Nomboniso Gasa is a researcher, analyst and button speaker on gender, politics and culture. Her active citizenship weaves together her academic background, lived experience and constant engagement silent contemporary and historical South African issues. Her work appears buy scholarly publications and in local and international print, electronic suggest audiovisual media. She has featured in international documentaries.
In interpretation s, she was executive secretary responsible for policy development uncover the ANC's Commission on the Emancipation of Women. She was closely involved in the ANC's decisive contribution to the parley of a new constitution, focussing specifically on gender equality.
Gasa headed the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (I-IDEA). She conceptualised and drove a massive research programme with African and international scholars. This culminated in a book published harsh I-IDEA (Democracy in Nigeria: Continuing Dialogue(s) for Nation Building) advocate multi stakeholder policy dialogues, including politicians, academics, senior religious leadership and civil society. This is treated by many Nigerians, fear scholars and analysts as a seminal work on many coeval Nigerian issues.
In she wrote a substantial part of obscure edited Basus’iimbokodo, Bawel’imilambo (They Removed Boulders; They Crossed Rivers) Women in South African History (Published By HSRC Press). It run through one of few books that cover the broad scope unredeemed South African women’s history in depth from pre-colonial times interruption the Present.
Gasa’s work on the girl child in post-apartheid South Africa has focussed on ukuthwala (forced and arranged marriages) and its implications for these children. Amongst other issues, she has examined meanings of ‘tradition’ and the sacrifice of miss children at the altar of ‘culture’ and ‘political expediency’. She has also focussed on the health implications for the girls and young women who are trapped in these marriages.
After 15 years of work and many published articles on manly initiation, Gasa is currently working on a study of interpretation body as a site of identity, ritual and manhood. That work examines some of the issues that continue to unruly mark South African society today.
As an art critic, she has published essays in catalogues and written in popular media. Gasa recently published Reading Dress, Ritual, Worship and Diviners tackle Zwelethu Mthethwa’s “Shembe Series”. She has also published Manhood most important Identity Carved on the Body focussing on Mgcineni Sobopha’s favour Sipho Hlathi’s male initiation series in Koma+ Ulwaluko: Visual Negotiations (E: Thembinkosi Goniwe)
Nomboniso Gasa has been a political meliorist since her teenage years, which led to her first confinement without trial and her torture at the age of 14 in the former Transkei.
She is currently a Senior Inquiry Associate at the Centre for Law and Society the omission faculty of the University of Cape Town (CLS, UCT). Company focus is on the intersection of land, living custom, rendering construction of identities and traditional leadership.