This thesis began by asking a clear but loaded question: what counts as feminist work in the Winelands? I sought to move beyond ruling feminist frameworks that often speak in theory-heavy words but disregard the everyday and situated practices of working-class Coloured womxn in the Cape Winelands. While this project is informed by Hood Feminism, it is rooted in local practices of survival, care and visibility. These practices may not always speak the language of conventional feminism, but they enounce tenacity and interdependence in a context that is often shaped by ongoing precarity – these womxn might not be writing manifestos, but they are showing up, sharing food, accounting for each other and surviving and challenging systems designed to keep them out of being in community. Throughout, I rely on “Dala what you must” not only as a local saying, but both an analytic and an ethic, to display the commitment to doing what is unavoidable, a refusal of respectability politics and a celebration of the ingenuity present in everyday feminist acts. These are vernacular feminist practices, spoken in the language of the ghetto. This work traces and seeks to honour the womxn whose labour, lives and language can transform what feminism can look like, here in the Winelands.
I recognise that a substantial body of work already addresses this topic in South Africa. South African scholarship interrogates Coloured identity as politically contested, historically assembled, and culturally negotiated. Authors such as Zimitri Erasmus (2017), Zoe Wicomb (1998), Mohammed Adhikari (2009), and Pumla Dineo Gqola (2010) provide indispensable frameworks for understanding the complexities of Colouredness. Addhikari and Erasmus trace its formation through Apartheid classification and the logic that shaped it. Wicomb foregrounds the fluidity of lived identity. Gqola extends this conversation by positioning Colouredness as cultural presence, one shaped by memory, creolisation, and belonging rather than facile notions of racial mixing. Together, their work highlights Coloured identity as an active site of negotiation, cultural practice, and tension. Moreover, these insights align closely with Mikki Kendall's (2020) insistence that feminist knowledge must be grounded in the material realities and everyday negotiations of marginalised womxn. Kendall's framework resonates with the South African scholarship by validating local experiences as a legitimate site of theory-making.
Kendall (2020:10) does not frame Hood feminism as discrete or as a new movement, but rather as a new approach and a way to recentre feminist concerns and priorities. Instead, Kendall (2020:11) relates Hood Feminism to a framework that recognises that an intersectional approach is needed in all feminist movements. Likewise, I do not propose a separation between Coloured womxn from Black feminist thought, rather I am trying to vocalise and localise the intimacy, resistance and experiences of Coloured womxn in ghetto communities through ghetto feminism. The aim was to situate my collaborators' narratives as a contribution to Black feminist teachings and intersectional feminist frameworks, which illuminated that womxn who live in ghetto context do not necessarily use the feminist label yet embody feminist praxis. In turn, this often implies that they do not approach feminism through a defined or organised framework, but a looseness that addresses the fluidity and complexities of the issues they grapple with. Each narrative provides insight into an individual experience, but together they offer commentary on issues faced, particularly in ghetto contexts.
This research endeavour is grounded in a participant-led methodology and a/r/tography, where my collaborators actively determined the direction of this project – steering the language choices, media forms and narrative focus used throughout. Utilising a/r/tography in this context meant that I did not rely purely on text or interviews, but through acts of showing and telling through their silences and art-making – my collaborators acted as researchers, teachers and artists. Rather than foisting external frameworks, I tried to follow my collaborators' inclinations and cues, which allowed the research to emerge in ways that honoured their rhythms and voices. Furthermore, I decided to do a narrative of my own, not to centre myself – but to process my own voice alongside theirs, a sort of offering. As a Coloured, Queer, working-class womxn from the Winelands, I am not an outsider to the world this thesis aimed to explore. I could not stay neutral, it was emotionally charged, chaotic and political – I had to keep myself definable and be parallel with the community that shaped me. Self-reflexivity here does not purely mean addressing biases and differences; it was about locating my voice through self-exposure and leaning into vexation and the "matriarch of emotions, joy" (Hudson, 2024).
Deliberately, I expanded on the field itself by including digital traces through platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp and TikTok. I soon recognised that these are imperative spaces where everyday feminist practices are negotiated, accentuated and archived. These platforms provided valuable insight into how womxn in the Winelands convey community-making and resistance. In the midst of this project, Kendall’s words (2020:189) have proved prescient: “Marginalized communities have already developed strategies and solutions as they do their own internal work. Now mainstream feminism has to step up, has to get itself to a place where it spends more time offering resources and less time demanding validation.”
I zeroed in on moments of so-called “failure” – nervous silences, changes of heart and missed images, not as errors to be corrected, but as data in their own right. These disruptions, absences and hesitations divulge the political as well as emotional fabric of the field, and provide insight into the possibilities and limits of representation. At its core, this project was guided by co-making rather than extraction – where the goal was never to simply collect data, but to establish a reciprocal relationship. By consolidating collaboration, discomfort and the demurral of neat conclusions, this methodology promotes feminist research practices that are tangled and messy.
