Vuloyimuni: How research on hostels, housing and intergovernmental relations took me to my roots

The autobiography was written to contribute to resolving housing issues in South Africa. It is a response to the plight of many South Africans who lived in squalor conditions in hostels. The constitutional imperative of the right to housing spurred the author to research on the living conditions of black people in hostels and government housing projects. She found that the Hostel Redevelopment Programme has indeed improved the living conditions of hostel dwellers. The noble government interventions to provide housing especially in the hostels and generally among South African communities were dented by shoddy workmanship by the contractors and corrupt tendencies by some of the stakeholders.  Vuloyimuni: How research on hostels, housing and intergovernmental relations took me to my roots is a microcosm of the weaknesses of the South African tender system, which led to incomplete housing projects with extreme structural defects, illegal occupation, illegal selling of the houses and vandalism. Nevertheless, the author presents a model for the successful completion of government housing projects through the synergistic relations between national, provincial and local government. The book also depicts the author’s resilience demonstrated through her humble beginnings of being raised by a single parent, being a hawker and eventually obtaining a doctoral degree in spite of the notorious apartheid system, poverty and patriarchal society. The democratic dispensation has admirable policies of gender equality, but women are still experiencing unprecedented gender-based violence. Nevertheless, the author’s life experiences attest that women who empower themselves through education will emancipate themselves against the social ills perpetrated against them. Vuloyimuni epitomises women’s resilience in a hostile world, characterised by misogyny and oppression of women in society and all spheres of life.