JENdA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies
ISSN: 1530-5686
JENdA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies ISSN: 1530-5686 |
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They Need to Know Where They Came From to Appreciate Where They Are Going to – Visual Commentary of Informal Settlement Women on Motherhood |
Doria Daniels
A central task of a democratic society is to produce responsible citizens and to encourage active citizenship. Sixteen women who live in an informal settlement in Gauteng province, South Africa participated in a two-year study on women’s community building and leadership roles. As part of the empirical work, the subjects recorded visual data on their community. Drawing on the women’s analysis of the photographs and also on interview and observational data on their roles, this article discusses the traditional positioning of women as mothers for this South African community. By using photography as a primary research tool access was gained into the world of these community women in a much more personal way, without physically invading the women’s private spaces. They photographed people, daily events and community occasions. In a consecutive workshop on community building the photos, as well as their own drawings became pedagogical tools that provided deeper insight into the women’s ways of dealing with their multiple roles. Though motherhood was not the focus of the study, this theme was interwoven in all aspects of that which the women reported on. This article discusses how the discourses on motherhood come together with the participants’ political involvement, community building and leadership initiatives.
Motherhood cannot be analysed in isolation from its historical context. This is because motherhood is contextualised by the interconnection of race, ethnicity, class and gender. Racial domination, economic exploitation and ethnic structuring have enjoyed limited focus within feminist theorizing on motherhood (1994, Collins; Daniels, in press). These dimensions, together with patriarchy, require analysis in the reporting on the mothering contexts of women who do not function within the archetypical western nuclear family, which is the case for a great portion of African women. Though ethnographic research processes have become less authoritative and more dialogic means of writing up research has replaced monologue writing styles (Clifford, 1988; Rosaldo, 1993), issues of power and the politics of representation, as Lassiter (2001) points out, are still not adequately resolved. Despite progress in feminist research on the representation of the “other” Nnoromele (2002) asks whether present day western scholars are any clearer on the African women’s condition than they were a few decades ago. In her critique of existing scholarship on The Joys of Motherhood (Nnoromele, 2002:178) she states that rather than serving as an avenue through which to assess the condition of African women and to interrogate the validity of its claims, it has become, for most part, a framework for reiterating old stereotypes about Africa and its women and for oversimplifying an otherwise complex relationship.
African women, especially black women, are often portrayed by scholars as victims with little or no control over their lives; as objects to be bartered for by men; to be invested in similar to property (Katrak, 1987; Yongue, 1996). Collins (1994), quoting Eisenstein, ascribes this to most feminist theorizing positioning men as the main driving force within the family. Consequentially, an understanding of motherhood becomes situated in a paternalistic context which separates the private from the public, and allocates the public as a male domain. This private/public dichotomy separates the private/household from the labour market, and sets those who function on the margins of the public domain such as women to be considered dependent, less autonomous and in need of help. Thus certain sectors of women who function in alternative economies such as the informal sector or those whose societies have alternative family structures to archetypical northern family structures stand the chance of being misrepresented by researchers. Although lack of opportunities and lack of recognition for the work that most poor women do, do minimize their contributions, these women are not necessarily more dependent than women from affluent society. In female headed households and communities with high male absenteeism women make invaluable contributions to community building and development. Within these contexts these women’s mothering experiences challenge the social constructions that separate the work sphere from the family sphere. Their labour, both reproductive and productive, most often is for the benefit of the family and the community they live in, instead of just for autonomy and personal gain.