Across the portraits, five cross-cutting patterns emerged – femininity, anger, scarcity, and the insistence on community-based engagement – and they do specific conceptual work.
Winay’s proximity to womxnhood was a startling one, but not uncommon. Of course, it is hard living a life geared towards femininity (her own perception and relation to this term) when you are constantly reminded that you are not a biological womxn and often excluded from spaces and conversations. Winay’s femininity, according to her, lies in the way in which she shows care and resilience, which is what she absorbed from her mother and the womxn in her immediate community. Winay proclaims “Coloured womxn are raised to provide”, and I do not think she means this only in the financial sense. In the same breath, she also creates a separation between herself and biological women.
Moreover, Winay purposefully separates herself from other women by portraying biological women as the ones who suffer the most and require the greatest protection. This exclusion has been well documented in feminist spaces, and often supported through the idea that women have a direct link to femininity because of biological factors, meaning their “gender identity and/or expression is the same as their assigned sex (2018:91). Although gender and sexuality are social constructs, fluid and arbitrary – this does not mean that it is not extremely tangible manifestations that greatly impacts how one chooses to show up. To illustrate, Leigh Ann van der Merwe describes herself as a trans Coloured woman from a rural part of South Africa (van der Merwe, 2018:90). In her article Transfeminism(s) from the Global South: Experiences from South Africa (2018) sheds light on trans African womxn’s experience as they try to navigate “trans activism” and having a voice in feminist spaces (van der Merwe, 2018:90). Van der Merwe (2018:91) draws on a quote by trans feminist activist Tani K; “It is difficult to say you’re a trans feminist when ‘other’ [cis] feminist call you a man in their feminist spaces. This brings back an emotional discomfort which makes it difficult to have willpower to have solidarity and fight with other feminists”.
Kendall (2020:15) underlines that, “Trans women are often derided or erased”. Winay alludes to the fact that she needs to move closer to feminist circles, which leads me to believe that she is aware that not all feminist spaces exclude trans womxn, but that she has internalised it from a conservative mainstream feminist perspective. Van der Merwe (2018:94) points up, “Trans women face a complicated combination of socio-economic determinants that reflect their realities as gendered beings. These realities manifest in a number of very negative ways. Biological determinism, cultural considerations, cis-hetero patriarchy and normativity can all be linked to some of the poor health and general life outcomes of trans women”.
Pageantry was an unexpected topic that emerged during the course of my research. I have always thought of pageantry as an expensive ‘hobby’, especially in terms of transport, gowns, hair products and make-up. Pageantry, in particular, is not addressed in Kendall’s text. However, Kendall does speak to beauty standards; she says that as a lighter (not light-skinned) Black woman, there was a proximity to Eurocentric beauty standards that had to be preserved (Kendall, 2020:81). Moreover, I had no previous objections or initial concerns prior to my research surrounding this subject matter. However, Wilma and Judie’s affiliation with pageantry was not what I anticipated. They have described their participation in pageants as “fun” and honouring femininity, and that pageantry was not about the crown, but building confidence. Amanda Gouws (2022) discloses that, “Feminists are divided on the merits of beauty pageants. The criticism relates closely to the type of feminism individual feminists embrace. It also reflects a generational divide between older and younger feminists”. Presently, I too am divided on this matter. Personally, I would generally support any industry that is inclusive regarding size, age, race, gender and sexuality. For instance, I enjoy pageantry through the lens of drag. I first came into contact with pageant queens through my engagement with RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2014. Although there is fierce competition and rivalry that occurs amongst the queens, it was fixed through a queer lens. There has been little to no queer, fat or trans representation in Miss South Africa or Miss Universe pageants.
Gouws (2022) elaborates, beauty pageants are a direct link to patriarchy, which enviably constructs who and what is considered beautiful and often excludes various types of womxn, and the idea of diversity and inclusivity is directly impacted. Wilma was already a mother when she started participating in pageants and was fearful of her position once she became a grandmother, which altered her perspective and positionality she chose to explore despite this. Judie was nearing her sixties when she first participated in a pageant. Here, I am not suggesting that there is no feminism or self-identifying feminist who partakes in these pageants, but rather that there are women who have the autonomy to choose whether they find such pageants to be a marker of feminism. If feminism is a woman’s right to choose, I do not think pageantry is excluded from that choice solely based on its history. Furthermore, they explored pageantry through security. Wilma participates in pageants that are mostly held within familiar and community-based settings, like church and school halls. In contrast, Judie chose to participate in a pageant that transcended gender norms and embraced Queer identities across gender, age and sexuality. If problematic spaces are constantly being reclaimed and re-shaped to be more inclusive or simply create an atmosphere to diffuse tension, they should have the room to do just that.
