Paper Title
Strategies For Life-Long Teaching and Learning, As Well Consciousness-Raising: A Case of Rural Vhavenda Women of Vhembe, South Africa

Abstract
This paper examines indigenous protest music performed by Vhavendasemi-literate and illiterate women, some of whom are employed as service workers in institutions of higher learning and government offices in the Vhembe District Municipality, Limpopo Province, in South Africa. Its purpose is to examine gender issues, women’s rights, in relation to tshigombelaandmalende protest lyrics, and to explore their role, relevance and impact. This paper also explores the significance of sociolinguistic aspect of the lyrics of the women’s indigenous protest music in interrogating culture, and Vhavenda culture in particular. In this study a triangulation of several research methods hasbeen employed. These are a combination of the qualitative methods, namely interviews and focus groups, as well as the quantitative method, which include content analysis of protest lyrics, the participants’ conversations, and their life story narratives. Moreover, consciousness-raising, whose aim is to validate women’s subjective experiences, as women and as people,is a goal as well as a ‘methodological tool’, as it has a major role in changing social inequality, and it begins with the standpoints and experiences of women. The protest songs that the rural women perform could serve other purposes such as teaching rural communities strategies of survival among poverty-stricken communities.