Women's collective economic strategies and political transformation in rural South Africa

Abstract

This article examines the economic processes and socio‐political institutions that shape women's involvement in community projects. Feminist materialism and postcolonial theory provide the framework to analyze these livelihood strategies as they are grounded in the material conditions of women's lives. The empirical study is based in a rural northern province of South Africa where colonialism and apartheid have contributed to extreme economic and social hardships. Fieldwork was conducted in Limpopo to analyze how community projects contribute to livelihood strategies. In an area where migrant remittances remain one of the main sources of income for rural households, women have increasingly engaged in collective economic strategies such as pottery making, sewing, and agricultural production. These strategies are embedded in a complex set of patriarchal institutions that reinforce unequal access to resources and have historically marginalized rural black women. Despite these barriers, findings from this study demonstrate that community projects provide the potential for economic and social empowerment, especially among rural women.

Notes

Correspondence: Ann M. Oberhauser & Amy Pratt, Department of Geology and Geography, West Virginia University, PO Box 6300, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA; e‐mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

The Northern Province was renamed Limpopo in 2002 and is only recognized at the provincial level. It is a recommendation that has yet to be ratified by Parliament.

Materiality refers to social relations and practices, social structure, and institutions and is used here to analyze structural inequality and hierarchical power relations and their relationship to gendered identities and subjectivities. Culture refers to language, meaning, discourse, and cultural practice and is an active force in social reproduction (Liddle & Wright, 2001).

Participants in this research hesitated to discuss the impact of AIDS on their lives during the interviews. Many noted the incidence of HIV/AIDS in the country, but denied that it affected their communities or livelihood strategies.

This collaboration is part of the West Virginia University (WVU)–Southern Africa Linkage Program that has facilitated faculty and student exchanges, joint publications, conference presentations, research partnerships, and the sharing of resources between WVU and universities in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique since the mid‐1990s. This research project involved staff and students from Universities of Venda and the North as collaborators and field assistants.

The exchange rate at the time of this research was 10.42 rands per 1 US dollar.

Under apartheid women lived within a complex web of customary and common law. Traditional institutions, such as the chieftancy, were transformed to serve the conservative apartheid government. Most rural black African women remained perpetual minors to their husbands or fathers and were unable to own land in their own right, enter into contracts without the aid or consent of their male guardian, or even act as guardians to their own children (Walker, 1990).

Currently the work is done manually. Stones are carried from a nearby riverbed and crushed by hand using a large mallet. It is extremely labor‐intensive.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ann M. Oberhauser

Correspondence: Ann M. Oberhauser & Amy Pratt, Department of Geology and Geography, West Virginia University, PO Box 6300, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA; e‐mail: [email protected]; [email protected]