Claiming Spaces, Changing Places: Political Violence and Women's Protests in KwaZulu-Natal

‘Girls hit!’ Constructing and negotiating violent African femininities in a working-class primary school

“…While this section of the paper does not attempt to delve deeply into the work of feminist social historians, the main line of argument here is that South African historiography demonstrates that African women and girls, whilst victims of violence, were also supporting and organizing violence of various kinds in the turbulent history of racial oppression and resistance (Gasa, 2007). Bonin (2000), Hassim (2005), Suttner (2007) and Cherry (2007) argue that whilst there has been an attempt to downplay or ignore the ways in which women resisted traditional classification of gender in South African historiography, the evidence suggests that rigid maleÁfemale dualisms do not explain the resistance history in South Africa and women's involvement in political protest: 'it means that you are fighting, even though you don't have a weapon . .…”

“…The research is geographically situated in KwaZuluNatal, a province in South Africa where political violence of the 1980s and 1990s received wide media coverage. Whilst there are remnants of political violence, such violence has now largely been overtaken by violent crime (Bonin, 2000;Terreblanche, 2002). Nompilo, like other girls in the study, attend KwaDabeka Primary School located in an African township, one of many sites of rising unemployment and social inequalities, poverty, HIV/ AIDS, and violence.…”

Public Space in Conflict: Conceptual Coordinates and Ideological Tensions

“…Es en este sentido que el espacio público es el escenario material para el cambio social y un termómetro más de la calidad democrática de una sociedad. Pruebas del carácter inagotable del conflicto urbano son la emergencia permanente de conflictos en lugares públi-cos que simbolizan poder político (Jeong y Almeida, 2004;Philp y Mercer, 2002); las disputas socio-espaciales que buscan desafiar las concepciones patriarcales dominantes (Amir-Ebrahimi, 2006;Bonnin, 2000;Nagar, 2000); las discrepancias ideológicas entre grupos nacionalistas y no-nacionalistas en cuanto a la interpretación y uso de edificios públicos simbólicos (Devine-Wright y Lyons, 2007;Loukaki, 1997;Stangl, 2006); los procesos de contestación de formas consolidadas de segregación racial del espacio urbano (Dixon y Durrheim, 2000;Oelofse y Dodson, 1997); o los conflictos que implican prácticas controvertidas en el espacio público desde el sentido común dominante, como beber alcohol, vender artículos fuera de la economía reglada, consumir drogas, pintar graffiti, colgar carteles o lavarse en fuentes (Cusick y Kimber, 2007;Dixon et al, 2006;Halsey y Young, 2006;Popke y Ballard, 2004;Snow y Mulcahy, 2001). …”

Marginalising women in politics: Recent trends in KwaZulu-Natal

“…Bonnin (2000) contends that these protests were not isolated events, and that while locally organized and raising specifically local issues, they fell within the political 'tradition' of women's protests in South Africa, which in many cases, have yielded positive results. Indeed, women's negotiation and mobilisation abilities were brought to the fore during the country's constitutional talks between 1992 and 1994.…”

“…In South Africa, women's protests against state excesses have also been effective in addressing their concerns and those of their communities in general (Beall et al, 1987;Walker, 1997;Bonnin, 2000). For example, in KwaZulu-Natal, women in Mpumalanga Township protested against the excesses of the South African Defence…”