UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Decolonising the ‘safe space’ as an African innovation: The Nhanga as quiet activism to improve women’s health and wellbeing

Gumbonzvanda, N; Gumbonzvanda, F; Burgess, RA; (2021) Decolonising the ‘safe space’ as an African innovation: The Nhanga as quiet activism to improve women’s health and wellbeing. Global Public Health , 31 (2) pp. 169-181. 10.1080/09581596.2020.1866169. Green open access

[thumbnail of Burgess_Nhanga_R2_11.12.20_clean_Final Accepted for distribution.pdf]
Preview
Text
Burgess_Nhanga_R2_11.12.20_clean_Final Accepted for distribution.pdf - Accepted Version

Download (707kB) | Preview

Abstract

Contemporary power and decolonisation discourses reflect how Eurocentric and Western analysis has shaped our understandings of the world. Decolonisation efforts within Global Health and feminist studies (including what counts as valid forms of women’s organising) also require a reclaiming of praxis developed within historically oppressed countries lost through erasures of knowledge-production. Our work contributes to these efforts through an analysis of a form of collective activism for women’s health and development in Zimbabwe: the Nhanga. This traditional cultural practice is anchored to intergenerational women only ‘safe spaces’, a praxis pre-dating second-wave feminist theorising on such ideas. Currently, Nhangas are used by the Rozaria Memorial Trust across community, national and global advocacy spaces to promote women’s health. Using collaborative autoethnography, each author’s personal accounts of engagement in the Nhanga interrogate the processes that promote change in women’s lives. Our analysis suggests that the Nhanga fractures systemic, institutional and relational power through leveraging culture, emotions and narrative, in spaces where such dynamics are often overlooked. We conclude that the method offers a valuable form of collective organising: fully engaging with the complex relational, political, social, and cultural environments that impact on health, through a quiet activism anchored to emotion, connection, and re-imagining of culture to promote change at individual, community, and global levels.

Type: Article
Title: Decolonising the ‘safe space’ as an African innovation: The Nhanga as quiet activism to improve women’s health and wellbeing
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1080/09581596.2020.1866169
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1080/09581596.2020.1866169
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
Keywords: Decolonisation, Agency, Global Health, Quiet Activism, Power
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute for Global Health
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10117807
Downloads since deposit
264Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item