This marks the book’s third major award following the 2022 Humanities and Social Sciences Book Award for the best Monograph in Non-fiction, and the coveted 2023 Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year Award in the social sciences and humanities category.
Female Fear Factory was lauded at the event held at the Algerian capital, Algiers, on 18 October 2024, for its imaginative approach to gender issues, offering a compelling contribution to feminist literature.
The book is the follow-up to Prof Gqola’s 2016 Sunday Times Alan PATON Award winner, Rape: A South African Nightmare. Like the previous book on which it builds, Female Fear Factory fuses intellectual rigour and extensive research.
In Female Fear Factory, the renowned South African scholar and feminist author examines the complexity of living in a patriarchal culture as a woman. She uses the factory as a metaphor for how the fear women come to accept as a normal part of their lives is fundamentally manufactured from what they are told and how they are expected to behave.
“The Female Fear Factory is a theatrical public performance of a patriarchal policing of women and those made female, those who approximate women, those seen as women, in order to mark them as safe to violate – safe to violate means violable without consequences,” explained Prof Gqola.
Reviewers noted its insightful and sobering account of global patriarchal violence and how it offers a hopeful vision through the eyes of an unapologetic feminist.
The award included a $20000 prize received by Layla Mohamed, editor at Cassava Republic Press during a dinner hosted by Algerian Minister of Arts and Culture, Soraya Mouloudji.
Owned by Dr Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, Cassava Republic Press is a black publishing house with a presence in Abuja and London.
Mohamed said that award was not just a moment of recognition for Prof Gqola’s book, but a marker in the broader movement for Black literary independence.
“The Canex Prize underscores the need for a strong and supported African publishing ecosystem who are building the infrastructure for the production of African stories and challenging long-standing power dynamics in the global publishing world,” said Mohamed.
Minister Mouloudji presented the trophy, a bronze sculpture crafted by the famed bronze casters of Benin City and engraved with the Adinkra symbol nkyinkyim, symbolising resilience and adaptability.
The Canex Prize for Publishing in Africa, launched in Cairo in November 2023, aims to promote a vibrant literary culture across the continent and foster a sustainable business ecosystem in the literary sector.
The award evaluates entries on the quality of their writing, editing and production, with particular emphasis on books printed and produced in Africa, as well as those published in indigenous African languages.
This year, 85 entries were received from 49 publishers across Africa, representing a diverse range of languages, including English, French, Portuguese and Swahili.
The jury, chaired by Dr Wale Okediran, praised Prof Gqola’s Female Fear Factory for its bold editorial risk, urgency and timely message.
Prof Gqola is based at the Centre for Women and Gender Studies at Nelson Mandela University, where she is the NRF Chair in African Feminist Imaginations, hosted within Faculty of Humanities.
Her work focuses on literature, with a specific focus on African feminism, African literature, race, class, gender and histories of slavery.