There are many reasons for the misrepresentation of women. Universalising tendencies ignore the extensiveness of women’s experiences. In cross-cultural research factors such as linguistic, ethnic, racial and cultural differences have been found to contribute to the misrepresentation of research populations. I used photography as a method to get one informal settlement community’s women to share the responsibility for collecting data on their roles as community builders. This was possible because photography is not dependent on one shared language or on the presence of the researcher[1]. Photographic data can be used as bridges of communication between strangers and has the potential to become pathways into unfamiliar, unforeseen environments (Collier & Collier, 1986). The data was collected over a period of two years as part of a study on how women appropriate their leadership and community building roles with their community’s needs. The research population were the women of the peri-urban informal community of Majazani[2]. The sample population of sixteen women were homemakers, volunteers/unemployed, informal sector traders and community workers. In this ethnographic study knowledge about the community women’s roles and experiences were accessed through one-on-one interviews, observation, photography and drawing (Daniels 2002).
In educational research the use of photography demonstrates its traditional association with ethnography and social anthropology. Ethnographers use the camera to photograph people, places and events; thus establishing cultural inventories of communities. Collier and Collier (1986), who collected photographic data from their first day in the field, define photographic data as “can openers” of society. However, the limitation of these researchers' usage of the camera is that the researcher as photographer decided which can to open; thus influencing what became visible or was worthy of being recorded. Photographs are also sometimes part of documentation or are considered to be artefacts in qualitative research (Prosser, 1992; Bogdan & Bilken, 1982). In this format, argues Prosser (1992), our perceptions and analysis of the “found” photographs are influenced by our own experience and knowledge. Historical photos also have limitations as forms of evidence because they are records of an occurrence that becomes context less without the documentation evidence. In this study photography was not used as a secondary source to observational data, as is normally the case. Instead it was a primary source of data collection, with the women as the recorders/photographers of their own worlds.
Each woman received a disposable camera to record visual data of her home environment, family and life in the settlement. I explained that their photographs could enhance my understanding of their roles in both private and public spheres. Through their photographs I could gain a better understanding of their visibility, strengths and potential within the community. With this data collecting method the decision-making power shifted from me to the women. The subjects had decision making power of who and what in their daily lives they wanted to record as personal visual commentaries on their private worlds. As taking the camera into their homes could be considered an invasion of their privacy, I emphasized that this was a voluntary process. It was arranged that they return the cameras only once all twenty-seven frames were taken. The women on average kept the cameras for one month. Our agreement was that two sets of prints were to be developed, of which one set was kept for data purposes. Each woman received her own set of prints the week after she returned her camera.
As an African researcher I harboured similar concerns about the representation of African women to that which Nnoromele (2002) voices in her article. As a South African my experiences were shaped by racial laws and legalized segregation that have left a legacy of stereotypes of the "other" racial groups. An important process that I spent time on, was to define sameness and difference and to contextualize myself as well as the research subjects.
The subjects and I shared commonalities such as race and gender. We are black and residents of South Africa. As such, we have a shared gender and race reality characterized by inequality, exploitation and oppression as black women. However, historically and socially we are different. Though we are of the same race and gender, we have differing degrees of power accrued to us because of our ethnicity, class and our perceived blackness[3]. Adult education feminists and critical theorists (hooks, 1984; Zambrana, 1988; Horsman, 1990; Freire, 1992; Giroux, 1992; Mayo, 1999) have advocated for both the recognition of these differences as well as for the recognition of the significance of these differences. It thus became important that I problematise to what extent what I did observe and record, was shaped by my perceptions of how lives are lived by women in this informal settlement. And, to what extent what I observed and reflected on was from my perspective instead of the women’s. I had to acknowledge my personal biases as well as anticipate the subjects’ biases to stop them from negatively effecting the investigation and even threatening the validity of some of the data (Merriam, 1998). Complacency about sameness could pose a similar threat. One cannot assume that when black women conduct research with other black women, that the dialectic research environment is a given, and that ‘there exists an immediate perceptive bond of sisterhood that provides an ideal research setting” (Johnson-Bailey, 1999: 659).
