“For me, freedom means just being and not having to explain your choices”- Lorato Palesa Modongo (Botswana) 2\5
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Our conversation with Lorato Palesa Modongo continues. Lorato is an African feminist from Botswana. She is a Psychologist, with interests, skills, knowledge and over 7 years’ experience on Social Psychology, academia, qualitative research on gendered violence, decolonialism and African feminisms.
In the first part of this conversation, Lorato shared with our Jama Jack about her feminist journey. In this second part, we further explore her education and experiences as a social psychologist and how this connects to her work and actions as an African feminist.
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So, we are going to dig into your journey with education. Why psychology?
Four parts! The first part is that I wanted to do law. I grew up resisting, fighting, just saying no to people. And the beautiful part is that I was given that space at home. Even though the whole gender roles thing was happening, there was space for curiosity and for being inquisitive and for saying no. So, I applied for law and unfortunately, I didn't make it to law school. I was really sad because I had centred my being around becoming a lawyer. I was like, “What the hell am I going to do? What is my next choice?” At the time, a lot of people were doing economics because the President of Botswana at the time was an economist. He was doing very well, and he was always on these international platforms talking about development, so everybody also wanted that. So, I was like okay, let me give it a try and I actually enrolled in economics and the calculations there… hmph [Laughs]
You were like “Not for me” huh?
I was like, “I am not going to do that.” So, all economics students had to do ‘Introduction to Psychology’, and there was a young woman who had just come in from the United States. Her name is Dr. Mpho Pheko. She was very brilliant, energetic, confident, knowledgeable, stylish, and well articulated. And she just didn't take any nonsense from the students. Our classes were in big auditoriums where it’s like 200 students and she wasn't intimidated by that huge number. I mention this because she looked very young, and that was really interesting for me. I had a conversation with her, and she told me what psychology was. So that's the second part: representation. Because I saw someone that I identified with, and was inspired by..
And the more I got into the field, the more I saw that it affirmed the curiosity that I talked about, the inquisitiveness, the understanding of human behaviour. The giving meaning to things that were happening and the making sense of the world. It was such a huge moment for me.
The fourth layer was largely a spiritual thing. I dream a lot when I sleep. So, my grandfather basically came to me in a dream and said: “you have to do psychology” and he gave me the reasons, and they made sense. Considering that my grandfather then didn't know what psychology was, it was interesting that in the dream, he was explaining the reasons why I needed to do it. When I told him years later, he said “You know that my grandfather also appeared in my dream to tell me that I'm going to do what I'm doing now?”
Oh wow! For real?
Yes! So, that is the spiritual side of things. Those are my four reasons. I was rejected by my first love: law; I saw somebody that I admired doing the work, so there was representation; but it also was a space for my curiosity and understanding of human behaviour. And lastly, the spiritual side of it. So, I believe I was called into it.
That’s incredible. And what has that journey from your education to the work you do now looked like?
Beautiful and rewarding. Every day I do my work, I don't feel like I'm working. I just feel like I'm stumbling into newer parts of myself, newer parts of the work and finding ways to be a better self, but also for the community, the society, at all levels, including the global level. But I think the most beautiful tool it has given me is finding words to articulate internal contestations, because …you know when you can name things and the power in naming things?
Yeah! I know too well what that power feels like and what it shifts in your mind.
That has been the beauty of it. There are many aspects that I don't agree with - the colonial gaze of the field, or the westernisation if we want to put it that way. For example, the most basic one, the fact that clinical psychology uses diagnostic manuals to diagnose people with mental health issues. Sure, there's that, but it completely ignores the spiritual aspect and indigenous knowledge of Africans. It ignores that Africans are also spiritual beings. So sometimes people are hallucinating not because they have schizophrenia, but because maybe they are called to do ancestral work, or healing work or whatever type of work. And they will hear voices, they will see things. All they need is to do whatever they believe they need to do, and then they are good. But if psychology is going to diagnose them with schizophrenia, it means we're using a colonial gaze and for these people we take into mental institutions, we will try to put them in a box as per colonial rules, and I have problems with that.
