INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE AND RECONCILIATION OCCASIONAL PAPER NUMBER 19 crafted by the TRC described apartheid not as a system in which a racialised power disenfranchised and dispossessed a racialised majority, but as a set of human rights violations of a minority of individual victims carried out by an even smaller minority of individual perpetrators”.96 Reservations over the implications of this narrative has manifested in an upsurge of protests among large sectors of the black population concerned over the lack of transformation in both the public space and in lived realities. there were attempts to socially engineer population growth through policies aimed at inhibiting the growth of families among the black population, while promoting larger families among the white population. From 1994, the African National Congress (ANC) sought to demolish the discriminatory frameworks established by the apartheid government. In December 1996, a new Constitution bestowed South Africa with one of the most comprehensive frameworks for the protection human of rights in the world. It notes that: “The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth”. In order to realise gender-based rights the Constitution called for the creation of a Commission on Gender Equality, whose object was “to promote gender equality and to advise and to make recommendations to Parliament or any other legislature with regard to any laws or proposed legislation which affects gender equality and the status of women”.99 Indeed Mandela made his commitment to creating a new dispensation apparent in 1995 when he noted: “as a tribute to the legions of women who navigated the path of fighting for justice before us, we ought to imprint in the supreme law of the land, firm principles upholding the rights of women. The women themselves, and the whole of society, must make this a prime responsibility.”100 The chasms developing in the discourse around the “rainbow nation” was sharply displayed in a series of racist outpouring on social media in December 2015 which revealed the lack of attitudinal and cultural shifts in South Africa that Hamber and Kelly identify as key to reconciliation. This led to a response by political activist Andile Mngxitama who argued that: Th(e) denial of racism (in South Africa) is based on a lie that was hatched in 1994 by our political leaders and christened the “rainbow nation” by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It was a rickety Humpty Dumpty put together by a series of unethical strategies and lies … This non-racialism without justice traps whites and blacks inside a lie mistaken for a common brotherhood and limits our understanding of what makes Sparrow-like97 acts possible – namely … institutionalised racism.98 Beyond the Constitution a number of laws and policies have been implemented to address gender issues, such as the 1998 Domestic Violence Act and the 2009 Sexual Offences Act. In addition, one of South Africa’s oft-cited achievements in the representation of women in public office, which has been achieved through the ruling ANC’s own quota system. Significantly while (white) women made up just three percent of parliamentarians during the last apartheid government, following the first democratic elections in 1994 the number of women increased ten-fold. By 2009 women made up 44 percent of those in the National Assembly, the third highest representation of women parliamentarians in the world, although this decreased slightly following the 2013 elections after which women held 42 percent of seats.101 Women are also well represented in Jacob Zuma’s 2013 cabinet holding 41 percent of ministerial positions, 47 percent of which are at deputy minister level. And, at the international level, South African women now occupy highly visible and influential roles. For example Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma has been Chairperson of the African Union since 2012 and Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka  has been Executive Director of UN Women since 2013. South Africa’s Transition The release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 and South Africa’s subsequent democratisation was accompanied by commitments to create a non-racial and non-sexist society and, in so doing, prevent a repetition of the past. This was always going to be a formidable task given the ways that race, class, gender and sexuality were manipulated through apartheid’s legal framework. But, as often occurs subsequent to regime change, mobilisation by civil society occurred to ensure gender-sensitive policies and laws were enacted. Even before the first democratic elections, South Africa signed up to the United Nation’s Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 1993, an international treaty to protect and promote women’s rights which has established standards for achieving gender equality. Ni Aoláin and others have drawn attention to the unique ways in which authoritarian regimes such as the apartheid state were repressive in gendered ways. In South Africa racial discrimination was embedded through the political and legal framework and this context had a profound impact on gender roles. Specific policies such as forced removals and influx control were intended to prevent the African population, but in particular, African women, from settling in the urban areas. There were also more subtle examples of racially motivated social control of which women were the primary victims. This was evident in the area of employment and education as well as reproductive rights. For example It should be noted, as Shireen Hassim and others have observed, in South Africa obligations to promote gender equality was won through “elite suasion” and “arose out of a commitment to human rights in the ANC, rather than out of a broad public deliberative process”.102 Indeed we have seen the erosion of much of the gains made in the heady years of the 1990s and the increasing assertion of a heterosexist and patriarchal society under the Zuma administration. This has 9