The use of visual data raised many ethical concerns, and made the politics of representation a contentious terrain. So also is the shielding of participants. For Babbie and Mouton (2001) anonymity and confidentiality are useful techniques for protecting subjects. They claim that by protecting the identity of subjects the researcher is acting in the interest of the subjects of the study. I question whether this decision is always an ethical one. It could be interpreted as presumptuous to assume that all subjects want anonymity or that all subjects are in need of protection. This is a decision that subjects should make based on prevailing circumstances[4]. The allocation of pseudonyms would have been another form of thievery (Daniels, 2003). Furthermore, protecting the identities of the subjects would have been difficult as the photographs that the subjects took were used as pedagogical materials during the workshops they participated in. Practically, it would have been impossible to hide a person’s identity given that she was the subject, and analyst of the data.
Nine women participated in the community building workshop. The workshop followed a similar method to that of the humanities-based model for marginalized women which has as outcome the individual’s personal liberation from oppression (Baird, 1997). However, instead of using the written work of established female authors of similar race, class and experience, as the humanities-based model does, the women’s own photographs were used in the workshop “to give creative expression to their thoughts and take action on their liberation through critical reflection” (Baird, 1997:8).
The methods that I used in the workshop defined the women participants as the knowledge makers. In this critical pedagogy the women were active protagonists of their transformation (Daniels, 1998; 1996). They used their photographs as educational materials to facilitate the analysis of Majazani women’s roles in community building. Through self-exploration and critical thinking, and analysis of their ascribed and adopted roles in society, the women evaluated their roles and contributions to community building. This resonates with Cervero and Wilson’s (2001) third strand of adult education in which they describe the political as being structural, and adult education as a means of redistributing power. The workshop participants worked in two groups. The research assistant[5] and I acted as both facilitator and scribe to the groups. Each participant was given an opportunity to describe her photos and explain her community roles through the visuals she had selected. They could make their selection from the other participants’ photos too, or they could use one of the blank sheets to draw an image that represented their thoughts. In their descriptions and analysis of their roles, I found that their roles as mothers were inseparable from their other community roles. Motherhood also served as motivator for many of the community actions that women are driven to. The following section is devoted to the women’s analysis of their photos as they relate to motherhood.
The community of Majazani has a 75% unemployment rate. Based on the observational data of my weekly visits, the women appeared to be the economically active ones. This was corroborated by the interview data. The women subjects were the financial backbone of the family due to the scarcity of jobs for their husbands and partners. In most cases, they were solely responsible for their families' survival. They were supporting their families through income generated from domestic piecework jobs in neighbouring formal townships, or as spaza[6] traders who were selling fruit, chicken pieces and various other wares all over the settlement. There were very few male traders, and they often were younger men who were assisting women traders. Four of the subjects in the study were spaza traders.
Figure
1
Every morning Katrina, Bessie, Rebecca and Winnie load their wares on their steel supermarket trolleys or wheelbarrows and wheel them to the open space opposite the school where they set up their spaza shops for the day. All four women are mothers, with only Rebecca having grown-up children. Two of them, Bessie and Katrina, still have young children. In their report on their contribution to community life, it was clear that both women chose trading because of its flexibility. They could bring their children to work with them, something that is not possible in a domestic worker job. Bessie (in Figure 1 photos below) is the mother of two young school going children.
Figure
1
She started trading when her husband became unemployed, which was a year back. Bessie does not see a future for her family in Majazani. They moved there due to unemployment and their inability to pay rent for the house they were living in before. In the informal settlement they can live for free. Unfortunately, this allows all kinds of people to also come and settle in the community. Bessie described Majazani as an unsafe environment to raise children in, and explained that unsavoury characters roam their section and enter their plots without permission. This has resulted in her over protectiveness towards her children. She aspired to relocate to the city to escape the dangers of her present community. However, these plans need money and her husband is unemployed. Though she could find a job as a domestic worker in the city, she has chosen to be an informal trader instead. Her motivation for this decision is so that she can be readily available to her children. She can take them to school in the mornings and be there for them when the school day ends. “ Even if I can find other work, where will my children go to?” She openly stated that she wants her children by her side.
