Women's moral agency and the quest for justice in Africa

Abstract

This article explores women’s moral agency in post-apartheid South Africa and Africa by examining the intersections of governance and the public space; we shall also look at the agency of African women from the perspective of African feminist social ethics. The article begins by discussing the African post-colonial state. It then goes on to evaluate the portrayal of African women’s agency in the dominant discourses of the human sciences, particularly as these are articulated in South Africa. The purpose of this article is to unearth how African women’s agency is perceived, interpreted and understood. We also want to evaluate whether African women inhabit or reject the negative way in which they are portrayed. The second part of the essay identifies and discusses African women’s agency and demonstrates the ways African women agitate for justice, and claim political agency and citizenship. The essay then calls for emancipatory and transformatory justice in the public sphere and in the human sciences; it rejects the objectification of African women, and protests against treating them as objects of research. Instead, it understands African women as subjects and agents in their own lives, including in the private and public spheres.