Identity and the Changing Politics of Gender in South Africa

Abstract

The democratic election in South Africa in April 1994 signalled the end of the four-year transition from white minority rule and the birth of a nonracial Government of National Unity. However, the accession of Nelson Mandela to the presidency of South Africa marks the end of transition in one sense only. At the level of government, voteless and powerless blacks have been enfranchised and empowered. At many other levels, particularly the terrain of gender politics, the process of transition is incomplete and struggles continue. In this chapter, we argue that the politics of gender during the period of transition reflects both an engagement with international debates and a response to the specific dynamics of the transition. Paradoxically, the possibilities for advancing feminist causes have multiplied even as the categories of ‘women’ and ‘men’, as well as the project of feminism itself, have been called into question. In the present period of rapid social change various gender identities are being fragmented and challenged. This presents opportunities for a more productive politics of gender at one moment even as it seems to close off possibilities at another. As far as gender is concerned, the transformation of South African society is still very much underway. Indeed, the nature of the changes in political identities — including gender identities — during this period of transition raises important questions about apartheid-era interpretations of South African politics, which theorists have been slow to abandon. New ways of imagining politics and transformation need to replace the dualistic political imaginary which underpinned both apartheid and anti-apartheid politics and analysis.