The 31-year old Katrina moved to Majazani as a single woman, more than a decade ago. She built her own shack and later moved to her future husband’s shack when they married.
It was not difficult. You see, when you are alone its easy. You can look for a shack without any problem. But when you have a husband you have difficulty because you will bear children.
Figure
2: Katrina with Angela, the research assistant, on the left.
In the two years that I visited the area, Katrina always had her two youngest children, one a baby, the other a four-year old, with her at the spaza shop (see figure 2 below). She started trading when her husband lost his job. Katrina learnt her trading skills from her mother, a woman who was left behind, with her children in a rural area while her husband worked in the city.
Her father was a migrant worker who did not always send money back home to support his family. To feed her children, Katrina’s mother started selling vegetables. “We were selling cabbage, potatoes and tomatoes”. As was the case with her mother, the lack of a steady income and the need to feed her family motivated Katrina to become a trader.
When I started this business I started it when the situation was bad. I thought let me try also and earn some few cents so that the children could eat because there’s no job (for my husband).
Besides there being no-one to look after her children, Katrina’s decision to have her children with her while trading was motivated by her concern for the safety of her children. She stated,
Here in Majazani incidents are hurting, and horrendous things occur here. People outrage very young children, like the three and four year-olds. I do not like this place. I am just here because of circumstances. Truly, money is not available. I was discussing with my husband that if we had money we would move to Ennerdale [a formal township close by] away from this place and live there because this place is not safe for children.
Katrina, like Bessie, considers her presence during the day in the lives of her children as very important to their development and safety.
Even when there is no food you can ask for maize meal from next door, and make them happy. A man does not do that. Like now daddy is not here, I am here to feed the children. Without a mother, children learn mischief easily, they indulge in so many wrong things because if you are not there. Being there is a great duty because as a mother you sacrifice as long as they can survive- no problem.
In the absence of their extended families, these women considered themselves solely responsible for their children’s safety. Both Katrina and Bessie fused their motherhood roles with their work worlds. Work and family do not function as dichotomous spheres for them, rather they are interwoven. Katrina, for example, would nurse her baby, and feed her other toddler sweets to keep him occupied, while calmly listening to our questions. In-between she would serve her customers. Both women were the breadwinners of the family, with their husbands being unemployed or doing gardening jobs. Though their spouses occasionally helped them with their work, both said that they were in charge of the spaza, not their husbands. It appeared as if their husbands were not threatened by being “kept” by their wives. This could be because employment was uncertain for both sexes, and it was common in this community for the women to hold down the more stable job of the two. This is also a society in which cooperation is vital for the preservation of life. This might have contributed to overt spousal competition or egotism not being evident to the outsider.
The dichotomous image of the mother as activist or “sweet mother”[7] impacted negatively on women who were in leadership roles in the community. The negative public profile of the community activist in this specific community served to suppress some women participants’ success in their private roles of mothers and family heads. Monica’s public profile is that of a community activist and politician. As a member of the African National Party, which is the majority political party in South Africa, and the secretary of SANCO, the biggest civics organisation in South Africa, she was being described as a highly controversial political figure in the community. At the time of the workshop the relationship between community women was typified by a lot of horizontal hostility, which is infighting or factionalism amongst women. The community was experiencing unrest and a few women, Monica included, were central figures of the community fights. She was not a very popular woman amongst the community women I interviewed, who described her as a hardened politician, and as ruthless. They shared with me this perception of her, despite them acknowledging that they did not know Monica personally and that they have not had access to her private world prior to the workshop. Their perceptions of her as a person was based entirely on her very visible public persona. I sensed that some women’s disapproval of Monica stemmed from their inability to envisage of mothers as anything but “sweet” and sacrificing and in service of their children. Women such as Monica exhibited politicised identities that were not confined to mothering and women’s issues only. The fighting and violence that the community’s women activists were part of, challenged the participants’ perceptions of what motherhood stood for.
