The Everyday Practices of Women Traditional Leaders in Resolving Conflicts in South Africa: A Centre for Mediation in Africa project

The public perception of leadership in South Africa does not often include an appreciation of the role of women traditional leaders in communities. This booklet promotes the recognition of women traditional leaders and their work in resolving conflict and building peace. It emerges from the Centre for Mediation in Africa’s engagements and collaborative work with women traditional leaders across the country, ranging from Queens of the respective kingdoms to traditional leaders of rural communities. Our goal is to assist readers of this text to have a sense of the day-to-day work of women traditional leaders and appreciate their role in conflict resolution, service-delivery, stability and governance, especially in rural South Africa. As we note in a section of this booklet, ‘The day-to-day work of conflict mediation that women traditional leaders, and traditional leaders more broadly, do is not widely recognised, legitimised or acknowledged. Yet it deeply reflects and resonates with the context within which it is practised.’ Although much of what we describe here is relevant to traditional leaders broadly, our focus on women brings attention to an institution that is transforming. In South Africa, women traditional leaders are at the forefront of that transformation as they actively challenge traditional norms and engage in new types of community initiatives. We begin by exploring the nature and scope of women’s traditional leadership within South Africa, their day-to-day work, the rural context in which they mostly operate, cases of conflicts they have resolved and end with an outline of the principles that inform their practices followed by some recommendations. This publication largely focuses on the context of the Eastern Cape, but also draws from experiences in other parts of the country. Insights were drawn from multiple engagements with women traditional leaders across South Africa, between 2019 and 2025. These engagements included one-on-one interviews in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Limpopo and the Free State, as well as focus group sessions with women traditional leaders from these provinces at the University of Pretoria.