Women and peace-building: the case of Mabedlane women - Sarifa Moola

This focus discusses the concept of peace-building and how women contribute to a culture of positive peace-building, contributions that have largely gone unnoticed and are generally undermined, compromised or destroyed by the culture of valuing money and greed. This culture is informed by the negative impacts of economic and cultural globalisation and by our government's economic policies which perpetuate poverty amongst women and chidren, particularly in rural areas. This focus will draw on a case study of a project in the Mabedilane community based in rural KwaZulu-Natal. The idea is to show how top-down peace-building programmes flounder because they fail to address unequal gender relations and power dynamics that exist in communities. As its methodology, this focus employed literature review, observation and personal interview.
From: Agenda 69 (2006), pp. 124-133