Monica’s photos had two very definite subjects: children and funeral goers. Through her photographs Monica was creating the space to talk about her family, especially her children and how her two sisters’ deaths changed her family’s composition. Monica was a single unemployed mother of nine children when I first interviewed her. Five were biologically her children while the other four were her sister’s children. She "inherited” the four children when her first sister died. About eight months later I learnt that her second sister had also died and that she had two more children to take care of. This was at a time when, as sole family breadwinner, she was unable to secure cleaning or ironing work in the townships.
Figure
3
In Monica’s selected photograph in Figure 3 she is bathing a young boy whom I had assumed was one of her eleven children. However, this five-year old boy was not her child, but a disabled child she had found wandering in the alleys of the informal settlement. When she could not locate his parents she took him home with her. She fed and sheltered him for three months before his relatives came to claim him back. Monica, as a community mother, took pity on the helpless child and willingly shared her family’s minimal resources. What was clear was that mothering for Monica was not confined to children that were biologically hers only. As a community activist she was very concerned by the growing number of abandoned children in their community. Monica’s commentary gave those present a chance to see her in her private roles of mother, household head and caregiver of children, and how her role as activist is an expansion of these roles. Her analysis of the photographs changed many participants’ perceptions of her. Though none of her photographs elicited discussion on her public role as political activist, it is my sense this activity served to enhance her legitimacy as activist in the eyes of the women.
The roles of grandmother and mother are interlinked and interchangeable. Ma Adelaide, a 64- year old grandmother, is raising her seven and ten year old granddaughters, who are the offspring from each of Adelaide’s two daughters (see figure 4). One could classify Ma Adelaide as a single parent as her husband is paralysed and not active in raising the girls with her. She described herself as a strict disciplinarian and said: “They do listen and do adhere to rules that I lay down as a parent”. Though both her daughters are married, she made the decision to raise her granddaughters and take responsibility for them after both developed “health problems” while living with their biological parents. Other than the occasional financial contribution of one of her daughters, Ma Adelaide supports her family on her husband’s small grant and her monthly stipend of R225 that the school feeding scheme gives her for preparing sandwiches and cleaning offices at the community school.
Figure
4
The fragility of life due to poverty, migration, political unrest and the effects of debilitating diseases such as AIDS on a community such as Majazani has led to differing models of motherhood emerging, as Monica and Ma Adelaide are testimony of. Both are women who have limited resources and valid reasons to not take on the added responsibility of motherhood at their age and in economically trying times. However, they function in an African society in which communalism requires that their definition of motherhood stays fluid. The decisions they make are normative ones that are more in line with that of an extended community in crisis. In such a context an unrelated, helpless community child who is lost can be taken in and made part of a family until his real family comes for him. A grandchild can be reared by her grandmother until her parent is deemed responsible enough by the grandmother to resume and take over the mothering role.
Figure
5
Maria is a community activist and the mother of three children. Of the sixteen subjects this 27-year old woman was the only one with a high school education. She dropped out of high school at the age of sixteen, to get married. Maria said that through her photographs she was recording the history of Majazani for the children of her community. Her photos supported this commentary. They were of community children doing washing, and of children engaging in everyday activities that children in this informal settlement do, such as playing together outside the shacks or in the dusty streets. She wanted the children of Majazani to not forget their humble beginnings and the challenges they faced as children while growing up in an informal settlement (see photos in figure 5).
Figure
5
This photo will show where we come from – our children and grandchildren will see our history – seeing us doing washing in buckets. They should know where they came from to appreciate where they are moving to.
Maria and other community women’s dream of owning and occupying brick homes was about to come true when in 1996 the community concluded a Land Availability Agreement as well as a funding agreement with the provincial Government to develop the community into a formal settlement. However, in 2000 there was a breakdown in communication between the community and the provincial Government. Development in the area grounded to a halt and gave rise to continuing incidents of intimidation, fights and even murder. This continuing community infighting and instability has contributed to the community children’s insecurity. In the other two photos that she discussed she had captured the underlying currents invisible in everyday activities in the community, and their impact on the children.
