Earlier this year, I stood inside the British High Commissioner’s offices in Pretoria as a WOSSO Fellow, presenting my advocacy plan with a trembling voice but a determined heart.
My presentation focused on something deeply personal and politically urgent: the backlash faced by women in traditional and cultural spaces. I spoke about how, across South Africa, tradition was being weaponized against women who dared to lead.
I spoke about the rural girls taught that leadership is masculine, the women chiefs undermined by custom, and the silent wars playing out in royal households and cultural councils.
I didn’t know then that just months later, the nation would once again bear witness to this exact struggle — playing out in a Limpopo courtroom where Princess Masindi Mphephu is fighting not only for a throne, but for the right to exist as a leader in a world determined to erase her.
A few weeks ago, Prince Toni Mphephu Ramabulana stood before the Limpopo High Court and boldly declared that if a woman — specifically his niece, Masindi — were to ascend the Vhavenda throne, “the kingship would collapse.”
He claimed that Vhavenda customs do not allow women to rule, and that sacred rituals such as dzekiso, u luvhedza, and u ṱanula would die under female leadership. With chilling confidence, he asserted that this was not discrimination — it was culture.
(Below Picture Supplied By GenderLinks)
But as a feminist, an activist, and a woman rooted in both custom and constitutional rights, I reject the notion that culture must be male to be sacred.
Princess Masindi’s story is one of pain, persistence, and power. After her father’s passing in 1997, she was groomed to inherit the throne. But instead, she was sidelined because of her gender — a decision that South Africa’s Constitutional Court ruled in 2016 was discriminatory and unlawful.
That victory should have marked the end of her struggle. Instead, it was only the beginning of a deeper, more brutal battle — one that continues to this day.
In court, Prince Toni insisted that his leadership was legitimate and rooted in cultural norms, even as his testimony grew shaky under cross-examination. He couldn’t clearly explain why gender was never mentioned in formal submissions to the Nhlapo Commission.
He claimed the throne was too fragile for female hands. He implied that Masindi had failed to perform required rituals — a convenient excuse used to disqualify women from leadership in many traditional spaces.
As I listened to the developments of this case, I was taken back to that room in Pretoria — where I had warned that we cannot speak of freedom in South Africa while women in royal homes are still being told they are unfit to lead.
(Below Picture supplied by Limpopo Mirrror-2021)
We cannot celebrate democracy while culture is used as a shield for patriarchy. What is happening to Princess Masindi is not just a family dispute — it is a national crisis of conscience.
This case reminds us that the backlash against women’s leadership is not theoretical. It is real, and it is violent. And it does not only live in Parliament or boardrooms. It thrives in rural corridors, behind traditional councils, and within sacred rituals that are twisted into tools of exclusion.
Princess Masindi is standing not just for her crown, but for every South African woman born into a leadership legacy only to be told she is “less than” because she is female.
Her struggle mirrors that of so many women I have worked with through The Great People of South Africa, women who have been disinherited, ignored, silenced — all in the name of “custom.”
But culture is not inflexible. Tradition is not a cage. And patriarchy disguised as heritage must be called out for what it is: an injustice.
If we accept what Prince Toni says — that women cannot lead without killing tradition — then we must ask: What kind of tradition dies the moment a woman is empowered? And is that tradition worth preserving?
As the court prepares to resume the case in July, South Africa must ask itself whether it is ready to choose justice over comfort. Not just for Masindi, but for every woman fighting to hold space in a system that wasn’t built with her in mind.
I still stand by what I said in Pretoria as a WOSSO Fellow: we must push back against the pushback. We must not romanticize traditions that silence women.
We must demand a future where girls can inherit crowns — literal and symbolic — without having to fight in courtrooms for their humanity to be recognized.
To Princess Masindi Mphephu: you are not alone. Your battle is our battle. Your courage is the prophecy of a future where leadership is not bound by gender, but guided by purpose, vision, and ancestral calling.
May the throne you fight for become the symbol of a South Africa that is finally ready to honour women — not only in memory, but in power.
Aaaaah Mukololo!!!!
