Women in Associations and Organizations

Author(s):  
Alice Kang

Associations and organizations are groups of individuals who form a body to achieve an aim. Women’s leadership and membership in associations constitute a vital part of Africa’s economic, social, and political history. Women-only associations and women in dual-sex organizations protested against colonial rule; fought for independence; and mobilized for democracy, peace, and equality. Still, women in associations also supported colonial projects, fought in war, and held up postcolonial authoritarian rule. Taken together, economic, social, and political accounts of Africa are inherently incomplete if they fail to interrogate women’s participation in collective action on the continent. Women have created and joined many kinds of associations and organizations in Africa. These include secular and religious associations. Some groups represent the interests of a profession (e.g., academics, journalists, lawyers, midwives, traders) or a political party or ideology (e.g., African National Congress Women’s League in South Africa). Others explicitly try to bring together women and men from multiple status and political groups (e.g., Women’s National Coalition in South Africa). Women have formed groups of friends and family members in their immediate vicinity, at times through small-scale rotating savings and credit associations. Other associations have a national membership base. Associations further vary in their relationship to the state. Some are formally recognized, and others are informal. Whereas some groups receive state financing, others depend solely on the contributions of its members, and many fall in the middle of the spectrum. Women have also forged intra-regional, pan-African, and global networks of individuals and organizations. It is not uncommon for a woman to belong to multiple kinds of associations simultaneously and for her memberships to vary over her lifetime. The associations and organizations that women have spearheaded rise and fall, consolidate and fragment, and succeed and fail in achieving their aims, reflecting local, national, and international contradictions and dynamics. The power of women-led organizations has changed over time. Women-led organizations registered economic revolutions, political upheavals, and religious conversion on the continent before the advent of European colonization, under European rule, and in postcolonial Africa.

2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (1-3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lungisani Moyo

ABSTRACT This paper used qualitative methodology to explore the South African government communication and land expropriation without compensation and its effects on food security using Alice town located in the Eastern Cape Province South Africa as its case study. This was done to allow the participants to give their perceptions on the role of government communication on land expropriation without compensation and its effects on South African food security. In this paper, a total population of 30 comprising of 26 small scale farmers in rural Alice and 4 employees from the Department of Agriculture (Alice), Eastern Cape, South Africa were interviewed to get their perception and views on government communications and land expropriation without compensation and its effects on South African food security. The findings of this paper revealed that the agricultural sector plays a vital role in the South African economy hence there is a great need to speed up transformation in the sector.


2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Foreman Bandama ◽  
Shadreck Chirikure ◽  
Simon Hall

The Southern Waterberg in Limpopo Province is archaeologically rich, especially when it comes to evidence of pre-colonial mining and metal working. Geologically, the area hosts important mineral resources such as copper, tin and iron which were smelted by agriculturalists in the precolonial period. In this region however, tin seems to be the major attraction given that Rooiberg is still the only source of cassiterite in southern Africa to have provided evidence of mining before European colonization. This paper reports the results of archaeological and archaeometallurgical work which was carried out in order to reconstruct the technology of metalworking as well as the cultural interaction in the study area and beyond. The ceramic evidence shows that from the Eiland Phase (1000–1300 AD) onwards there was cross borrowing of characteristic decorative traits amongst extant groups that later on culminated in the creation of a new ceramic group known as Rooiberg. In terms of mining and metal working, XRF and SEM analyses, when coupled with optical microscopy, indicate the use of indigenous bloomery techniques that are widespread in pre-colonial southern Africa. Tin and bronze production was also represented and their production remains also pin down this metallurgy to particular sites and excludes the possibility of importing of finished tin and bronze objects into this area.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-75
Author(s):  
Ainara Mancebo

A tripartite alliance formed by the African National Congress, the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions has been ruling the country with wide parliamentarian majorities. The country remains more consensual and politically inclusive than any of the other African countries in the post-independence era. This article examines three performance’s aspects of the party dominance systems: legitimacy, stability and violence. As we are living in a period in which an unprecedented number of countries have completed democratic transitions, it is politically and conceptually important that we understand the specific tasks of crafting democratic consolidation.


Exchange ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henri Gooren

AbstractThe central question of this article — why people may change their religious affiliation or become disaffiliated — is relevant from both an academic and a practical point of view. The article makes first an inventory of existing literature on religious conversion. Next I sketch the contours of the new conversion careers approach I am currently working on. I make some comparisons with a region that is not usually mentioned in the literature on conversion: Latin America. These comparisons are based on my earlier fieldwork on Roman Catholicism, Pentecostalism, and Mormonism in Costa Rica and Guatemala (H. Gooren, Rich among the Poor: Church, Firm, and Household among Small-scale Entrepreneurs in Guatemala City, Amsterdam: Thela Thesis 1999).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Milan Oralek

