ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to theorize what citizenship means in the context of postapartheid South Africa and, specifically, what it means to those most often marginalized, namely black1 women. Citizenship in South Africa has always been a politically charged and contested notion. Today it serves as a unifying symbol within the broader political project of nation building. However, the meanings of citizenship at a variety of spatial scales (international, national and local) are by no means clear or uncontested. For most South Africans, the term is inextricably bound up with the struggle for liberation and democracy. It is clear, however, that the transition to democracy does not mark the endpoint of political struggle, of contestations over the meanings of citizenship, or the eradication of social and economic inequalities, including those of gender (Hassim, 1999). As with other post-independent states, the struggle for women lies in the (impossibilities of translating de jure equality into de facto equality, and of translating state level commitment to gender equality (at least discursively) into tangible outcomes at the local and individual levels.
