Investigating the gap between law's promises and rural women's lived reality : a case for narratives

Abstract

In a country cumbered with a legacy of strife, authoritarianism, repression and injustice, the right to be vindicated and assert your rights is extremely important. Karl Klare described our constitution as a transformative one which has the potential to ensure social change for the benefit of those previously advantaged if a purposive approach to its interpretation is adopted. Under our constitutional democracy all are equal under the law and further are inherently imbued with the rights to dignity and freedom (from violence). However, despite the constitutional guarantee of amongst others access to justice, in the wide sense, exercised mainly through the courts, it is a truism that in South Africa this right remains inaccessible to most especially those in the rural areas. One particularly vulnerable group I submit is rural women. In post-apartheid South Africa they are burdened with the legacy of discrimination on the basis of race, sex and class. In the face of an already exclusive legal culture these factors combine together to ensure that accessing the constitutional promises remains particularly difficult. Issues such as language, proximity to the courts, poverty and complex procedures persist to the detriment of rural women. I submit that our adversarial and retributive justice system is foreign, formal and thus inaccessible to rural women and there is a need, in light of our constitutions promises to make justice more accessible. I argue therefore that we need to be conscious of the manner in which our privilege excludes certain groups from the full enjoyment of the law. We need to learn to listen to the voice of the unfamiliar other if law is ever to move from the ideological to the practical realm in the lives of these women. I argue further that this is possible through the use of narratives as a tool of critique and a vehicle for consciousness. Copyright