English, Media and Performance Studies

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Class and racial inequality experienced by women of colour in post-apartheid South Africa, explored through selected South African literary texts (1987-2011)
(2023) Pillay, Shazlynn Juelle.; Malaba, Mbongeni Zikhethele.
South Africa is commonly referred to as the ‘Rainbow Nation’. This country is known as a melting pot of ethnicities. However, the legacy of apartheid is eternally woven into the fabric of the nation’s existence. This has shaped the identities of those born before and into the era of democracy. Women of colour have difficulties adapting to a post-apartheid, male-dominated version of South Africa. This study investigates the class and racial differences women experience in contemporary South Africa as represented in two post-apartheid feminist texts, along with an analysis of a text set and written during apartheid. My research focuses on Coconut (2007) by Kopano Matlwa, Onion Tears (2011) by Shubnum Khan, and You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town (1987) by Zoë Wicomb. Using Kimberlé Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality as the foundational theoretical framework, this research project argues that women should embrace every aspect of their heritage and identity to deal with the pressures of a variable socio-economic atmosphere. Matlwa and Khan’s novels are debut texts for these female writers and present characters who search for identity, yearn for belonging and struggle to assimilate while addressing women’s societal roles and the impact of an ever-changing socio-political environment. Wicomb’s interrelated short story anthology also deals with issues of identity, acceptance and the difficulties Coloured women experienced during South Africa’s darkest days. Each theme resonates with non-white women currently, just as in the past. Onion Tears focuses on three generations of Muslim women living in suburban Johannesburg. Khadeejah Ballim is a first-generation Indian woman who wonders if her place truly is in South Africa. At the same time, her daughter Summaya is caught between her South African and Indian identities. Summaya’s young daughter, Aneesa, often has difficulty connecting with her peers and understanding her community. Similarly, Coconut documents the lives of two young Black women living in Johannesburg. On the one hand, Ofilwe Tlou is born into a wealthy family, receives her education from private schools and is given every advantage. On the other hand, Fikile Twala, who hails from a township, strives to escape poverty by working hard to change her circumstances and reinvent herself. The novel indicates that class differences create social segregation, which is apparent in this society. Wicomb’s protagonist, Frieda Shenton, encounters class and racial issues from a gendered perspective throughout her life in South Africa, which influences her relocation to London during adulthood.
Textual representation of the social construction of womanhood and gendered identity: a case of selected Eswatini women poets.
(2022) Langa, Siphiwe Angelica Angela.; De Meyer, Bernard Albert Marcel Sylvain.
The patriarchal society of Eswatini entrenches numerous unfair practices against women. Cultural elements ensure that women are kept at a perpetual position of disadvantage. The socialisation of females and males at different levels of society, including in families and schools, promotes a social divide between the two sexes. The suffering of women epitomises coloniality; women serve the interest of men in the same way that the colonized served the interests of their masters. Since women’s voices have been systematically muted, they do not speak out against their oppression; women are the subalterns who cannot speak and thus they absorb their suffering in subdued silence. Moreover, they self-categorise with other women who are facing a similar plight. This research, therefore, sought to discover how poetic texts by selected Swati women poets represent the social construction of womanhood and gendered identity as a form of social action that contests the dominant discourses in society. Ten poems, spanning three decades, written by six women poets were selected on the basis of their feminist thematic content, an additional five oral poems were included to interface the discussion of the ten poems. The primary poetic texts were analysed by applying principles of interpretivism and narrative inquiry and by relating to cognitive poetics principles. Theories that guided the analysis of the poems were postcolonial theory, a wide range of feminist philosophies and selfcategorisation. Findings from the study revealed that poetic texts enable women poets to exploit figurative language as a vehicle to expose social ills that society perpetrates against women. Exposing the issues creates an opportunity to address those concerns that are considered taboo since it is ‘unSwati’ for women to speak out against women’s oppression. Findings from studying the poems revealed that: with the exception of a few confident women, generally, womenfolk in Eswatini are treated as domestic slaves; they suffer a myriad of abuses including emotional abuse, conjugal deprivation, physical abuse, sexual abuse and economic deprivation. Also, it was revealed that women’s abuse has negative effects on the youth and the society at large. In spite of these abuses, the texts showed that women in the country have a preferred identity. Furthermore, it was discovered that the key theoretical insights were significant in enabling an understanding of the construction of womanhood and gendered identity in Eswatini. While society has constructed womanhood to be a category of the oppressed, women poets, on the other hand, create a preferred identity of confident and independent women. It is recommended that similar research in future should include poems written by males, since men are implicated in the gendered oppression of women.

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