Gendered Taboos as an Impediment to African Women’s Leadership: A Decolonial View

Abstract

Human beings come from various backgrounds shaped by their norms, culture, belief systems, age, social orientation and their language. In addition to all these human beings, the common denominator is that they are different in terms of their parity and equality. This difference of human beings in the world has their own knowledge and cultural practices towards contribution of knowledge. Transformation of leadership which is imperative during the decolonialisation projects demands among other things more information about African traditional leadership. The realisation and existence of such leadership cannot be imagined without the indigenous knowledge which was and is still rich with ingredients of growing and leading African people to the right direction. Our South African context demands that women must also be uplifted to leadership roles in society and the workplace, but this usually collides with different African beliefs that still put women secondary to men, for instance, the issue of taboos which mainly promote the subjection of women. For the sake of this research, the focus is on those taboos which portray women as inferior to men in the society. Two cultures were selected for this purpose, Xitsonga and IsiZulu.