Feminist activism: Rural South African vernacular law as an "accidental" site

Starting from the premise that ordinary women participate daily in resistance that feminist scholars have labelled ‘everyday activism,’ this chapter examines how this ‘accidental’ activism accumulates to produce social change in rural South Africa and its vernacular (or ‘customary’) governance institutions and dispute management forums. This social change is produced through mechanisms offered by vernacular law, though the system’s logic of ‘tradition’ encourages continuity rather than change. It also occurs despite the prevalence of patriarchy and widespread institutional resistance to women’s exertions of power, even as the cultural identities embraced by the women themselves emphasize submissiveness. Informed by ethnographic and historical research, the chapter draws on the narratives and experiences of women in two deep rural villages to complicate the dichotomous distinction between ‘rights’ and ‘tradition’ as sources of women’s power and activism. While women’s contributions are characteristically unrecognised, ignored or even actively silenced due to patriarchy, vernacular law is partly made in and through their ‘accidental feminist’ actions and interactions which constitute a social movement-albeit an uncoordinated and very local one.