Amanda Gouws

Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa: Attributions of Blame and the Struggle over Apartheid

In an effort to put its past firmly behind, the New South Africa created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to document human rights abuses under apartheid and to grant amnesty to those confessing their nefarious deeds. South Africas democratic experiment depends mightily upon whether truth does in fact bring about reconciliation. Consequently, we examine whether ordinary South Africans accept the theories of blame that underlie the truth and reconciliation process. Based on a formal experiment within a representative sample of South Africans, our results confirm some conventional hypotheses (e.g., leaders are judged more responsible for their deeds than followers), repudiate others (noble motives do little to exonerate violent actions), and modify still others (actors are judged by the severity of their actions consequences, although it matters little whether “combatants” or “civilians” were the victims). We conclude that the dark legacy of the apartheid past makes the consolidation of the democratic transformation problematical.

South African Social Welfare Policy: An Analysis Using the Ethic of Care

New policies have been developed in South Africa since the demise of apartheid. This article examines one of these policy documents - theWhite Paper for Social Welfare - using the lens of a feminist political ethic of care. The ethic of care is used to trace the normative framework of this policy document and to make judgements about how adequately issues of care, welfare and citizenship are dealt with. Policy texts display authoritative ways of talking about care and contain a range of gendered assumptions in the way that they represent social practices of care. The article proposes that the White Paper for Social Welfare inserts care principally into a familialist framework. This framework does not address current South African social problems in an adequate manner, nor does it correspond with social justice principles that are endorsed in the White Paper. The contribution that the ethic of care can make in solving the problems that are identified in the analysis of the White Paper for Social Welfare is elaborated on. It is proposed that care should be positioned in notions of citizenship rather than family or community. In this way, the responsibility for care would be deprivatized and made a common concern, centrally placed in human life.

Redefining the public space: women's organisations, gender consciousness and civil society in South Africa

Abstract This article addresses the relationship between civil society and the womens movement in South Africa. It argues that civil society is not a gender‐neutral concept, but is founded on the separation between public and private as two distinct arenas in society. Womens movements in South Africa have constantly challenged these boundaries. The article also explores the emergence of a gender consciousness within South African womens movements. The authors argue that while gender consciousness should not be equated with feminist consciousness, the development of feminism is an element in the success of womens movements’ challenges to unequal relations of gender. Finally, the article addresses the changing relations between womens organisations and the state as a result of the creation of the national machinery for women. The authors argue that these new institutions offer opportunities for womens organisations to pursue claims on state resources and advance struggles for equality. However, the re...

Political tolerance and civil society: the case of South Africa

ABSTRACT The recent debate about civil society in South Africa has focused mainly on relationships of power in the reconstruction of civil society. This article puts forward an argument about the importance of civility (expressed in the acceptance of people as bearers of rights), as a component of civil society. It is in the acceptance of others as rights‐holders that political tolerance is fostered. Tolerance, therefore, lies at the heart of civil society. Empirical data of a sample of South Africans on political tolerance are assessed, and the implications of the lack of tolerance are analyzed.

THE ANGRY DIVIDE

Can white women represent black? This has been an ongoing debate in Agenda, and Amanda Gouws takes the discussion further

Multiculturalism in South Africa: Dislodging the Binary between Universal Human Rights and Culture/Tradition

The aim of this article is to show how the binary opposition between the cultural rights of indigenous populations and constitutionally protected universal rights leads to a closure of the discourse about these concepts. The inability to dislodge the binary is particularly damaging in post-colonial societies where the misrecognition of cultural practices may have negative implications for women, because of its impact on the redistribution of resources. By applying Nancy Frasers concept of recognition and redistribution to the debate on customary law and land in South Africa I want to first show the complexity of gender relations in ‘multicultural’ contexts in post-colonial societies, and second, attempt to find ways of dealing with the conflict between culture and rights in a more productive way.

The rise of the femocrat

The institutionalisation of gender could shape womens issues outside government and create a new kind of woman, the ‘femocrat’, inside government. Signs of this at provincial level are evident where new ‘gender desks’ are taking different and disconcerting form, writes AMANDA GOUWS

Recognition and redistribution: State of the women's movement in South Africa 20 years after democratic transition

abstract This article attempts to analyse the shift from a mass-based womens movement in the form of the Womens National Coalition in South Africa to more localised temporal movements since political transition 20 years ago. I apply Nancy Frasers theory of recognition and redistribution to illustrate how two alliances – the Shukumisa campaign around gender-based violence and the Alliance for Rural Democracy around the Traditional Courts Bill – meet the criteria of localised temporal movements that engage the State with the intention of recognising identities and redistributing resources to promote gender equality.

Intolerance in KwaZulu‐Natal: illustrating the complexity of tolerance attitudes

ABSTRACT One of the processes of consolidating democracy is the development of a democratic culture of which political tolerance is a crucial ingredient. Tolerance, however, is a puzzling and complex attitude because it does not correlate well with other indicators of democracy. A better understanding is needed of the link between political tolerance and civil liberties, the indicators of tolerance, the link between tolerance and public policy, the malleability of tolerance attitudes, the role of political leaders in the creation of tolerance and the link between intolerant attitudes and political behaviour. This article attempts to shed light on these aspects and then to illustrate the complexity of tolerance attitudes with a case study of intolerance in KwaZulu‐Natal.

Feminism in South Africa today: Have we lost the praxis?

abstract This Focus tracks some of the changes in feminism(s) in South Africa since the early 1990s, making the argument that institutional politics have depoliticised feminist politics to the extent that a feminist praxis has been lost. Three different impacts on feminist politics are analysed: institutionalisation, transnational organising and populist rhetoric. It is clear that a feminist praxis as developed by radical feminist scholars as a way of life has become seriously weakened in South Africa. A feminist praxis is the internalisation of feminist theoretical principles to the extent that these principles are used to guide feminist action and turn spaces into feminist spaces. It also means that a feminist will locate herself in a space as a feminist. A feminist praxis is the pursuit of a feminist consciousness that becomes a political practice.