AFFRIKA Journal of Politics, Economics and Society

When African states experience the democratisation, the state becomes a target of international negative criticism. The African state becomes preoccupied with hegemonic issues and uses all means and machinery to defend its grip on power. This paper acknowledges the “Africanness” of post 2000 state in Zimbabwe. It also argues that post 2000 Zimbabwean state is a victim state. Zimbabwe`s experience in the new millennium has rarely been analysed using any views contrary to Neoliberalism. By acknowledging this gap, the paper argues that only a state that chooses to stand against Neoliberalism is forced by circumstances to earn the labels such as “brutal”, “election fraudster”, “totalitarian”, “gross abuser of human rights” churned out of the Human Rights lexicon. The argument deviates from the conventional Human Rights and pro-Neoliberal discourse that is dominant in describing post 2000 state in Zimbabwe. The paper uses secondary sources to analyse pre and post 2000 Zimbabwe, and concludes that Global Financial Institutions were the key players in setting up Zimbabwe for a repressive resistance to democratic change. It argues that the Global Financial Institutions created a new reality that forced post 2000 Zimbabwe to respond in the way it felt appropriate as a sovereign state – to retain power or let go.

Work performed directly in the service of families, including housework and childcare, is often unacknowledged all over the world because of cultural assumptions that a wife or mother should work in the privacy of the home. This study adds extra depth to the ongoing gender approach by testing whether couple negotiate specific conjugal and parent roles in terms of the division of household labour. This study seeks to discuss numerous variables that impact the division of household labour between men and women. The study was conducted in Schoemansdal village, situated in Nkomazi region, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. The study used a qualitative research design to collect and analyze the data. Samples of married men and married women were selected in this study. The findings are as follows: Women do a disproportionate share of the housework, even when the women work, and the men don’t, and even when the women want to share the housework more equally. When most men aren’t working, they don’t see domestic labour as a means of contributing. In fact, they double down and do less of it because it challenges their masculinity. But when men earn more, women who are almost all working too, feel obliged to contribute in some way to maintaining the household, generally by cooking and cleaning.

Unlike in many countries around the world, a great number of South African women have since the advent of democracy in 1994 attained significant political leadership positions. Despite being constrained by traditional norms and values, the political status of women in the country has risen from 2.7% at the end of apartheid to about 47% as of 2017. Today, South Africa is among the few countries in the world with more than 40% women representation in decisionmaking institutions, in both national and regional governments. This paper provides explanation for this ‘exceptionalism’, with the hope that they will serve as a learning curve for communities with poor women representation. It builds on political process model within the social movement theory to unpack the phenomenon. Exploratory sequential research design, supported with qualitative and quantitative research methods was used for the study. Snowball sampling technique guided the data collection process, which was analyzed using Atlas.ti 8 and SPSS 25. The results indicated support for women education (14%), the presence of women liberation movement during the apartheid (13%), quota system (12%), protests movements against patriarchy (12%), demonstrated leadership skills (11%), and sensitization on gender equality (10%) are key factors. Other factors include institutional support (7%), willingness to serve (5%) and zeal to compete (3%). These factors interact with one another to provide the window of opportunities through which women activists participate and attain leadership positions in South African politics.