Browsing by Author "Ndlovu, Thatshisiwe"

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    Punctuated lives: the (un)making of Thwalwa’ed Subjects in Engcobo, South Africa
    (2022-08) Ndlovu, Thatshisiwe
    This study is about a particular group of women who were married through a specific cultural practice commonly known as ukuthwala (bride abduction) in South Africa, and it details the lives and experiences of these women. The study examines the technologies and mechanisms that sustain this cultural practice, and raises questions on who sanctions this cultural practice, how it is sustained and why. While arguing that ukuthwala is a violent cultural practice, it also uncovers women’s responses to this practice in their everyday lives. The thesis departs from the mainstream arguments on ukuthwala that focus on describing and detailing its scandalous nature by bringing into sharp focus discussions of the women’s own experiences and representations of this practice as one of the entry points in revealing the complex multiplicity of dynamics at play that are often missed in mainstream studies. While acknowledging that women have been silenced through and by this practice, the thesis brings women’s voices to the centre of its discussions and to knowledge production about the practice. It does so by prioritising the experiences of ukuthwalwa (those being abducted). Drawing on ethnographic research, including the life histories of thwalwa’ed women based on their own narration of their experiences, I ask how ukuthwala is perceived and experienced by these women and what the impact of dominant ideas is on women’s experiences of ukuthwalwa. I explore two related phenomena. Firstly, the complexities that pervade thwalwa’ed women’s lived lives, how these women live through ukuthwalwa, including ways that they find to resist, negotiate or adapt to their subjectivation. Secondly, the entities and technologies that ensure the continued existence of this practice, in particular, the ways in which culture works to enforce patriarchy through sanctioned forms of violence. The findings indicate that a thwala’ed subject is created through complex operations of violent power relations and within a framework of pain and suffering. I argue that understanding this complexity requires attention to how culture works in the interests of patriarchy as an ideological tool to impose a script on the lives of women such that they must come to terms with a new self – a thwalwa’ed self that struggles with itself. In that vein, I employ the notion of embodiment as the condition of “being in the world” (Csordas,1994) to uncover how the violence of ukuthwala, and the consequent pain and suffering are lived and embodied. Additionally, through the examination of the everyday tactics that these women utilise to navigate their lives, I argue that thwalwa’ed women are neither victims nor are they victors. I try to understand the women’s relationship to their constrained agency through the conceptual lens of ‘shifting vulnerabilities’ where women find ways of using their vulnerabilities to exercise their power in small acts in their everyday lives that sometimes exhibit resistance. Mostly, though, these acts exist within the accepted norms and expectations of the system that is designed to keep them in positions of subordination. In this way, I offer a reading of ukuthwalwa as one of a process of subjectivation (after Foucault) in which those on whom violence is enacted, act in their own interests, without accepting that which is imposed on them, even if only in small and hidden ways, reclaiming their own power to shape their subjectivities, albeit often without contesting or changing the system that oppresses them in its entirety.
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    Silent victims or agents of change? An exploration of the lived experiences of African widows confronted with the practice of customary law of succession and inheritance in South Africa
    (2016-02-18) Ndlovu, Thatshisiwe
    This study seeks to explore the lived experiences of black South African widows living in a poor socio-economic locality using a qualitative research design, which allows for deeper engagement of widows’ experiences of their own world. Having benefited immensely from reviewing literature on numerous legislative measures that have been enacted to protect the rights of women in South Africa, this study takes an entry point of analysing experiences of widowhood from the widow’s perspective. Underpinned by the central question of examining how and in what ways customary practices of inheritance have affected the lived experiences of widows, the study challenges the view that African widows are silent and helpless victims of patriarchal beliefs and practices. It presents findings drawn from life history narratives of ten black women living in low-socio economic areas of Midrand and Tembisa located in the present day Gauteng province of South Africa, which indicated that widows in this locality were victims of structural, political and socio-economic factors. It also observed that widows were also victims of invisible and often unrecognised power of patriarchal attitudes that have lingered on. The study then deployed a feminist narrative approach to analyse the findings, which shows that some of the black women’s experiences are informed by their socio-cultural realities and their lives are shaped by the unique intersection between race, gender and social class. Drawing from the main findings, I argue that culture, patriarchy, tradition, gender, and class are not distinct realms of experience, existing in isolation; rather they come into existence in and through relations with each other. Furthermore, the study argues that the connection between widowhood and law is marked by contradictions and uncertainties, which are deeply embedded in unequal power relations, socio-cultural and legislative measures of the broader post-apartheid South African context. By extension, this has seen such dynamics as class, level of education and types of marriages strongly playing themselves out in the lived experiences of widowhood. The study uses this as a launch pad to argue that in various ways, African widows exercise their agency, their silence being one of their chosen forms of resistance to challenge and question patriarchal domination. This study then suggests that widows and the experience of widowhood ought not to be seen from a homogenizing approach, as it tends to mask the limitations of legislative measures as an effective mechanism in countering the negative effects of customary and traditional practices.