Suchergebnisse

In the South African War (1899–1902), Boer women emerged as more heroic than their men folk. When Boer leaders succumbed to a truce, much discursive work ensued to domesticate Boer women anew in the face of their recalcitrance in accepting a peace deal with the British. But attempts to re-feminise Boer women and elevate Boer men to their 'rightful' position as patriarchs faltered in the topsy-turvy after the war. The figure of the volksmoeder, or mother of the nation, provided a nodal category that combined feminine care for the family and the volk, or fledgling Afrikaner nation, but the heroic narrative was increasingly displaced by the symbol of self-sacrificial, silent and passive motherhood, thereby obscuring women's political activism. Today, a re-remembering of volksmoeder heroism, combined with feminist politics based on the democratic-era Constitution, opens up possibilities of Afrikaners breaking out of their white exclusivism to join the nascent democratic South African nation.

South Africa's transition to democracy coincided and interlinked with massive global shifts, including the fall of communism and the rise of western capitalist triumphalism. Late capitalism operates through paradoxical global-local dynamics, both universalising identities and expanding local particularities. The erstwhile hegemonic identity of apartheid, 'the Afrikaner', was a product of Afrikaner nationalism. Like other identities, it was spatially organised, with Afrikaner nationalism projecting its imagined community ('the volk') onto a national territory ('white South Africa'). The study traces the neo-nationalist spatial permutations of 'the Afrikaner', following Massey's (2005) understanding of space as (1) political, (2) produced through interrelations ranging from the global to micro intimacies, (3) potentially a sphere for heterogeneous co-existence, and (4) continuously created. Research is presented that shows a neo-nationalist revival of ethnic privileges in a defensive version of Hall's 'return to the local' (1997a). Although Afrikaner nationalism's territorial claims to a nation state were defeated, neo-nationalist remnants reclaim a purchase on white Afrikaans identities, albeit in shrunken territories. This phenomenon is, here, called Afrikaner enclave nationalism. Drawing on a global revamping of race as a category of social subjugation, a strategy is deployed that is here called 'inward migration'. These dynamics produce a privatised micro-apartheid in sites ranging from homes, to commercial and religious enterprises, to suburbs. Virtual white spaces in the form of Afrikaans media products serve as extensions of these whitened locales. The lynchpin holding it all together is the heteronormative, middle-class family, with consumption the primary mode of the generation of its white comfort zones. ; http://www.hts.org.za ; am2016 ; Sociology

Includes bibliographical references. ; This dissertation explores the extent to which the post-apartheid democratic space in South Africa has allowed for the emergence of new identities for Afrikaans women beyond the normative Afrikaner nationalist volksmoeder [mother of the nation] ideal. The study interrogates Afrikaner subjectivities through the interpretive lens of ordentlikheid - an ethnicised respectability - at the intersections of gender, sexuality, class and race. Framed by the theoretical perspectives of Laclau and Mouffe, Foucault, and Butler, the study employs discourse analysis across three phases: Firstly, an analysis of Sarie women's magazine, as an instrument of a culturally-sanctioned, normative discourse; secondly, an analysis of texts generated in focus group interviews with subjects who self-identify as women, white, heterosexual, middle-class and Afrikaans-speaking; and thirdly, an analysis of texts from individual in-depth interviews.

One of the political consequences of the 9/11 attacks on the US has been a renewed abuse of the catch-all phrase 'national security.' In South Africa, 'national security' has in recent months been bandied about to defend a clampdown on state information, which has seen a renewed application of an apartheid law and the adoption of the Protection of State Information Bill, the so-called Secrecy Bill. In recent years the government has reverted to attempts to control flows of state information in the face of an active media sector, intermittent whistleblower revelations and press leaks from different factions within the ruling African National Congress. Exposures regularly revolve around suspected or actual corruption among a political elite criticized for its 'conspicuous consumption.' Here, van der Westhuizen reports how free speech and good journalism are being undermined by bad laws in South Africa. Adapted from the source document.

This article places the Accra Confession, accepted at the 24th General Assembly of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) (2004), within the historical context of the WARC's struggle for economic justice in the face of globalisation. It moves beyond addressing such issues merely as ethical issues to rather viewing them as confessional issues of faith. It highlights the difficulties of the WARC to reach consensus on issues concerning economic justice. It also shows how the WARC has taken the lead in the ecumenical movement by engaging a broad spectrum of people – professionals and non-professionals, from the North and the South, rich and poor – to ensure that such a confession is a true reflection of the experiences of people at grass-roots level and that it speaks from the heart. The Accra Confession challenges Christians to take a faith stance on economic injustice. ; This article was originally presented as a paper at a meeting of the Joint Globalization Task Team of the Reformed Churches of Germany and South Africa, held at Arnoldsheim, Frankfurt, Germany, 26–30 May 2008. ; http://www.hts.org.za ; am2015 ; Sociology

Zehn Jahre nach der Weltfrauenkonferenz in Beijing hat sich die Lage der Frauen in Afrika kaum verbessert. Auch die Verabschiedung der Millenniumsziele, die Geschlechtergerechtigkeit als Ziel ausgegeben haben, hat nicht den erhofften Impuls gebracht. Der Sammelband gibt einen Überblick über die internationalen Instrumente zur Gleichstellung und untersucht kritisch die Faktoren, die die Umsetzung der Ziele in Subsahara-Afrika behindern oder befördern. Die Beiträge gehen auf einen Workshop im Mai 2005 in Johannesburg zurück. (GIGA-Sbd)

There has recently been a global resurgence of demands for the acknowledgement of historical and contemporary wrongs, as well as for apologies and reparation for harms suffered. Drawing on the histories of injustice, dispossession and violence in South Africa, this book examines the cultural, political and legal role, and value of, an apology. It explores the multiple ways in which 'sorry' is instituted, articulated and performed, and critically analyses its various forms and functions in both historical and contemporary moments. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of contributors, the book's analysis offers insights that will be invaluable to global debates on the struggle for justice

"The reconciliatory project [in South Africa] seems to have completely fallen away from the national agenda, and many of the TRC's [Truth and Reconciliation Commission's] recommendations remain unimplemented and unrealised. Has reconciliation been successful? Do South Africans feel reconciled? What is the way forward? This book brings together leading social scientists and researchers to critically interrogate the success of the reconciliatory project, using ten years of public opinion data collected by the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation (IJR) through the South African Reconciliation Barometer survey."--Back cover