In South Africa, a country in which the manipulation of ethnicity was at th
e heart of the government's attempts to establish control over the majority
African population, ethnic mobilization during the liberation struggle was
singularly unsuccessful. The one exception was Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi'
s controversial Inkatha movement. This article suggests that one of the rea
sons for Inkatha's successes was the astute way in which the organization a
nd, in particular, Buthelezi played on gendered notions of 'home' and 'home
land'. Historically, apartheid constructed notions of home and space differ
ently for women and men and Inkatha was able to draw upon and manipulate th
ese differences to produce a powerfully felt response. Thus, for men, many
of them migrant workers in South Africa's cities, the notion of 'home' impl
ied a return to patriarchal values and male domestic control in a historica
lly constituted 'homeland'; for women, Buthelezi emphasized the new 'modern
' opportunities opened up by the KwaZulu homeland, and the importance of th
eir 'God-given' gifts of motherhood.