ABSTRACT
Between 1990 and 1994 South Africa underwent a significant political transition from apartheid to democracy. In the course of this transition, the women's movement also underwent a significant shift, moving from the margins of formal politics to the centre and impacting on the debate about and the formation of the new institutions of democracy. In this chapter I address one aspect of this shift, focusing on the change in the arena of political discourse. I argue that the transition facilitated a shift away from nationalism as the overarching framework within and against which women's political identities were conceived and strategies articulated, to a discourse of citizenship that has implicitly shaped subsequent women's movement strategies. The nature of that transition - that is, the creation of a liberal democratic state in which citizenship rights were accorded irrespective of race, gender or ethnicity - unexpectedly allowed feminists to articulate an agenda of equality that unseated nationalist formulations of women's political roles. Demands for equality, representation and inclusion in decision-making of women that had previously been expressed primarily within the ANC were expanded to the political system as a whole on the grounds of democracy.
