The Patriarchal Woman in Modern South Africa

Post-1994 land laws mimic apartheid

Nomboniso Gasa, Mail & Guardian

“Umhlaba! Izwe lethu! (Land! This land is ours!)” It is now more than 40 years since I first heard these slogans. Given the passion with which they were declared, I have tried to understand exactly what they meant.

Like many South Africans, I continue to grapple with the multiple meanings of the land question. For me, it is important to understand land dispossession as a structural process that played out over many centuries.

King’s culture call is all about land

Nomboniso Gasa, Business Day

KING Goodwill Zwelithini made a fiery speech in Kokstad recently in which he declared 2015 to be the Year of the Regiment. He urged male initiates to be "his regiment and defend African culture against critics".

His call to arms must be understood in the broader context of claims of power over land, resources and customary law.

Nomboniso Gasa Remembers Jeff Guy

In a country and a world, where rigorous and principled academics are in short supply, the passing of Jeff Guy is a major blow. Despite the often repeated description of Jeff Guy as cantankerous, I never experienced or witnessed this side of him. I had limited interactions with Jeff. The man I met and often broke bread and chewed a curd with, was generous, tender, sensitive, astute, punctilious, open minded and incredibly funny.

Jeff Guy was a historian. He was also a Marxist. He was not dogmatic. His Marxism did not interfere with his academic precision (despite what his detractors said). This ability to be ideologically positioned and still maintain academic rigour fascinated me greatly.

Claimants still waiting for the promised land

Nomboniso Gasa, Mail & Guardian

The man’s movements were deliberate as he took the microphone at the recent land tenure summit in Boksburg.

“Minister, we support this summit,” he said. “We, the labour tenants on the farms, feel the pressing hard sole of the farmers on our backs. We, who are dragged on the backs of bakkies, without protection … many of us know no other home. Our parents gave their labour as we give ours. Must our children suffer the same fate? There is no political will to ensure that the laws are adhered to, there are no mechanisms to ensure labour tenants are treated as human beings.

Nomboniso Gasa on Traditional Authority in Contemporary South Africa

MaMbeki’s voice to echo across time

Nomboniso Gasa

Nomboniso Gasa, The Dispatch

THE harsh landscape of Mbewuleni carries in its crevices the secrets, hopes, tears and idealism of a young couple who moved there to make an independent existence in the 1940s.

Like so many other activists of their time, MamoTseki, Nomaka Epainette Mbeki (nee Moerane) and her husband, Govan Mbeki, knew that dependence on government salaries would render them vulnerable.

They could easily lose their positions and salaries.

Their move to Mbewuleni was also inspired by their commitment to working with and understanding the “peasants’ existence”, a subject close to both their hearts and captured in Govan Mbeki’s book, The Peasant Revolt, a history of the Mpondoland resistance.

Annual Teach-in: The 2014 Elections

Empty promises to rural people

The land restitution bill is not the game-changer that President Zuma promised, write Nomboniso Gasa and Nolundi Luwaya. Sunday Independent

The Land Restitution Bill approved by the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) on Thursday may raise a cheer from traditional leaders, but it is not the game-changer that President Jacob Zuma promised in his State of the Nation address last year.

Zuma and his Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform, Gugile Nkwinti, punted the bill as a second chance for the Khoi, San and Africans who were dispossessed before the notorious 1913 Natives Land Act redesigned the South African landscape.

Nomboniso Gasa interviewed by Azania Mosaka (audio)

Feminisms, Motherisms, Patriarchies & Women's Voices in the 1950s

Nomboniso Gasa: Feminisms, Motherisms, Patriarchies and Women's Voices by TigersEye99

What Mandela means to intellectuals: with Lesley Dikeni and Nomboniso Gasa

Nomboniso Gasa: Long and short of the gender issue

by Percy Zvomuya, Mail & Guardian

Gender activist Nomboniso Gasa has been on Twitter for most of this year, although she hasn't yet memorised the social medium's first commandment: brevity. Her tweets, as a result, are often numbered 1 to 10.

"I was always intrigued by the power attributed to social media, the role it played in the Arab Spring, its power to report things as they happen," she said at her home in Observatory, Johannes­burg, on why she joined Twitter. "But I have always wondered about the depth of the platform. I didn't understand how you could communicate substantial issues in 140 characters. I still haven't mastered it. That's why I do the lists."

Nomboniso Gasa: "Eloquent Silences: Gender, Culture and the NDP"

The sting is in Vavi’s choice of words

History of denigrating women by those in power has been repeated by the way the trade unionist referred to a woman as a ‘girl’, says Nomboniso Gasa, Sunday Independent

Johannesburg - Despite attempts by his own opponents to find charges that stuck, ranging from allegations of his wife’s involvement in the pension affairs of Cosatu workers and his alleged involvement in the Cosatu Head Office debacle, Zwelinzima Vavi seemed to take the challenges in his stride.

How patriarchy fuels a culture of fear in women

Nomboniso Gasa interviewed by Ayanda Allie-Paine on the sexist attack on Lindiwe Mazibuko in Parliament

Complex legacy of 1913 Land Act ‘held captive’

By Nomboniso Gasa, The Daily Dispatch

26 April, 2013

THIS year marks the centenary of the 1913 Land Act. Yet, very little is in the public debate about its multiple legacies in the present.

The centenary of the Land Act occurs 18 years after the South African constitution was enacted into law. While the function of the constitution in any society is broader than redressing past injustices; there can be no question that such redress is central in laying foundations for a society based on justice, freedom and equality – in all meanings.

There is general acceptance that South Africa’s land reform and redress has been frustratingly low. This is acknowledged by the leaders of the country as it is equally experienced by the communities who live with the legacy of that dispossession. Why is this so?

How Hani brought politics to villagers

Nomboniso Gasa

by Nomboniso Gasa, Independent Online, 14 April 2014

As the sun hung above the Cacadu River the question echoed in the hamlets and villages: “Is it him? Is this the son of Tshonyane?”

The cars stopped outside a humble homestead.

Transkei Defence Force and Umkhonto weSizwe soldiers jumped out of their cars, making way for the returning son of the village.

Feminisms, Motherisms and Patriarchies and women's voices in the 1950s

by Nomboniso Gasa

Click here to download this essay in pdf.