Gender, Traditional Authority, and the Politics of Rural Reform in South Africa

Abstract

The new South African Constitution, together with later policies and legislation, affirm a commitment to gender rights that is incompatible with the formal recognition afforded to unelected traditional authorities. This contradiction is particularly evident in the case of land reform in many rural areas, where women's right of access to land is denied through the practice of customary law. This article illustrates the ways in which these constitutional contradictions play out with particular intensity in the 'former homelands' through the example of a conflict over land use in Buffelspruit, Mpumalanga province. There, a number of women who had been granted informal access to communal land for the purposes of subsistence cultivation had their rights revoked by the traditional authority. Despite desperate protests, they continue to be marginalized in terms of access to land, while their male counterparts appropriate communal land for commercial farming and cattle grazing. Drawing on this protest, we argue that current South African practice in relation to the pressing issue of gender equity in land reform represents a politics of accommodation and evasion that tends to reinforce gender biases in rural development, and in so doing, undermines the prospects for genuinely radical transformation of the instituted geographies and institutionalized practices bequeathed by the apartheid regime.

Hybridity emergent: Geo-history, learning, and land restitution in South Africa

“…As has been noted elsewhere (e.g. Rangan and Gilmartin, 2002;Claassens, 2001), the post-apartheid government has not sufficiently challenged traditional authorities in the former homelands and Bantustans.…”

South Africa’s Application of the Gender Mainstreaming Strategy within the Water Resources Management of Rural Areas: Challenges and Limitations

“…Clear political will and the allocation of adequate and, if need be, additional human and financial resources for gender mainstreaming from all funding sources are important for the successful translation of the concept into practice. In post-apartheid South Africa, development policies have reflected the broad trend in gender awareness (Rangan & Gilmartin, 2002). After the African National Congress (ANC) won the political power, it outlined a strong commitment to gender and human rights in its approach to development.…”

“…Post-apartheid, South Africa was in need of strategies to ensure gender equality and gender mainstreaming came to the rescue. However, the strategy was also accompanied by a number of challenges (Bennett, 1995;Ntsebeza, 2000;Rangan & Gilmartin, 2002;Vlassoff & Moreno, 2002;Morley, 2006;Bauer & Burnet, 2013) which made it difficult to fully realize the benefits of the strategy.…”

Land reform in South Africa and the colonial present

“…Their continued influence over people's lives is an irrefutable reality in the former homeland areas of South Africa. It is, moreover, an extraordinary outcome, a 'constitutional contradiction' (Rangan and Gilmartin 2002), that the post-apartheid polity protects the institution of traditional authority even though the democratic Bill of Rights enshrines governance by elected representatives (Ntsebeza 2003 (Hall 2003: 25).…”