Vision and Objectives

Land is the starting point to women's independence and control over their own lives. Access to and control over land is a means to improving women's livelihoods, reconnecting with their history and heritage, being able to fulfil the sacred trust, i.e fulfilling their cultural and spiritual rites and responsibilities as women who are the keepers of knowledge of communities, providing a sense of continuity from past to present to future, and to provide a sense of community and safety. This programme was designed to create a space for women to share their experiences of landlessness and poverty, their understanding of what land means socially, culturally, politically, historically, spiritually, economically, their aspirations and their strategies for the repossession of land where land reform is racist, classist, sexist and heteronormative. It will create an enabling, sacred space for women to speak of the violence of dispossession, the courage of resistance, the necessity to turn the circle and the ways in which this can be done. It will honour the knowledge and bravery of our grandmothers and find ways to support women to lead the struggle for land in South Africa.

Objectives

• To create a space for poor black rural women to speak of their experiences, visions, strategies and dreams
• To document and disseminate the her-story of poor rural women
• To reassert poor rural women's historical, social, political, cultural and spiritual access to land
• To use the different tools including courts of women for the mobilisation of women to develop just strategies for redress
• To recognise the indigenous knowledge of poor rural women
• To highlight the increased lack of food-security for poor rural women and it is relationship to social dilemmas.
• To acknowledge and challenge women's current forms of organization and mobilisation
• To link and network with women from regional and international movements and organisations.

   

Methodology

Nkuzi seeks to expose women to a new philosophy that will challenge colonial conceptions and challenge the fear of acknowledging, exploring and giving expression to their own suppressed knowledge and wisdom. Through awareness workshops and motivational exercises Nkuzi's will rejuvenate the innate strength of women to fend for themselves for what was taken away from them by constant rejection and denial of access to various domains which have taught women to step away from this innate power because of the threat of violence, exclusion, rejection, alienation from the dominant cultures and taking responsibility beyond the private sphere of the household into the public domain.

Nkuzi's approach endeavours for women to build a collective consciousness and identity of women from that of subservient to that of being in control of their own destiny. It work intends to act as a catalyst for the healing of women's memories through the telling of stories of violent dispossession, but also reclaiming the stories of resistance and courage and our own knowledge and vision of a peaceful, just and secure society. It will do this by using a language of symbolism and connection between women from different parts of the country, such as visual arts, poetry, drama, song, dance and conversation.

These activities will be guide by the following objectives:

• To raise public awareness, educate communities on gender based violence and related acts
• To empower rural communities primarily women to participate equally and fully in all community issues
• To conscientise women about their rights and men to understand the necessity of changing gender relations and to help then accept and adjust to change
• To assist victims of gender based violence to assert their rights
• To mobilize communities and relevant stakeholders around issues of gender
• Create an enabling environment for gender mainstreaming