Twenty years after its transition from apartheid to democracy, South Africa is seen in the international community as a regional bastion of democratic, economic and social rebirth. Yet despite its many successes, rates of violence against women in South Africa remain endemically high. This paper examines the diffusion of norms of nonviolence and gender equality from the international community into South African law and society and the subsequent feedback of those norms, to measure South Africa's compliance with international human rights standards. To inform the discussion, this paper introduces a model outlining the institutions and social processes operating at three levels: macro (i.e, international), meso (i.e, national) and micro (i.e, community/individual). The model highlights six ways in which norms are weakened or blocked: accessibility, apparent compliance, institutional weakness, divergent priorities, silencing and norm violation fatigue. Each of these factors is examined in turn to explain why women in South Africa continue to experience high rates of violence and why South Africa cannot be said to have made a 'complete' transition to a peaceful democratic state.

Despite its lauded political transition in 1994, South Africa continues to have among the highest levels of violence and inequality in the world. Organised survivors of apartheid violations have long maintained that we cannot adequately address violence in the country, let alone achieve full democracy, without addressing inequality. This book is built around extensive quotes from members of Khulumani Support Group, the apartheid survivors' social movement, and young people growing up in Khulumani families. It shows how these survivors, who bridge the past and the present through their activism, understand and respond to socioeconomic drivers of violence. Pointing to the continuities between apartheid oppression and post-apartheid marginalisation in everyday life, the narratives detail ways in which the democratic dispensation has strengthened barriers to social transformation and helped enable violence. They also present strategies for effecting change through collaboration, dialogue and mutual training and through partnerships with diverse stakeholders that build on local-level knowledge and community-based initiatives. The lens of violence offers new and manageable ways to think about reducing inequality, while the lens of inequality shows that violence is a complex web of causes, pathways and effects that requires a big-picture approach to unravel. The survivors' narratives suggest innovative strategies for promoting a just transition through people-driven transformation that go well beyond the constraints of South Africa's transitional justice practice to date. A result of participatory research conducted in collaboration with and by Khulumani members, this book will be of interest to activists, students, researchers and policy makers working on issues of transitional justice, inequality and violence.

This edited volume assesses the progress that sub-Saharan African countries have made towards gender equality and offers strategies that can be used to empower African women to contribute to the fulfilment of the United Nations’ (UN) 2030 sustainable development goals (SDGs). The contributing authors consider the goals identified during the 1995 United Nations World Conference on Women and the 2015 UN World Conference on Sustainable Development in New York—including no poverty, healthy life, quality education, gender equality, peace and justice, reduced inequalities, and decent work and economic growth—and document the advances made on these goals, with a special emphasis on African women’s experiences. They provide innovative ideas for accelerating achievement of the SDGs and address challenges and opportunities in tourism, business, politics, entrepreneurship, academia, financial inclusion, and the digital gender divide. This book will be of value to policymakers, non-profit organisations focused on gender equality and sustainable development, and academics and scholars who teach and study gender-related issues in the African continent.

In this ground-breaking study, Sabine Binder analyses the complex ways in which female crime fictional victims, detectives and perpetrators in South African crime fiction resonate with widespread and persistent real crimes against women in post-apartheid South Africa. Drawing on a wide range of crime novels written over the last decade, Binder emphasises the genre’s feminist potential and critically maps its political work at the intersection of gender and race. Her study challenges the perception of crime fiction as a trivial genre and shows how, in South Africa at least, it provides a vibrant platform for social, cultural and ethical debates, exposing violence, misogyny and racism and shedding light on the problematics of law and justice for women faced with crime.

Despite pervasive accounts of sexual violence against women throughout South Africa's apartheid history, the definition of 'gross violations of human rights' in the legislation establishing the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) had no distinct reference to acts of sexual violence or gender-based crimes. Lobbying by women's NGOs and civil society resulted in the TRC convening special women's hearings and the expansion of the definition of 'severe ill-treatment' to encompass a range of abuses, including sexual violence. However, the TRC's predominant focus on crimes of killing, abduction and torture resulted in the criticism that it exhibited 'a blindness to the types of abuse predominantly experienced by women,' excluding the possibility of accountability or reparations for these violations. This article explores the 'essential relationship' between civil society and the TRC at various stages of South Africa's transition in holding the government to account for restoring the 'human and civil dignity' of women who suffered gross violations of human rights, 'many of which were gender specific in their exploitative and humiliating nature.' Given that 'violence against women has been one of the most prominent features of post-Apartheid South Africa,' the article further considers the innovation by South African civil society in developing various responses to this enduring harm, which extends beyond a compensatory model of reparations towards a transformation of the conditions that perpetuate the violence.

- The Cautionary Rule

Despite its lauded political transition in 1994, South Africa continues to have among the highest levels of violence and inequality in the world. Organised survivors of apartheid violations have long maintained that we cannot adequately address violence in the country, let alone achieve full democracy, without addressing inequality. This book is built around extensive quotes from members of Khulumani Support Group, the apartheid survivors’ social movement, and young people growing up in Khulumani families. It shows how these survivors, who bridge the past and the present through their activism, understand and respond to socioeconomic drivers of violence. Pointing to the continuities between apartheid oppression and post-apartheid marginalisation in everyday life, the narratives detail ways in which the democratic dispensation has strengthened barriers to social transformation and helped enable violence. They also present strategies for effecting change through collaboration, dialogue and mutual training and through partnerships with diverse stakeholders that build on local-level knowledge and community-based initiatives. The lens of violence offers new and manageable ways to think about reducing inequality, while the lens of inequality shows that violence is a complex web of causes, pathways and effects that requires a big-picture approach to unravel. The survivors’ narratives suggest innovative strategies for promoting a just transition through people-driven transformation that go well beyond the constraints of South Africa’s transitional justice practice to date. A result of participatory research conducted in collaboration with and by Khulumani members, this book will be of interest to activists, students, researchers and policy makers working on issues of transitional justice, inequality and violence.