However, femininity was something all of my collaborators chose to accentuate. Sam was recovering from a cholecystectomy and spent most of her days in recovery, unable to take care of herself or beautify herself, something that she enjoys doing. She conveyed to me that after her check-up, her husband stopped in front of a hair salon and offered to pay to get her hair done. He had said to her that she had been unable to do it herself and that he knew she felt at her best after a hair treatment and blow-out. This was evident the day of our sit-down interview, when Sam revealed that she did her hair and put on something nicer than what she usually wears to work, especially for our interview. Moerieda chose an image of herself where she had felt the most beautiful. She vocalises that her hair and skin look healthy, and that she was in her element when those things were aesthetically pleasing to her. Femininity, like pageantry, is embodied, not passive, but a choice. In pageantry, you have categories, and you stylise your appearance based on that, but it is still a deeply personal enactment. The category is presented, but the way in which you pick out your dress, shoes, hair and make-up is ultimately left up to you, how you relate, dispose and endorse those things.
Winay, Sam, Judie, Moerieda, and Wilma speak about anger, forgiveness and picking themselves up after what they have considered to be their failures. To amplify, in her 2023 text, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook: The Radical Potential of Getting in the Way, Ahmed (2023:15) indicates that multiple feminist scholars have reached a point in their feminism where anger dissolves, and one learns to become more accepting towards the things one cannot 'change'. Ahmed (2023:43) notes that feminist spaces are emotional spaces and that anger is what fuels various feminists to take up space and stay loud against injustices. The feminist killjoy "Is someone who is uncomfortable with the norms of society, someone who recognizes the patriarchal, racist, and classist system that exists and does not stand for them” (On Canada Project, 2023). Ahmed (2023:43) states that the killjoy is synonymous with the angry Black womxn trope; a trope that holds that the angry Black womxn is “loud-talking, irrational, overly assertive, aggressive, and argumentative – therefore not wholly female” (Corbin, Smith & Garcia, 2018:628). Kendall (2020:11) suggests that she is a kind feminist, not a nice feminist, and she is often the person who is called when being nice is not working. Ahmed (2010:8) expresses that, “To kill joy, is to open a life, to make room for life, to make room for possibility, for change.”
Besides Judie, whose anger was directly attributed to the patriarchal structures of her job, and Wilma, who was more disappointed than angry, and Moerieda, who doesn’t carry any resentment, and Winay, who is tired of explaining why she deserves a voice. Sam’s anger lied in her Coloured identity being impeded by romantic relationships that forced her to give up parts of herself. What all of them have in common is that they have found inner peace through moving towards forgiveness. Kendall (2020:9) expresses, “Feminism is the work that you do, and the people you do it for who matter more than anything else”. It was evident that forgiveness did not mean that they stopped speaking or fighting for the things that needed attention; they simply shifted their focus, anger and disappointments beyond themselves and placed them back into their community work. Kendall (2020:185) proclaims, “Demands that the oppressed be calm and polite and that forgiveness come before all else are fundamentally dehumanizing”. To elaborate, anger is fuel; it may not always be needed, but it is hard to deny that, in various instances, it does get the job done. Anger is used to shift the conversation, and it is an innate emotion inhibited by all marginalised communities, who should have the right to be angry about injustices without the insistence that their anger is not warranted (Kendall, 2020:186).
This calls to mind Audre Lorde in her 1979 essay titled The Master’s tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House which was originally presented at a feminist conference and poignantly critiques the feminist movement. Lorde (1979), in this instance, is specifically speaking about a feminism spearheaded by white middle-class women. Those who have failed to embrace difference amongst women. Difference here means class, age, race and sexuality, which often erases marginalised womxn from achieving liberation. Albeit liberation can take various forms and is not globally defined, and takes different shapes depending on cultural and traditional viewpoints. Moreover, what is poignant about this essay is that the title “The master’s tools” (1979) signifies that racism, classism, and patriarchy cannot be repurposed, as it is the exact same toolset that oppresses womxn of colour and that there is an active system that must be dismantled. Lorde (1979) emphasises that these divisions are insightful and can be used as a source of strength to move beyond “tokenism” and even anger to reconstruct collaboration and new ways of enquiring knowledge that do not mimic oppressive hierarchies.
