Thembisa Waetjen

In this compact study, Thembisa Waetjen explores how gender structured the mobilization of Zulu nationalism in South Africa, where ethnic communitarian and liberal democratic conceptions of nation competed for dominance as anti-apartheid efforts gained force during the 1980s. As its title suggests, Workers and Warriors argues that political struggles fought out in lethal battles between men - struggles over the nature of political authority and citizenship, territorial sovereignty and cultural tradition, industrial relationships and street-level control - were necessarily bound up with struggles over the changing meaning of male gender identities, power, and practices in conditions of rapid social change.

Masculinity and the Struggle for Nation in South Africa

Workers and Warriors

Goolam H. Vahed

"For decades, South Africans aspiring to make the perfect biryani have turned to Indian Delights, the best selling cookbook produced by Zuleikha Mayat and the Women's Cultural Group. This is the story of the women behind the recipes; it is an account that brings to life the changing, gendered worlds of Muslim women in 20th century Durban. Through a blend of scholarly rigour and compelling biography, this book reveals how a group of women, who were formally excluded from both political and customary power, nevertheless forged a vibrant citizenship and public life for themselves. In the midst of unfolding global and local transformation, apartheid, feminism, doctrinal shifts in Islam - the members of the Women's Cultural Group were themselves agents of change, not only within the local communities that benefited from their proficient and varied labours, but in the making of South African modernity. Academic historians Goolam Vahed and Thembisa Waetjen have constructed a multilayered narrative that capturesthe spirit and housewifey appeal of their subjects. A fascinating read for anyone interested in local history, gender identity, and Islam in the Indian-Ocean region"--http://www.exclus1ves.co.za.

The Women's Cultural Group of Durban, 1954-2010

Gender, Modernity & Indian Delights

Goolam Vahed

The history of Muslim education in the east coast region of South Africa is the story of ongoing struggles by an immigrant religious minority under successive exclusionary forms of state. This book traces the labors and fortunes of a set of progressive idealists who established - via mobilizing merchant capital, transoceanic networks, and informal political influence - the Orient Islamic Educational Institute in 1943 to found schools and promote a secular curriculum that could be integrated with Islamic teaching. Through the story of the Durban flagship project - the Orient Islamic School - the book provides a fascinating account of the changing politics of religious identity, education, and citizenship in South Africa. Across a century of changing political expectations, as the region transformed from a colony to a nation-state to a multi-racial democracy, concerns for social mobility, civic inclusion, and the survival of Islamic identity on the periphery of the Indian Ocean world were invested in the education of the young. From the late 19th century, Gujarati Muslim merchants who settled in Natal built mosques and madressas, while their progeny carried on the strong traditions of community patronage and civic leadership. Aligned to Gandhi's Congress initiatives for Indian civic recognition, they worked across differences of political strategy, economic class, ethnicity, and religious identity to champion modern education for a continually ghettoized diaspora. In common was the threat of a state that, long before the legal formation of apartheid, managed diversity in deference to white racial hysteria over 'Indian penetration' and an 'Asiatic menace.' This is the story of confrontation, cooperation, and compromise by an officially marginalized but still powerful set of 'founding fathers, ' along with their centrality in the histories of education, urban space, and Muslim identity in this region of Africa. [Subject: Social History, African Studies, Islamic Studies, Religious Studies, Diaspora Studies, Migration Studies, Education, Politics]

Thembisa Waetjen

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