<p>This thesis explores the life and work of a South African journalist, editor, and activist Michael Alan Harmel (1915–1974), a political mentor and friend of Nelson Mandela. A resolute believer in racial equality and Marxism-Leninism, Harmel devoted his life to fighting, with “the pen” as well as “the sword”, segregation and apartheid, and promoting an alliance of communists with the African National Congress as a stepping stone to socialism in South Africa. Part 1, after tracing his Jewish-Lithuanian and Irish family roots, follows Harmel from his birth to 1940 when, having joined the Communist Party of South Africa, he got married and was elected secretary of the District Committee in Johannesburg. The focus is on factors germane to the formation of his political identity. The narrative section is accompanied by an analytical sketch. This, using tools of close literary interpretation, catalogues Harmel’s core beliefs as they inscribed themselves in his journalism, histories, a sci-fi novel, party memoranda, and private correspondence. The objective is to delineate his ideological outlook, put to the test the assessment of Harmel—undeniably a skilled publicist—as a “creative thinker” and “theorist”, and determine his actual contribution to the liberation discourse.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Milan Oralek

<p>This thesis explores the life and work of a South African journalist, editor, and activist Michael Alan Harmel (1915–1974), a political mentor and friend of Nelson Mandela. A resolute believer in racial equality and Marxism-Leninism, Harmel devoted his life to fighting, with “the pen” as well as “the sword”, segregation and apartheid, and promoting an alliance of communists with the African National Congress as a stepping stone to socialism in South Africa. Part 1, after tracing his Jewish-Lithuanian and Irish family roots, follows Harmel from his birth to 1940 when, having joined the Communist Party of South Africa, he got married and was elected secretary of the District Committee in Johannesburg. The focus is on factors germane to the formation of his political identity. The narrative section is accompanied by an analytical sketch. This, using tools of close literary interpretation, catalogues Harmel’s core beliefs as they inscribed themselves in his journalism, histories, a sci-fi novel, party memoranda, and private correspondence. The objective is to delineate his ideological outlook, put to the test the assessment of Harmel—undeniably a skilled publicist—as a “creative thinker” and “theorist”, and determine his actual contribution to the liberation discourse.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (3) ◽  
pp. 521-537
Author(s):  
R Henrico

Daar is in Suid-Afrika verskeie vrywillige godsdiensorganisasies. Hulle leerstellings het betrekking op geloofsgebaseerde aangeleenthede. Sodanige organisasies vervul ook funksies ten aansien van die bestuur van die kerk, die hiërargiese samestelling daarvan, administratiewe aangeleenthede, die gedragskode van lidmate en leraars en dissiplinêre optrede ingevolge huishoudelike tribunale. Die verhouding tussen die lidmate en die organisasie waartoe hulle hul vrywillig verbind het, is nie statutêr van aard nie. Die verhouding is gebaseer op die interne grondwet van die godsdienstige organisasie wat beteken dat die bevoegdhede wat byvoorbeeld uitgeoefen word deur dissiplinêre tribunale, gebaseer is op die instemming van die betrokkenes. Kragtens die bevoegdhede wat so verleen is, bestaan ’n ongelyke verhouding tussen die leierskap teenoor hulle lidmate en medeleraars. Dit bly egter ’n privaatregtelike verhouding en word geen publiekregtelike verhouding weens die magsverhouding nie. ’n Vergelyking kan gemaak word met administratiefregtelike verhoudings waar eweneens sprake van magsverhoudings is. Administratiewe verhoudings is openbare regsverhoudings, maar tog ook een van ongelykheid. Die staatsreg plaas die individu in ’n ondergeskikte verhouding teenoor die owerhede. ’n Lidmaat wat verontreg of gegrief is deur ’n besluit van die godsdienstige organisasie waarvan hy/ sy ’n lid is, kan sodanige besluit aanveg deur middel van die hersieningsprosedure waarvoor in die grondwet van die organisasie voorsiening gemaak word, maar kan ook bloot besluit om te bedank en uit die organisasie te tree. Dié bevoegdheid geniet ’n burger wat verontreg is deur ’n administratiewe vergryp van die owerheid, behoudens dan emigrasie, nie. Alhoewel die bevoegdhede wat binne ’n godsdienstige organisasie uitgeoefen word, gebaseer is op onderlinge instemming – en gereguleer behoort te word deur die interne grondwet van die vereniging – mag dit die moeite loon om kennis te neem van die beginsels van die administratiefreg in die lig van die omvang van gevestigde administratiewe regspleging. Die outeur ondersoek in hierdie artikel in die eerste plek private godsdienstige organisasies binne die bestek van die grondwetlike waarborge van indiwiduele en geassosieerde vryheid van godsdiens. Tweedens word gelet op die feit dat, nieteenstaande die private aard van die verhouding tussen lidmate en die vrywillige godsdienstige organisasie, ’n geregtelike hersiening van godsdienstige verenigings gebaseer op die gemenereg wel toepaslik mag wees. In ’n demokratiese bedeling leen nóg die Wet op die Bevordering van Administratiewe Geregtigheid, nóg artikel 33 van die grondwet dit tot geregtelike hersiening van administratiewe optrede. Met inagneming van die horisontale toepassing van grondwetlike beginsels en artikel 39(2) en (3) in die handves van menseregte en die ongelyke verhouding tussen die partye, ontstaan die vraag of breër verligting deur middel van administratiewe regspleging nie moet seëvier in gevalle van sodanige “private administratiewe regspleging” nie. Ten slotte ondersoek die outeur die beginsel van vermyding van leerstellige verstrengeling. Dit onderstreep die respek wat ons howe verleen aan godsdiensvryheid waarkragtens die howe hulle daarvan weerhou om in te meng in die sake van godsdienstige organisasies tensy dit buite die bestek van die tersake eie norme en riglyne soos vervat in die tersake grondwette val.


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