Liberated from a life of abuse

JOURNALIST Shana Fife’s new book, Ougat, is brave and raw as it delves into her experience of domestic abuse and sexual violence.

Fife describes her story as a “dissertation of why I think I stayed in it for that long”.

“It is a memoir of coming into myself as a woman of colour and shredding the nonsense that previous generations instilled in my psyche. A lot of conditioning goes into the way women are raised. I was taught that I can only go through life a certain way within femininity,” she said.

Throughout her life, Fife thought her purpose was to please others.

“I connected my selfworth to how many men I slept with, how coy I could act and how I was valued by older relatives and possible suitors. Once I destroyed that by falling pregnant, I was isolated from ‘proper society’, and this book documents that.”

She added: “I wrote this book to document it for myself and women like me who died thinking that they were less than, when in fact it was society that was lacking empathy, knowledge and respect for women who do not fit the chastity mould.”

In 2014, the Mitchells Plain author began her blog, Just a Hoe with Babies, where she documented her abusive relationship. In 2017, Fife created a second blog, Into a Housewife, which explored her life – married to Riyaahd Fife and being a mother of three.

“I never considered writing a memoir or anything to do with my blog. The idea of being able to share a story that I know resonated with so many women, a larger audience, felt like the right move at the right time in my life,” she said.

“This felt like evidence that I and my kind exist.”

Fife said South African women should be reading stories like hers in order to feel seen and heard. “Men should read my book so that they can know that we no longer take bulls**t under the guise of godly submission and comfortable femininity. We are equals.”