigation report and publicly available information. It does not disclose confidential information shared with me privately by victims or survivors. Those conversations remain confidential and are not relied upon in this analysis.