Salma Ismail - The Victoria Mxenge Housing Project: Women building communities through social activism and informal learning

Appendix A
Short biographies on Victoria Mxenge women and people interviewed

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Dedication

I dedicate this book to my son Ilanto his free, abundant and radiant spirit.

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The motivation for this book is to share how poor semi-schooled African women learned through social activism and community development in South Africa. It covers fieldwork research that I did from 1992 to 2003, putting together a detailed case study on the history of the Victoria Mxenge Housing Development Association. Document and follow up visits took place until 2012. During this time many people contributed to this book. I particularly wish to express my thanks to the Victoria Mxenge women, the director of the Peoples Dialogue, the architect (also known as the technical adviser) of Peoples Environmental Planning, and all the interviewees who participated in this study, for their time and patience. I am indebted to the women who shared their experiences with me over a long period of time and who were always inspirational.

I would also like to thank Sandy Shepherd from UCT Press for her endless patience and faith that the book would be realised. This book has greatly benefited from Liz Mackenzies editing and comments from the reviewers. I am thankful to them for making it readable to a wide-ranging readership. Then I am indebted to my family Mark, Mischa, Tariq and Ilan for remaining interested, for encouragement, and for moral and technical support. I am also grateful for moral support from many colleagues, family and friends, to ANFASA for the award and the University of Cape Town for sabbatical leave, which enabled me to write the book.

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Dr Salma Ismail holds a Doctorate in Gender and Adult Education from the University of Cape Town, where she is currently a senior lecturer, teaching Adult Education at all levels. She has also taught literacy in communities and been an activist in worker and political movements. Her research interests include adult learning in informal contexts, namely development projects and social movements, and how knowledge is produced in these sites, which can lead to social transformation. Salma is involved in the universitys Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) admissions process, where she assists staff and students to navigate this process. She was chair of the Centre for Higher Education and Developments (CHEDs) transformation committee from 2004 to 2009 and ran mentoring and diversity training workshops for both administrative and academic staff.

Salma has published in the field of feminist popular education, equity and institutional transformation. Her latest publications include a chapter in Holding Onto Transformative Practices in a University: Musings of a Feminist Popular Educator (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and a journal article, Researching transformation at a South African university: Ethical dilemmas in the politics of representation, in Studies in Higher Education (2011).

She is part of an international and national network of popular educators (PEN), is an adviser on the international board for the journal Studies in Adult Education, and a trustee of ASSET, a non-profit organisation that administers bursary funds for poor students.

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