I think the reason we need more African psychologists is to also articulate those contestations and to confront the industry, but to also come up with new ways of thinking and imaginations around societal issues. I think that's the beauty of it; that even though I don't agree with certain elements of the discipline of psychology as a field in Africa, I believe it is an opportunity for us to create knowledge, re-imagine human behaviour, and create new ways of making sense of the world.
“Clinical psychology completely ignores the spiritual aspect and indigenous knowledge of Africans. It ignores that Africans are also spiritual beings.”
What would creating knowledge look like in this sense? Who is creating this knowledge, and for whom?
I should clarify that it’s not just to create knowledge, because knowledge does exist. But to say how do we legitimise various sources of knowledge. Who is referenced and why are they referenced? Why are you referencing some old psychologist from the global north, but disregarding my grandmother's musings, sayings, and knowledge around human behaviour? You find that there's a lot of psychology work, even in our language in something as simple as our proverbs, or our idioms.
In my language when you are feeling really, really tired, you say, ‘ke a go itheetsa’. In English, it means “I want to rest” but the direct translation is, “I want to listen to myself”. Meditation is basically that; it is you listening to yourself. Going to therapy is somebody assisting you with listening to yourself. But this knowledge has always been there.
So, for me, creating knowledge means an opportunity for us to legitimise sources of knowledge of our people, creating new ways of thinking about knowledge, about psychology, about the human condition, about being. We should also understand that we mingle now with different people from different backgrounds, and the world is evolving and expanding with new forms of thinking. How do we borrow from what we have to make sense of where we are now, so that we can envision and imagine better futures, or more healed futures?
So, your main practice is in social psychology and not clinical. What was the root of this choice? Is it all of these things that you're saying?
Yes, yes. So social psychology is not pathologising and diagnosing. It just wants to ask: what is happening in society? Where does that come from? It doesn't individualise issues. Clinical psychology individualises issues because it says, “Lorato, you have schizophrenia.” Social psychology says, “Okay, why are we seeing a lot of cases of violence in our society? What are the patterns?”
And what do you see as the connection between your practice in social psychology and your feminism? How do you connect the two, but also how do you bring your African intersectional feminism into your professional work as a social psychologist?
Oh, they definitely link. And I think when I tell people that I feel happy about my choice of career, it is because it's like a pot where things are all in and they complement each other in that sense. Like I say, it’s because patriarchy is a system that was causing those internal and external frictions. Then social psychology says, “Patriarchy is causing that because…” and then attached meaning and answers to the questioning. And because I have meaning and the words, when I get to the activism space, I am able to articulate better, to teach better, to learn better. But I’m also able to take what I get from the activism space to feed the knowledge production on the other side. So, they kind of assist each other with making sense of the world, and the issues I am interested in.
Earlier, you mentioned the issue of the valuation of African traditional knowledge, legitimising it and using it to build the future that we deserve. What does that future look like for you?
It looks like freedom, to put it very simply. Freedom of being, freedom of expression and freedom in knowing that we don't even need to validate the information and the knowledge that we have. I have problems with the term “indigenous knowledge”. I don't like it because why are we naming it indigenous? The fact that it is called indigenous means that there’s something that is not indigenous, and that knowledge is the knowledge that is thrust into the public discourse. I think our African knowledge is just that: knowledge.
You think there is first choice knowledge, and then you have a second class and so on…
Exactly! And that’s why you had to name it that. If you saw it as just knowledge, then there's freedom in that because I don't have to legitimise it. So, freedom for me is being. And what does being look like? You don't need to explain your choices. You are just being the fullest, highest expression of yourself, considering that you're not harming anyone and you are living life in this interconnected ecosystem, with other people and with the environment. I think that's what the future looks like for me. The freedom to be.
Lorato shares more on this in the next part of our conversation, where we also get into her experiences organising within feminist movements and spaces. Click here to read this third part.
