The call to decolonize knowledge and scholarship in South Africa, as in other countries in the Global South, has given rise to a renewed interest in indigenous thinking and practices relating to gender. Chandra Talpade Mohanty argued four decades ago that European and American feminism are irrelevant to contexts in the Global South. Her point remains valid in protesting the appropriation of Southern phenomena by career-hungry, middle-class white scholars. Mohanty and other scholars of her persuasion call for separate forms of feminism to be practiced in different contexts. At the same time, the rapid growth of cyber-communication and social media has helped to speed up the spread of knowledge and communication between geographically distant regions and cultures. My paper interrogates these ideas through the idea of intercultural encounters between settler invaders (Manathunga 2014) and indigenous Southern knowledges. It is by no means clear how one decides what qualifies as indigenous people or indigenous knowledges; at the same time, taking Africa as an example, local theories of gender have been disregarded and discarded by colonial discourses. It is important in multi- and intercultural contexts to conduct oneself with respect for diversity and difference so that cultures that have been shattered by colonial violence may be restored to dignity and voice. My paper will take South Africa as a case study to address and trouble several questions in an attempt to think through the complexities of decolonizing feminism: what counts as indigenous knowledge of gender and feminism in the Global South? Is it true that local problems can only be addressed by solutions that arise from those contexts? Is “Southern” feminism different from feminism in the Global South? Ultimately, the paper concludes that the borders between Southern and Euro-American feminism are, paradoxically, as important as they are porous.

Deirdre C. Byrne is a full Professor of English Studies and the Head of the Institute for Gender Studies at Unisa. She is the editor-in-chief of the academic journal Gender Questions. She holds a rating from the National Research Foundation of South Africa as an established researcher and has recently co-edited Fluid Gender, Fluid Love (Brill 2018). She is currently researching Gender-Based Violence in University Contexts; the poetry of Ursula K. Le Guin; and South African women’s poetry.

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