The Drums of the Past, Rhythms of the Future

Introduction Every movement begins with a rhythm. In South Africa, the sound of drums has long accompanied protest — from anti-apartheid marches to contemporary demonstrations against gender-based violence. The drumbeat carries memory and urgency: it recalls ancestral struggles while demanding attention in the present. Feminist activists who gather under the banner of “#AmINext?” or “Total Shutdown” are not only raising voices; they are raising rhythms, transforming silence into resonance.

This essay explores how the metaphor of rhythm — embodied in South Africa’s history of drumming and protest — can illuminate feminist movements worldwide. It argues that feminism is not only a discourse of ideas but also a practice of timing, resonance, and collective rhythm-making. To imagine feminist futures, we must learn to listen for the drum.

The Drum as Historical Memory The drum in Africa has always been more than music: it is communication, ritual, and survival. Under colonialism and apartheid, drumming was often suppressed, seen as threatening to order. Yet even under restriction, rhythm persisted — in churches, in community gatherings, in hidden rituals.

For women, drumming was not always literal but metaphorical: the rhythm of organizing childcare while resisting evictions, the cadence of songs sung in marches, the pulse of footsteps pounding pavement in protest. Feminist struggles in South Africa inherit this legacy: rhythm as continuity, rhythm as defiance.

Gendered Violence and the Urgency of Beat South Africa today faces staggering rates of gender-based violence. Activists describe femicide as a national emergency. In this context, the drum becomes both literal and symbolic. At vigils, activists drum to honor the dead. At rallies, rhythm unites voices into a single force.

But the urgency of the beat also symbolizes what feminist theorist Sara Ahmed calls a “feminist snap” — the moment when endurance breaks and resistance erupts. The rhythm of South African feminism is not leisurely; it is insistent, impatient, demanding change now.

Rhythm as Solidarity

Rhythm unites across difference. When people march together, even without words, footsteps create a shared beat. In feminist activism, rhythm can hold together diverse constituencies: students, workers, survivors, allies.

This resonates globally. In Latin America, the chant of “Ni Una Menos” echoes like a drum across plazas. In South Korea, chants against molka (spycam crimes) follow the cadence of digital age protest. In France and Germany, feminist strikes synchronize rhythms of labor stoppage. Each context has its own tempo, but together they create a transnational feminist polyrhythm — multiple beats coexisting, resonating, sometimes dissonant but always moving.

The Politics of Timing Rhythm is not just beat; it is timing. Feminist movements know the politics of timing well. In South Africa, activists speak of generations: the women of 1956 who marched against pass laws; the women of 2018 who declared a “Total Shutdown” against gender violence. Each moment carries its rhythm, yet they connect in sequence — a continuum of beats across time.

Globally, feminist timing matters. Hashtags trend, then fade. Movements flare, then quiet. The challenge is not only to create rhythm but to sustain it, to transform momentary urgency into durable change.

From South Africa to the World: Rhythms in Conversation What might it mean to take South Africa’s feminist rhythms as a lens for global analysis?

• For Vietnam, rhythm recalls rituals of Mother Goddess worship, where drums accompany possession ceremonies, suggesting empowerment through sacred performance.

• For Latin America, rhythm resonates with street protests where chanting and drumming turn plazas into feminist stages.

• For South Korea, rhythm is digital — viral hashtags, synchronized online campaigns.

• For Europe, rhythm is legal and institutional — slower, procedural, yet punctuated by sudden protests.

Seen this way, global feminism is less a single voice and more a network of rhythms: some fast, some slow, some ancestral, some digital.

The Drum as Future To imagine feminist futures is to ask: what rhythm will carry us forward? Bureaucratic reports often sound monotonous, stripped of cadence. But activism insists on rhythm — urgency, repetition, crescendo. If feminism is to remain alive, it must balance both: the slow rhythm of policy change with the fast rhythm of protest, the steady beat of community care with the explosive beat of rupture.

Perhaps the future of transnational feminism is not consensus, but rhythm: a capacity to march differently yet together, to hold dissonance without collapse, to let multiple beats compose a shared song.

Conclusion The drums of South Africa remind us that feminism is not only spoken but sounded. It is not only a theory but a rhythm — embodied in feet, in chants, in the pulse of collective will.

As we face crises of gender violence, climate collapse, and inequality, the question is not only what feminism will say, but how it will sound. Will we hear it in whispers, in chants, in digital notifications, in ancestral drums?

The answer, perhaps, is all of these. The rhythms of the past are not gone; they resurface in every protest, every march, every act of defiance. And in these rhythms, feminist futures begin to take shape.