Equality versus authority: Inkatha and the politics of gender in natal

Inkatha’s political programme contains contradictions. The movement presents itself as a modernising, liberalising force while simultaneously developing a conservative, precapitalist ideology to retain its rural political base. These tensions are exemplified in Inkatha’s attempts to engage women politically. Two instances are examined: the replacement of the Natal Code of Bantu Law by the KwaZulu Code, which removed the minority status of African women in law; and the efforts in the early 1980s to use the Inkatha Women’s Brigade to pacify the youth in the face of school boycotts

Women's organizations and democracy in South Africa: Contesting authority

The transition to democracy in South Africa was one of the defining events in twentieth-century political history. The South African women's movement is one of the most celebrated on the African continent. Shireen Hassim examines interactions between the two as she explores the gendered nature of liberation and regime change. Her work reveals how women's political organizations both shaped and were shaped by the broader democratic movement. Alternately asserting their political independence and giving precedence to the democratic movement as a whole, women activists proved flexible and remarkably successful in influencing policy. At the same time, their feminism was profoundly shaped by the context of democratic and nationalist ideologies. In reading the last twenty-five years of South African history through a feminist framework, Hassim offers fresh insights into the interactions between civil society, political parties, and the state. Hassim boldly confronts sensitive issues such as the tensions between autonomy and political dependency in feminists' engagement with the African National Congress (ANC) and other democratic movements, and black-white relations within women's organizations. She offers a historically informed discussion of the challenges facing feminist activists during a time of nationalist struggle and democratization

The Impossible Contract: The Political and Private Marriage of Nelson and Winnie Mandela

Winnie and Nelson Mandela had one of the most iconic political marriages in history. For most commentators, this was a one-sided marriage in which Nelson was by far the more significant actor and Winnie was the burden he had to bear. However, it is not possible to conceive of the public persona of Nelson Mandela after his imprisonment on Robben Island without also understanding Winnie’s role, not merely as upholder of the family name but also in terms of the ways in which she built an independent career out of her position as Nelson’s wife. This article reads the marriage at two levels. First, it argues that there were two actors in the marriage, both central to its narrations and both with political ideas and ambitions. Winnie Mandela was building a genealogy of heroic nationalism for herself from at least the 1960s, in parallel with that of her husband, and her rise to political status was both dependent on the marriage and at odds with its demands. Understanding Winnie as an actor, treating her own biography as seriously as that of Nelson, changes the way in which the marriage is read politically. Second, it draws on the small archive of letters between the spouses that are publicly available to show the ways in which Nelson’s benevolent, patriarchal (albeit loving and compassionate) approach to his wife contrasted with her increasing independence and political power. The separation caused by almost three decades of imprisonment had done more than impose a physical and emotional absence. Their politics, too, had taken extremely divergent paths in which she became a representative of radical politics while he was positioned as reconciliatory visionary

Violent Modernity: Gender, Race and Bodies in Contemporary South African Politics

In May 2012, an artwork on President Zuma caused a public storm about the relationship between freedom of expression, dignity and the rights of the artist. In subsequent political debates on Brett Murray's Spear, art and politics met in a heightened clash that embodied all the tensions of a country moving imperfectly towards an imagined state of democracy. In that clash, what was said mattered no less than who said it, and the significance of the debate related to the heart of how democracy ought to be understood. This article argues that the question of where gender equality might feature in South African democracy was less widely debated. More specifically, in the angst that characterized responses to the painting and responses to the responses, considerable anxiety was expressed about two aspects of democracy. The first related to whether or not the liberal political norms of the South African constitution were in danger of being eroded by a socially conservative populist movement. The second related to the sense of citizenship: who belongs in South Africa, who has the right to criticize and who is an authentic citizen. There was little attention to a discussion of what is entailed in the making of the postcolonial subject and especially in the way in which gender complicates modern democracy. The article argues for considering race and gender as inextricable. It suggests that the limits of democracy are most clearly visible when bodies become present in the public sphere

Social justice, care and developmental welfare in South Africa: A capabilities perspective

