The educational journeys of female farm activists in the Western Cape South Africa

Abstract

This study documented the education process that engendered activism among six female farm activists, who lived and/or worked on commercial farms in the Western Cape, South Africa. The study was located in an interpretative paradigm and a qualitative approach was followed. A collective case study design was employed and snowball sampling used to select six research participants who participated in the non-formal, popular education programme of a farm-based grassroots organisation, which the research called Female Farm Organisation (FFO). Ethnographic data in the form of interviews, participant observation and archival documents were used to provide a narrative account of each female farm activist’s educational journey. These educational journeys were biographical, and they provided the context in which the central phenomenon of the study could be explored. Educational journeys were framed as learning that took place across different educational sites over a person’s lifetime (Jarvis, 2004); with the focus on FFO’s nonformal, popular education. Freire’s (2005) theory of praxis was used to assess critically the interaction of female farm activists with FFO’s education programme. The content and method of the FFO programme were used to connect what and how the women learnt, with how the acquired education was used. The study specifically pinpoints the moments when female farm activists presumed their equality to those who possess power (Rancière, 1999), as their moments of activism. A key finding of the study was that a four-tiered education process engendered activism. Farmwomen learnt to be activists, experienced learning while being activists, were role models and facilitators of activism for other women and were agents of knowledge, as FFO learnt from their members. Activism was manifested in the private and the public spaces. Women used their education to grow their self-confidence; put an end to abuse in their homes, or directly confront institutions of power. By placing the actions of these female farm activists at the centre of the research, the study seeks to contribute to the body of literature that shows how ordinary people use education to contest the conditions of inequality that they experience.