Shireen Hassim examines the dynamic relationship between feminism and nationalism by tracing the trajectory of South African women's organizations with nationalism over the past 25 years. She also offers a sobering assessment of South African women's renowned gains. Hassim situates her analysis within an impressive array of feminist scholarship on Africa, Latin America, Europe and the United States. The book has pungent interview quips (a former woman deputy minister of defense observes that “male leaders will not oppose gender equality issues even if in private they form a male cabal” [p. 254]), in-depth archival research, and is enriched by the author's experience as a participant in several of the women's organizations and events she examines. Her clear-eyed assessment of the ideological and racial divisions among South African feminists and of the limits of women's achievements is thus all the more compelling.
At the heart of Hassim's study is the perennially pressing problem of autonomy versus integration. Methodically parsing types of women's movements and women's interests, the author argues that women's “struggles” in South Africa constituted a social movement. Answering the controversial question of whether women's organizations are feminist or nationalist, she argues that in South Africa they were both. Adapting Maxine Molyneux's typology of autonomy, Hassim analyzes the autonomy that South African women's organizations pursued and achieved. In doing so, she reveals the racial, class, and gender divisions among activists in women's organizations and the national liberation movement.
Hassim assesses the internal capacity of women's organizations and their ability to direct goals and strategies, and she evaluates external institutional, structural, and discursive opportunities. I found her inclusion of discursive opportunities quite useful, particularly in Chapter 5. Here, her analysis of the ideological shift in South African rhetoric from nationalism to equal citizenship during the transition convincingly highlights one important reason for South African women's striking success.
Moving thematically and chronologically from the early women's movements of the 1980s (Chapters 2 and 3) to women's dramatic successes during the transition (Chapters 4 and 5) and to the increasing challenges arising with democratic consolidation (Chapters 6 and 7), Hassim analyzes women's organizations that exemplify each type of autonomy. Summing up the trajectory of women's organizations to nationalism, she notes that the autonomy of women's organizations was gained and lost over time in a “discontinuous rather than incremental fashion”(p. 250). She thus rejects the claim, popular among some South African activists and scholars, that the women's movement of the 1990s was an organic outgrowth of women's organizations in the 1980s. At the same time, she acknowledges that those early women's organizations, not the African National Congress (ANC) Women's Section, were at the cutting edge of women's activism. Not surprisingly, Hassim finds that the more women's organizations moved away from the liberation movement and toward independent autonomy, the more successful they were in getting women's claims heard. I would hasten to add that independent autonomy unequivocally pursued can also be associated with political marginalization, a lesson exemplified in her account of the decline of the celebrated Women's National Coalition.
Hassim also offers a candid evaluation of South African women's inclusion in the state. Early in the book, she compares and contrasts inclusionary, rights-based feminism with transformatory, needs-based feminism. The book then traces how these ideological differences shaped the capacity of women's organizations at different political moments. In the concluding chapter, she explains why inclusionary feminism focused on the state has unintentionally undermined the purpose of putting women there. In South Africa, femocrats and women members of Parliament playing by the rules of the game increasingly promote policies focused on quotas and numbers, neglecting poor women's interests and women's pressing problems in the private sphere, issues that the ANC has largely avoided.
As a result, women's issues are “depoliticized” and statist, and have become fodder for technocrats. Disconnected from local women's needs and increasingly socialized in the institutions of power, women elites lose the potential clout of an actively mobilized constituency and are more dependent than ever on the ANC. As South African women's organizations fall into the trap of becoming a “development partner,” Hassim argues, a new women's movement in South Africa must be built, focusing on “interest articulation … and accountability” (p. 263). Hassim thus unflinchingly appraises the hard-won gains of organizations she has spent her life studying and supporting, insisting that future advances require the inclusion of poor women's voices that have once again been marginalized.
