Shireen Hassim

Fragile Stability: State and Society in Democratic South Africa

This article adopts a ‘state-in-society’ approach in order to take account of the impact of the transition to democracy in South Africa on social groups and their engagement with the state. The article suggests that democratic consolidation involves not only building a new state but also new interfaces between state and society. We use the term ‘fragile stability’ to characterise the contradictory nature of South Africas transition a decade after apartheid: society is stable in that the non-racial regime is fully accepted as legitimate, but the immense social problems which were apartheids legacy remain a threat to social order. The article shows how state authority and capacity have been regenerated from a position of severe weakness at the time of the transition, to a situation today where it has substantial capabilities in exercising basic functions such as policing, border control and taxation. However, we argue that in many other social arenas, both stability and fragility have increased. Drawing on other articles in this special issue, we discuss the different patterns in which the contradictory combination of stability and fragility has evolved. The macro-economic situation has been both stabilising and destabilising, but different policies have been responsible for each. We suggest that single-party dominance of the political arena, the continued salience of race relations, black economic empowerment, militarism and corruption are arenas where the same social or political processes have both promoted stability and added to the potential for destabilisation. In gender relations, HIV/AIDS and land reform, stabilisation has been limited, as linkages between state and society have not been successfully established. We conclude that despite its tenuous nature, fragile stability nonetheless represents an ‘equilibrium’ that is likely to persist in the short- to medium-term, because the social forces and political organisations needed to move the society to a different position – either crisis or thoroughgoing consolidation – have not yet emerged.

Voices, Hierarchies and Spaces: Reconfiguring the Women's Movement in Democratic South Africa

Abstract This article explores the ways in which the contemporary womens movement in South Africa has been shaped by its own recent history as well as by the changes in the political landscape since 1994. The article argues that the striking feature of the past decade is the manner in which the strategy of inclusion of women in formal political institutions of state and party has tended to displace the transformatory goals of structural and social change. Both goals, of inclusion and transformation, were held to be mutually dependent by womens movement activists throughout the 1980s and 1990s. However, the article shows that maintaining the strategic balance between these goals has been difficult to achieve, in large part because the womens movement has been relatively weak, apart from a brief moment in the early 1990s. The argument outlines the theoretical and strategic debates relating to definitions of the term ‘womens movement’ in South Africa, and then identifies and classifies different forms of organizations and strategies. Finally, the article argues that the realization of gender equality rests on the extent to which a strong womens movement will develop, with a clear agenda for transformation and relative autonomy from both state and other social movements.

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.

Family, Motherhood and Zulu Nationalism: The Politics of the Inkatha Women's Brigade

In 1975, Inkatha Yenkululeko Yesizwe (National Cultural Liberation Movement), under the charismatic leadership of Mangosutho Buthelezi, was launched in Natal. Although it put itself forward as a national movement, its location within a bantustan (KwaZulu), its links with the administration and politics of that bantustan through its control of the KwaZulu Legislative Assembly, and its very heavy reliance on Zulu symbolism and political imagery limited the degree of its appeal outside Natal. The character of Inkatha has changed since July 1990, when the organization decided to transform itself into a political party and abandon the tag of a cultural movement.1 The Inkatha Freedom Party presents itself now as a moderate (I would argue conservative) nonracial force in South African politics. The degree to which it will be able to take on this role successfully is a matter for another paper. Here I am concerned with the period from 1975, when a womens wing was inaugurated within Inkatha, to 1990, when Inkatha became a political party. The paper is based on archival research and interviews conducted with members of the Inkatha Womens Brigade. The four years between 1975 and 1979 represented a period of some flexibility and flux, when Inkatha was defining its character and place within black politics. Inkathas political fortunes waxed and waned, as Buthelezis credibility was increasingly questioned by the ANC. Until the immediate post-Soweto period, the ANC regarded Buthelezi as an

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...

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.

Nationalism, Feminism and Autonomy: The ANC in Exile and the Question of Women

There is a strong feminist scholarship that examines the fraught relationship between feminism and nationalism. The African National Congress (ANC) stands out as a nationalist movement that has gone further than most in transcending the tendency of nationalist organisations to reinforce womens status as secondary political subjects. Yet there has been little analytical attention to how the ANC operates as a political organisation. This article addresses this issue from the perspective of the ANC in exile and women active within it. Drawing on archival research and interviews, the article pays close attention to the workings of the ANC as a political organisation. It excavates the debates on feminism and autonomy within the ANC, and seeks to understand how feminist demands impacted on processes of organisational democratisation. The article identifies three categories of influence on the increasing assertion of womens interests within the ANC. The first relates to internal organisational experiences, and the second to the theoretical debates that flowed from attempts to find a role for women in national liberation. The third influence was ANC womens exposure to, and interaction with, international feminist debates and with womens organisations in post-independence African countries. These influences not only helped re-shape the ANC as a political organisation but also the nature of democracy instituted after the collapse of the apartheid system.

The Dual Politics of Representation: Women and Electoral Politics in South Africa

Abstract This article examines the politics of womens representation in South Africa. It argues that there has been a significant shift since 1994 in the ways in which womens organisations have articulated womens electoral interests. While womens organisations and women within political parties have been outwardly in agreement about the need for increasing womens representation, there are differences in their policy positions with respect to strategies for advancing equality. Within womens forums, these differences have been openly and sometimes acrimoniously debated. The article suggests that there is a dual electoral politics: an external level at which the coherence of women as a group is emphasised, and an internal level at which differences between women are recognised and debated. This dual politics is seen as inevitable in a situation in which women continue to be numerically under‐represented in electoral bodies. The article examines the consolidation of womens gains in representation in th...

The Limits of Popular Democracy: Women's Organisations, Feminism and the UDF

Shireen Hassim examines the contours and consequences of tensions between womens feminist politics and national liberation in the UDF during the 1980s.

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 Murrays 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.