One of the paradoxes of the democratic project in South Africa is that the combination of political empowerment, organised constituencies of poor people and increasing social sector spending has made minimal impact on increasing equality. Despite an overall macroeconomic framework that emphasises fiscal restraint, social welfare spending has increased in the past 14 years, and dramatically so since 2003. Almost one in four South Africans receives some or other form of grant, and the majority of recipients are women. Indeed, South Africa is regularly described as the developing world's largest and most generous welfare state. I address the extent to which gender inequalities are reduced through public sector spending, asking the question: what is the optimal relationship between social policy and the intrinsic democratic goals of equality, social justice and citizenship? Drawing on Amartya Sen's capabilities approach, the article argues that a focus on social sector spending alone is inadequate to address questions of social justice. Instead, I draw attention to the normative assumptions, discursive environment and institutional context in which social policy is elaborated and implemented. I argue that, in a context in which there is relatively poor infrastructural capacity in the state to ensure that service delivery takes place in fair, consistent and egalitarian ways, households and communities act as shock absorbers of state failures and women's gendered burdens increase, despite formal commitments to gender equality. While women appear to have gained from political empowerment, women politicians did not effectively leverage their position in the state to promote pro-poor policies or to build coalitions to challenge the watering down of early commitments to reducing gender inequalities

Decolonising equality: The radical roots of the gender equality clause in the South African constitution

South Africa has taken centre stage in most accounts of the synergistic potential of law and politics: it is seen to be a case which demonstrates that human rights can be made real, with the favourable combination of institutional and political conditions. Among these conditions, from a feminist perspective, are the inclusion of equality and socio-economic rights in the Constitution, high levels of representation of women in parliament and the bureaucracy, and a strong and free civil society. The country is often invoked, in comparative social science, as an example of a democratic and relatively peaceful transition from authoritarianism, in which the breakdown of institutions was avoided rather, it is seen as an example of successful institutional redirection from supporting an authoritarian state to advancing a democratic project. However, the Constitution is coming under increasing attack. It is not only conservative forces that seek to undermine rights in the name of culture, or wealthy elites concerned about defending their rights to property through rule of law and opposing high taxation, that are critical. It is also challenged by radical voices that aim at creating a society free of oppression. For the latter actors, the Constitution is less a tool of change and more an example of coloniality, or the imposition of a Western discourse on Africa. These arguments about decolonising political projects require more careful engagement, as the project of decoloniality is one that is in many respects allied to the project of feminism, whose own history required the disabling of the invisibilised male norm on which much legal and political theory was founded. This paper addresses the decolonial critique by showing the radical roots of the equality clause in a century-long history of struggles by black women

Critical thoughts on keywords in gender and history: An introduction

This introduction lays out the key themes addressed in the Forum and emphasises the importance of understanding historical description and theory as mutually constitutive. The contributions to the Forum interrogate key categories of analysis in feminist history including the gender binary, gender crisis, agency and intersectionality. The articles show how the study of historical events and processes in their particular detail reframes the categories used to construct feminist theories of stability and disruption. The productive encounters between feminist history and feminist theory in this Forum offer new and interesting ways to reframe research questions

Persistent Inequalities: A Comparative View of Indian and South African Experiences of Local Government Quotas for Women

Debates about the nature and impact of quotas tend to focus on national parliaments, and for the most part tend to debate theoretical assumptions within the disciplines of political science and political philosophy. This article suggests that there is much to be gained in understanding how quotas work by a lateral examination of literature in development studies, and by comparative work on countries that are in the postcolonial global south. Drawing on a comparison between local government quotas in India and South Africa, the article argues that the persistent underlying institutional formations and cultures of politics have a profound impact on the ways in which quotas are inserted into political systems. Applying a feminist lens to literature on women's experiences of entering local government institutions in India and South Africa, the article considers the relationship between women's representation and the broader political system in which they are inserted. The article argues that the presence of women may have democratizing effects on political systems, but that these effects depend as much if not more on the extent to which there is democratic mobilization outside of the elected bodies

Democracy's shadows: Sexual rights and gender politics in the rape trial of Jacob Zuma

This article examines the implications of the trial of Jacob Zuma, current president of the ANC, for sexual and gender politics in South Africa. The article argues that a central, contested issue in public debates on the trial was the relationship between public and private spheres in society