My collaborators in this study are drawn from a range of spaces within Stellenbosch, including historically marginalised neighbourhoods and communities shaped by a complex and fraught historical context. Judith, for example, is from Ida's Valley, a neighbourhood that emerged in the 1960s when Coloured residents were removed from central Stellenbosch (Die Vlakte) under the Group Areas Act. Moerieda and Winay are based in Cloetesville, a neighbourhood that was largely created through the same displacement (Andro, 2024). Wilma comes from Lanquedoc, a historically significant workers' village established by Cecil John Rhodes in the early 20th century to house his farm labourers (hehertiageportal, 2023). Whereas Samantha is originally from Lavender Hill on the Cape Flats, a community that was established through the forced removals of District Six residents (Davy, 2020), and did not grow up in Stellenbosch, but now accesses the former missionary settlement, Pniel. These are neighbourhoods where residents had to build community from the ground up. This spatial and historical diversity reflects the variety of ways in which creativity, identity, and social encounters are ratified across the town. These spatial histories are not just backdrops; they shape how each womxn understands community, identity, and creativity. By including womxn from these distinct but interconnected places, the study accentuates how Coloured belonging is negotiated, expressed, and lived in relation to memory, space, and history.
Throughout these narratives, there was an insistence on articulating Coloured identity and cultures. All of my collaborators share a similar Coloured identity. This was clearly demonstrated as they never tried to explain certain terms or meanings, or their relevance to me. For instance, the word kleurling was often used to refer to Coloured womxn, a word not often used in feminist spaces, for obvious reasons. The importance of a 21st to signify defying the odds, the term for spaghetti being “slangetjiekos”, feeding and waiting on food to be served to establish love and creating space for tough conversations, a tussen June and July experience to highlight a confusing situation, terms like “is da iets virri pot” and “rotsagtig” when there is no clear definition in the Afrikaans language for the latter. They never tried to negotiate their identities as something special or unacknowledged in feminist spaces, but they would like to show up as their authentic selves, shaped by an identity that was given to them by the Apartheid government and how they have reinterpreted and made it meaningful. They have their own cultural food, traditions, languages and ways of expressing themselves. Yet, the conversation did not change – they all agreed that class, race, and gender all have an impact on their lives, that they struggle to move between spaces that ask them to re-negotiate the repercussions of this.
This was most observable through their chosen artistic practice, writing. Writing, unlike other artistic practices, is inexpensive, but like all forms of art, it does require emotional inconvenience, frustration and depth. Writing in this instance allowed me to uncover what would have been inaccessible through a purely analytical or textual lens. To elaborate, Winay chose not to share any of her previous works but admits that she has always enjoyed bleeding through her pen; however, she does feel disconnected from creating in the present moment. Sam articulates parts of herself even through her fictional pieces and conveys that she feels like a real writer when she is not merely writing poetry. Wilma writes and posts her writing every day; she writes like she works a nine-to-five. Moerieda does not consider herself a writer, yet she does write as a form of escape; she often mindlessly puts pieces together as an outlet. However, authorship can take multiple forms. Therefore, the images were an important aspect of this study and were done intentionally. It was not only a means to visual articulation, but a method that places aesthetic value on agency beyond language. What surfaced after the visual was presented was strikingly different from the information that came before it. Their writing, as well as their chosen images, showcased how they extend community to themselves and to others.
Furthermore, the visual was almost performative in the sense that it allowed them to inscribe themselves into this study and confer a multimodal way of knowing. In engaging with platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook and TikTok, they were not necessarily producing content but participating in self-archiving – to preserve their own narratives, political affiliations, and aesthetics on their own merit. This is another way how vernacular archives function, often informal, yet everyday forms of grief, joy and even memory that are stored and then circulated. Moreover, their digital practices are inert yet curatorial and deeply intentional as they expand and unfold. Perhaps a political act of authorship, whereby they select how to frame it, share it, and with whom. They asserted control and established agency over their own representation. This proves that images and text messages are legitimate ways to acquire knowledge, while being credible, effective, and most importantly, accessible. My collaborators understood and are living a life filled with empathy, “survival as a shared project” (Ahmed, 2018:48) and moments that reinstate joy. Their wisdom and power do not lie in victimhood (Ahmed, 2018:43) but in sharing their knowledge, success and resources.
As I part ways with this project, however, never with the community or the womxn in it. I cannot help but show up more authentically and stripped bare of everything I once considered a philosophy. Collaborating and conspiring with the womxn who shaped this project reminded me that intersectionality is not only about expanding inclusion, but also about acknowledging, and actively challenging the historical exclusion of womxn of colour within feminist spaces. In the beginning of this project, I hammered on mainstream feminism needing to recognise, affirm and own up to their failures – to consult the womxn who do grassroots feminist work. But most of my collaborators never mentioned feminism, they have shifted the conversation past theory and institutional settings – they simply took up space, never asking for permission en nog oncie validationi. Daai gooste dala maaki saak wattie.