The question of coloniality of gender in the “new” South Africa

Abstract

The assertion this chapter brings forth is that the question of gender, twenty-seven years post-apartheid, falls within the cracks of the idea of South Africa. The concept of coloniality becomes very useful when dealing with the understanding of the global power structure in Africa and South Africa in particular. The argument this chapter makes centres on three points: the imperial global power structure as a root that defines the fundamental problem of gender, South African liberation without decolonisation: a fundamental gender question, and decolonial humanism: the horizon of gender transformation. Coloniality of knowledge as far as gender transformation is concerned in the idea of South Africa must deconstruct what Mignolo termed geo-historical and bio-graphical foundations of knowledge in the spectrum of modernity/coloniality. The horizon of gender within the idea of South Africa has been problematised as entrapped in coloniality which manifests itself in many ways that seek to distort the fundamental question of gender and gender transformation.