Phindezwa Mnyaka

Constituting Women's Day in Post-apartheid South Africa: Representations, Discourses and Practices of Power Phindezwa Mnyaka

National holidays are opportunities in which the national collectivity is constructed through performances, visual regimes and much public spectacle. In the process women are implicated in various ways in the construction of nationalism during such performances. Accordingly, narratives of history are put forward, the nature of which exists in relation to concerns of the present, including the ideologies the state attempts to put forward as valid. That means national holidays are spaces in which power relations are performed through various repertoires that characterise such days, repertoires that form part of attempts to express and strive for freedom and liberation. This study is an exploratory investigation into gendered representation, discourses and practices of power that constitute Women's Day locally in post apartheid South Africa. It explores the discursive content of local newspaper narratives on Women's Day as well as the performative content of a select few events. Women's Day events are characterised by various performative repertoires that form part and parcel of attempts to bring about an imagined future of freedom.