ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the new South African feminism. It presents the rural women's movement (RWM), a network of forty-five rural women's groups in the Transvaal region of South Africa, as a case study of contending feminisms and an example of the conceptual shift advanced by the new South African feminists. The chapter analyzes the founding, objectives, and performance of the women's national coalition (WNC). The RWM had its agenda included in the draft women's charter for effective equality that the WNC produced in February 1994. As a legacy of apartheid, most African women in South Africa today remain marginalized in geographic areas, some of which are still commonly referred to as Bantustans, or homelands, which are isolated from economic, social, and other resources. The history of the rural women's movement is rooted in the resistance of black communities to policies of forced removals and loss of their South African citizenship through incorporation into the Bantustans.