Figure
6
The first photo, Maria explained, was of a pigeon coop (see figure 6). She took the photo as a favour for her ten year old neighbour. The structure was to be demolished soon, because the family was moving. According to her the child was despairing about whether the pigeons were going to find a safe haven after they dismantle this coop. She said:
My neighbour’s son loves pigeons. He asked me to take a photo so that he can remember he once had pigeons. Even they are lost when we move from here.
With her last sentence Maria was also referring to the housing unrest that had split the once stable community in two. Her comments about the boy’s words were also a reflection of the displacement that many of the community women said they felt when they first moved into the community. The prevailing unrest was fuelling their uncertainties about their future. They could all relate to the child’s insecurity about his future and his fears of what lies ahead for his family who will be uprooted once again.
Figure
6
The photo of the two babies in figure 6 she took as a reminder to her son of his humble beginnings. The other baby in the photo is the neighbour's. When Maria talked about the photo, she again referred to the rift between the community's women and commented: "My child and my neighbour's child join hands and live together. Why can’t we live together like these children?” Prior to the workshop the women avoided talking about the impact of the violence on the stability of the community. However, by using their photographs which were not about the violence, they could safely express their fears. The photos became apolitical initiators of very political issues that the community women needed to be able to discuss.
The social realities for mothers in Majazani differ greatly from that for women living in urban formalized environments. These Majazani women can not fix their own choices upon those of women who are educated, affluent or urban. Nor can they depend on an infrastructure that formalized communities take as a given. In the community unemployment and the inability to meet the needs of their children have had devastating effects on the relationship between some of them and their children. For many children who are raised in homes where often times there is no food to eat, the survival of the fittest policy has become more attractive. This has led to the disturbing phenomenon of teenage children deserting their families and setting up homes of their own in the informal settlement. For a minimal amount of money the building materials for a shack can be purchased, allowing very young adults to set up home on their own or with a partner. Though some of these teenagers are still attending school, they are living independent of their families, with their teenage partners. Their meagre circumstances are often times better than the homes they left behind, so few choose to return home. Jeanette’s teenage daughter chose this option.
Children are disappointing. I can say so because the eldest does work, but she prefers to have her own site and live alone. I am just struggling with these other children.
To feed their lifestyle many teenagers have resorted to crime as employment. Some have formed gangs which terrorize the community through robberies and burglaries. Though informal community courts were functional, they were not very effective in curbing teenage criminal activities. Majazani, as an informal settlement, lacks the support services that could have countered this destructive tendency. There is no community center where children could participate in extra-mural activities, or a library that could serve as resource center for school going children. The lack of recreational facilities in the community together with idleness have led to many teenage children resorting to anti-social behavior. Some of the women I interviewed said that some mothers are encouraging criminality by keeping quiet about what their children are doing. This appears to be the case when children, through their criminal activities, put food on the family table. There are, however, mothers who do try to offer their children alternatives to crime.
Jeanette is the sole breadwinner and provider for her family of twelve. The family lives on her disabled husband’s small pension from his ex-employer. She supplements her family income with the R120 ($12) per month that she receives as a volunteer in the school-feeding program. Only six of her ten children live in the community. Her financial constraints forced her to leave the other four children behind with family in her hometown when she moved to the settlement in 1994. In 2001 she still had not secured permanent employment to send for her other four children. Jeanette clarified why many people from Majazani adopt religion in times of economic hardship - she is one of them. According to her, unemployed people realise that they can improve their chances of gaining employment when they become involved in the religious activities. Thus, being a practising Christian or Muslim in this community was an economically motivated decision taken to benefit the family’s financial well-being, and help feed their children. She selected the photograph in figure 7 to talk about community building.
