A women’s enterprise emerges in the new South Africa
Apartheid realities
The story of the cooperative reflects the experience of women in rural South Africa in the 20th century and the extraordinary odds against which they have struggled to sustain themselves in their community. The broader context for the story is apartheid, the official policy established when the National Party assumed power in 1948. Not until 1994, after a long struggle, were the first democratic elections with universal franchise held in South Africa. The African National Congress won the election, and Nelson Mandela became president. Although apartheid was brought to an end, its legacy has lingered.
One aspect of the apartheid system was separation of peoples by territory. The system established black homelands, or reserves, where different ethnic groups were relegated. Acornhoek was one of the homelands. In the 1950s, a Catholic mission was established there, and German missionaries opened a one-room schoolhouse on the mission grounds. Although there were few Catholics in the area (the population was a tribal mix of Tsonga and Tsotho), the poorest children came to the mission school because they didn’t have money to buy uniforms or to pay school fees; they only had to join the Catholic faith and choose a new name. Three of the cooperative’s master weavers attended this school.
Read about the Mapusha Women and today’s cooperative.
