The Status of Citizenship for Black Women in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Posted: 13 May, 2024 Filed under: Lesego Sekhu, Sinqobile Makhathini | Tags: African feminists, African women, apartheid, “face of poverty”, black women, discrimination, economic exploitation, heteropatriarchal systems, historical injustices, inequality, national oppression, post-colonial identity, racial division, South Africa, unemployment, women's rights 1 Comment |
Author: Lesego Sekhu Research Assistant, Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation |
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Author: Sinqobile Makhathini Research Assistant, Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation |
As we reflect on the celebration of International Women’s Month in March and motion towards the upcoming 2024 elections, which will be held on 29 May 2024, it is a significant time to critically reflect on Black women’s citizenship and positionality in post-apartheid South Africa.
Brief history
Historically, Black people have experienced second-class citizenry within the social, economic, and political landscape of South Africa. During apartheid, racial division was the primary strategy of ‘otherness’ that was exemplified by racialised citizen status that was reserved for white races, while the Black majority were systemically excluded from the imagination of the state. Equally, gender played a role in the divisions of labour, access to resources, and experiences of systematic violence that show apartheid as equal parts racial and equal parts gendered.
Apartheid, gender and property relations in South Africa: Some reflections from Rahube v Rahube & Others
Posted: 20 August, 2018 Filed under: Kennedy Kariseb, Nimrod Muhumuza | Tags: apartheid-era laws, black women, customary law, Group Areas Act, Land reform, ownership, post-apartheid, property ownership, Rahube judgment, Rahube v Rahube & Others, South Africa Leave a commentAuthors: Kennedy Kariseb & Nimrod Muhumuza
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| Kennedy Kariseb | Nimrod Muhumuza |
Land reform is a litmus test for how far post-apartheid democratic South Africa is willing to go to redress its abhorrent racist and sexist history. There have been several attempts to reconcile colonial and apartheid-era laws with their concomitant rights and obligations in the new democratic dispensation, epitomised by the transformative 1996 Constitution. The latest proposal is to expropriate land without compensation which is currently undergoing public consultation. However, scant attention has been paid to the gendered land relations that have excluded women from owning land in their own name.
The recent judgment of Kollapen J in Rahube v Rahube & Others,[1] is one such case that indicates the difficulty of reconciling the impact of a skewed racial, gendered history in a new democratic dispensation premised in a supposedly transformative constitutional regime.[2] The Rahube judgment is another (rather unfortunate) reminder of the subordinate position that women occupy in South Africa, as in most parts of Africa, reminding us that inasmuch as land and property relations in South Africa were racially anchored, they were, (and still are) thoroughly gendered. This is because for the most part, colonial and apartheid laws and practices limited, and at worst excluded women from accessing and controlling resources such as property, including land.[3]
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