an exception to this general trend. However, her
alliance with the RCD is largely situational; while
an advocate for the recognition of Berber culture
and language, her primary activism has revolved
around the repeal of the 1984 Family Code (Mes-
saoudi 1995).
Such feminism underlines another space for
women’s participation in the Berber cultural move-
ment: artistic performance. Female singers –
including Hanifa, Chérifa Ouardia, and Taos
Amrouche – were particularly prevalent in the
Kabyle immigrant scene of the 1950s and 1960s,
melding a Berber cultural revival with an early fem-
inist politics. Taos became a star of international
folk festivals by collecting and recording the oral
poetry of her mother Fadhma, whose autobiogra-
phy she later edited (Amrouche 1968). Considered
too proximate to Berber ethnonationalism, she was
barred from representing Algeria at the first
PanAfrican Cultural Festival in 1969 (Goodman
2002, 97).
Male musicians and songwriters of the militant
“new Kabyle song” style of the 1970s and 1980s
similarly deployed and reworked maternal genres
and images, creating idealized visions of Berber vil-
lage domesticity and culture (Mahfoufi 1994). In
this process, however, they have often silenced the
women whose songs they appropriate (Goodman
1996). Contemporary female singers – such as the
group Djurdjura, Malika Domrane, Nouara, Houria
Aichi (Aurès region), and Fatima Tabaamrant
(Morocco) – have attempted to recapture the genre,
using it not only to celebrate Berber culture and
language, but also to critique the patriarchal struc-
tures of Berber society and the misogynist violence
of their fathers and brothers (Djura 1991, 1993). In
their songs and performances, they inject a critical
feminist counterpoint to the cultural movement as
a whole.
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(1995), 95–106.Paul A. SilversteinSub-Saharan Africa: South AfricaThis entry examines the situation of Muslim
women in South Africa. They are a heterogeneous
group who manifest diverse attitudes and tenden-
cies but are beginning to assert their rights and
challenge “traditional” modes of thought and pat-
terns of behavior. They are doing this within the
context of being minorities three times over: first,
they are Muslims, a religious minority of just over
half a million out of South Africa’s total population
of 41 million; second, they represent a number of
ethnic groups originally from Asia and the Arabian
Peninsula as well as other parts of Sub-Saharan
Africa; and third, they are women. Accordingly,
their involvement in South African political and
social movements has been multifaceted and draws
on a number of ideological discourses. The two
most important loci of these, from the mid-twenti-
eth century to the present time, have been the strug-
gle against the old South African regime’s policy of
racial discrimination against non-whites – with
whom most Muslims were included – and contem-
porary activism for women’s rights.Background: assimilation,
isolation, and integration
Traditionalist values remain important in some
sectors of South Africa’s Muslim population and
among these women adopt a minimalist approach
to involvement with the state or with the broader
community. Any interaction or cooperation with
either tends to be on the basis of necessity, not moti-
vated by a sense of identity with national goals.
Their concerns are expressed in such areas as the
recognition of Muslim Personal Law, including
provisions of the Muslim Marriage Bill. In contrast,
some Muslim women have become full participants
in South Africa’s emerging “rainbow nation.” They