Critical analysis of issues that depict gender inequality and conflict between human rights and culture in Isiko Nelungelo and Intando Kamufi

Abstract

ABSTRACT South Africa has a diverse range of languages, races, religions, and ethnic communities. It has faced significant challenges – political, cultural, and socio-economic – since the arrival of democracy in 1994. Nevertheless, South Africa is still entrenched in its cultural beliefs even though the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1998, was introduced to neutralise some of the oppressing cultural beliefs. With special reference to the Zulu tribe, this research discusses the nature of human beings (men and women) as a democratic one even beyond cultural expectations. It argues against some cultural practices on women, especially widows, which claim supremacy and bind the widows to its ritual processes among the Zulu people. It stresses the importance of human individual that overtakes everything from God’s creation, including cultural rituals that have been created by human beings. It claims that the existence of culture depends solely on the existence or presence of human beings and their communities. Therefore, culture cannot use humans to shape itself and transform the community; humans use culture to identify themselves and ultimately change their communities. Although the paper is cultural in its approach, it argues for individual human rights to be respected and weighed above all cultural practices. It further concludes that such cultural practices are not stationery and that they can be removed from the rest of culture. Lastly, this research however exposes all the Zulu cultural practices that oppresses women and forcing them to involve themselves in rituals while compromising their human rights. It also seeks to provide solutions to conflict that exist between culture, human rights, and gender inequality. This paper concludes thus, cultural deconstruction is possible through re-visiting the cultural practices and look at what is still relevant to the society and to the people and only adopt what will not oppress women while involving themselves to the cultural practices.