This research project explored how young women involved in political organizations make
sense of apartheid history and how they appropriate that history into their identities. Nine
black women students who were involved in political organizations were interviewed from
the University of Witswatersrand. The women that were chosen participated in a narrative
style interview about their lives and the history of apartheid. The data were then analyzed
using narrative thematic analysis and organised in the temporal zones of past, present and
future. The analysis revealed the complexities of race, class and gender and how these are
embodied, enacted and made sense of in the construction and reconstruction of the identities
of these young women.
In imagining and reflecting on the apartheid past, race was understood through both distant,
public narratives and through personal and intimate family narratives. Gendered roles or
positions were talked about in reference to three thematic symbols of women as nurturers,
iconic wives and heroes. In progression from the apartheid past and its particular, separated
and structured understanding of race and gender, the journey into the present and future,
reflects increasingly complex, dynamic and multilayered understandings. In particular, the
conflation of race and class under apartheid is beginning to fragment and these young
women are thinking through their positionality in terms of personal class mobility and
simultaneous identification as black and committed to the continuation of race struggles. It is
also very clear that the question of gender equality is now very prominent for these young
women as they navigate their roles in political leadership in the present and envisage themselves
in the future.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/14752 |
| Date | 12 June 2014 |
| Creators | Mashigo, Thembelihle N. C. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf |
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