Figure 7
Jeanette’s photograph depicted two boys whom she identified as two of her sons. On the photo her two teenage sons were arriving home from madrassa, Islam's equivalent of the Christian institution of the Sunday school. Besides the financial benefits to joining religious institutions in the community, there were other benefits too, such as organised activities for the youth. She wants to protect her two teenage sons from what she describes as negative community influences by encouraging them to get involved in madrassa activities. Jeanette was hopeful that it will deter them from engaging in criminal activities. She felt that part of a mother’s social responsibility was to invest in the lives of the youth, and to stop them from engaging in criminal activities. Jeanette is a mother who is resisting the prevailing trends for teenagers to become delinquents. She weighed the options available to her in her community and made choices based on what could benefit her family most. She related how she joined the Women’s League, which is the female wing of the ruling political party, when she heard that membership could improve her chances of being selected for income generating skills training and the possible placement in a job. The motivation for community women like Jeanette to become politically involved stem from their efforts to enhance their family’s chances for survival, rather than from them having a politicised identity like Monica or Maria. Her positioning resonates with many Majazani mothers who I came to know over the course of the two years.
Women in Majazani are raising children under very difficult circumstances. Even so, they do not describe motherhood as being a punitive experience. The women's reflections of their photographs gave me insight into how women from the Majazani community experience motherhood. It was very easy to miss their bravery, and commitment to their families and community in a world of abject poverty that confronted me on my weekly visits to the community. The women's reflections on their photographs gave me a better perspective of what the challenges are that women living in their community face, and how these challenges impact on the effectiveness of women as mothers.
The photographs were the connectors to what these women deal with on a daily basis, and motherhood was at the core of these experiences. For the spaza traders the merging of their private worlds as reproducers with that of them as public producers was a calculated decision. It was embedded in their efforts to financially provide for their families, but not at the cost of placing their younger children at risk. They had managed to navigate the merging of these roles very effectively. The dichotomous image of the mother as either activist or sweet mother was challenged by the photo analysis. The photographs allowed one community activist with a much more equitable opportunity to present herself in her blood mother and community mother roles which were absent in the minds of the other community women when they judged her. Their skewed perceptions of her became more balanced after her absent motherhood roles and qualities as committed mother and sister became visible. As a pedagogical tool the photos initiated many discussions on life in the settlement, specifically women’s role in keeping the community functional. The preservation of a community’s history is important, even if it is one that is tainted by crime and decadence. One of the mothers’ aim was to instil in the community children a sense of identity and pride in where they come from. She wanted them to not forget the sacrifices it took to make a better life for the community of Majazani. Finally, this medium together with the social space of the workshop encouraged the women to explore the challenges they face as women and to experience themselves as active citizens who are working towards making a better life for themselves.
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[1] I am grateful to Prof. Sharan Merriam of the University of Georgia for her support of my plan to incorporate photography into the research.
[2] This is not the official name for the community.
[3] Black South Africans in the Apartheid years were classified as African, coloured or Indian, a classification that was determined by their ethnic background.
[4] The women in this inquiry were adamant that their own names be linked to their thoughts and ideas. Their decision was the result of some community members “stealing their ideas” and presenting it as their own. For me the removal of the subject’s identity from her contribution would have been an unethical decision given the subjects' stated views on “idea hijacking” (M. George, interview data).
[5] I worked with two student research assistants, Angela Mamiane and Marie Makaka, on this project.
[6] A spaza shop is an informal trader’s structure from which she operates. The structure can vary from being a table on which wares are exhibited, or stalls that are erected daily, to permanent brick buildings from where is traded.
[7] Molara Ogundipe used this term to refer to the idealised image of an African mother, during her keynote speech at the Images of Motherhood conference in Dakar, Senegal, on 16 February 2003.
Copyright © 2004 Africa Resource Center, Inc.
Citation Format
JENdA: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies: Issue 5, 2004.