African Womanist Hermeneutics: A Suppressed Voice From South Africa Speaks

Abstract

Senegalese writer Awa Thiam echoes the thoughts and feelings of her black sisters in South Africa.1 Black women in South Africa-here under stood as African women-form the vast percentage of the population in the country. Despite their majority, they suffer exploitation, invisibility, and silence; as a result, they are unknown. Though the most exploited of all groups, they remain in South Africa. In the midst of adverse socioeconomic conditions, they survive. And amidst pervasive oppression caused by kyriar chal structures,2 they are not crushed. At times these factors impact on them with a relentlessness that leaves them drained of both creativity and vision.3 But despite all these daunting obstacles, they remain brave. Jacqui line William argues: My offspring are stronger than me for they have sucked fertile milk from the bravest of the brave women. In poverty and in richness and in war I am still a woman. And I will remain a brave woman.4 These brave women form the majority, too, of church/worshipping communities,