ANC positions on gender, 1994–2004

In this article I focus on two central tensions around gender. In the first place there exists a tension between the broad, sometimes vague commitments to women's liberation that are rooted in the ANC's history as a national liberation movement and the specific policy directions that it adopts as a party in government. In the former strand there is an emphasis on radical structural change and an overturn of the systemic legacies of apartheid. In the latter, the party's focus on the creation of a black middle class and its failure thus far to deal with the economic marginalization of women make addressing structural inequalities difficult. In order to unpack the first tension, I trace the conflicting meanings of national liberation within the party. Attempts to accommodate this tension are reflected in the way gender as an issue becomes a concern to be addressed through developmentalism, in such a way that the radical or substantive content, which was a feature of the liberation struggle, is lost. In the process, gender concerns have been delinked from feminist concerns. The transfer of gender to development leads us into the second tension in ANC thinking around gender. The ANC's projection of itself as a modernizing force is reflected in gender concerns which locate gender in development, with consequences for what is possible in terms of substantive gender change. This position, though, is often contradicted by the presence within the party of socially conservative and traditional discourses of gender, for whom gender equality is often little more than a rhetorical commitment. In the article I examine why this is so. Cutting across both of these tensions and finding space as a result of them are the party's achievements with respect to gender equality. Both historically and in comparison with other developing countries, the ANC has done more to champion issues of gender equality than any other former national liberation movement. I argue that this track record could have been better. In the final section of this article I examine the history of gender activism in the party over the last 11 years, in order to examine the constraints to further gains.