We wrap up our series of conversations with the founders celebrating 20 years of Reconstruction with the interview with Staša Zajović, a peace activist and coordinator of Women in Black.
Can you tell us more about the context in which Reconstruction was founded in 2004? Why then, and why was it important at that moment for a women’s fund to emerge, or what was happening during that period?
I believe it is always important for such a fund to emerge because its nature is essential for autonomous women’s groups. It might have been particularly significant to initiate it then because the 90s were difficult, but after the regime fell in 2000, there was some space to continue the pre-war creation of the feminist movement. However, for me, the situation took a very negative turn with the assassination of Đinđić (prime minister of Serbia), in a sense of a throwback to the matrix of the 90s. We saw a pathway being paved even for the physical return of those who justified the war policies and had strong support for war aims. I am referring to the return of clerical-nationalist forces, which was one of the major dangers for women in Serbia.
At that time, we saw a total collaboration between the church and the state, with the secular principle of separation between church and state not being respected, leading to a dangerous, regressive current across the society. We then saw the necessity to create that space of support, and to support a horizontal way of working.
What does that horizontal way of working mean?
It means an autonomous system of organizing, where feminist principles do not have to adapt to market-driven project trends. Goals and activities do not have to be adjusted each year to current fads in market projects. It means that it is essential to work slowly, making small steps, creating an educational program that will work on women’s education and link educational work to street actions. It means that activism cannot be imagined without theory, and theory cannot be imagined without activism. As our Neda Božinović put it, few women can engage in theory, but most women can educate themselves, become literate, work, read, learn, and understand that learning is also one of characteristics of activism. It means creating a balance between activist and theoretical work, ensuring they are interconnected. This way, many groups working in tougher conditions do not only fight for survival, but also strive to create a space where women can work together, think autonomously, critically reflect, and ensure their work does not get bureaucratized or turn into NGOs that work only until five o’clock, and so on.
Why was it important for you personally to participate in the founding of the Reconstruction Women’s Fund?
For me, the most important thing personally, as both an activist and a fieldworker, was to support small groups working in small communities with clear feminist, anti-fascist, anti-militarist, and anti-war stances. I believe that no society can have a chance to change without a fine, capillary, horizontal system of small groups that learn together, respecting academic knowledge that is close to us. This is why it was very important to us to share with women the knowledge of Latinka Perović, Zagorka Golubović, and all the friends we rely on..
It was also very important for us to maintain the principle of sharing resources, knowledge, and the modest means the fund had. Simultaneously, the principle of frugality was crucial, not due to false modesty but because of the idea that we do not live and should not live differently from the women we work with. Sharing and frugality have always been as political as material principles.
You mentioned the process of building the feminist movement in the pre-war period, but what changes in the movement have you seen since the 2000s, and how do you see the role of Reconstruction in all this?
I personally participated in four gatherings of the Yugoslav Feminist Network, and the work was very different from today’s situation. We were on the Belgrade-Zagreb-Ljubljana line: activists, students, women from universities, our professors. It was on a very narrow scale. Sometimes people came from Priština and Sarajevo, but it was quite a close circle of women. Our main focus was on raising feminist consciousness and education, and we then had different types of activism. It was different primarily because we had no clue about projects nor had any connection with project work. Everything was based on communality and togetherness. I think this was the best way to create a feminist movement, to create a space for critical collective thinking without bureaucratization or wasting much time on the struggle for survival on the one hand and obtaining funds on the other, dealing with those administrative procedures, which are terrible.
Today, this has changed significantly. I think we were halted when the war began, but at the same time, the social base of feminist initiatives expanded greatly. Women come from all social backgrounds, different educational levels, ethnic groups, and classes, so the topics we address are changing, too.
What I think became a problem after 2000 is that the burden of the 90s’ crimes became irrelevant for donors. They started basing the concept of justice solely on criminal justice, i.e., trials. Courts are necessary, but working with victims I realized that we need new and different models of justice that will also address institutional reforms, reparations, and the acknowledgment of suffering. I think this is one of the major shortcomings of both projects and donor demands. They easily overlooked the burden of crimes and thought that with some economic investments, this issue would resolve itself. This was a great lie, a great illusion because international donors did not understand the importance of transitional justice and should not impose their project-based and suggestive models of what we should do. Their model of reconciliation is unacceptable to us and to most of the community, because it is a model imagined by donors, not by people in the community. Donor policies focus on what is visible and quantifiable, seeking results, which is deadly because we deal with processes that are very slow and invisible but incredibly important. I think that the Reconstruction Women’s Fund chooses a truly different path – paying a great deal of attention to institutional strengthening and creating free spaces not only for gender justice projects but also for other areas of engaged art, militarism, and nationalism. It creates space for both autonomy and togetherness.
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