University of Tulsa

Black Women Poets in Exile: The Weapon of Words

Author(s): Lynda Gilfillan
Source: Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring, 1992), pp. 79-93
Published by: University of Tulsa
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/463783
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 Black Women Poets in Exile:
The Weapon of Words

Lynda Gilfillan
University of Pretoria

Let's have poems

blood-red in colour...
(A.N.C.Kumalo)1

This paper focuses on the anthology Malibongwe ("In praise of women"),

which is subtitled ANC Women: Poetry is also their weapon. Malibongwe
forms part of the corpus of literature produced by the national liberation
movement in South Africa. As such it reflects and participates in the
national liberation struggle that Amilcar Cabral has defined as "the regain?
ing of the historical personality of [a] people.. . their return to history
through the destruction of the imperialist domination to which they have
been subjected."2 The Malibongwe poems are themselves arenas of struggle
in that they resist the codes associated with traditional western aesthetic
norms and practices; they are, according to editor Sono Molefe (Lindiwe
Mabuza), "agents as well as reminders," intended to raise morale as well as
political consciousness.3 The consciousness-raising process refers entirely to
the task of national liberation. The anthology has what Molefe describes as
"a style and aesthetic that are thrillingly new: nerve-filled and public" (p. 4).
A vigorous rhetoric is an aspect of that aesthetic, as is evident in the poetry
of contemporary oral poet Mzwakhe Mbuli with its characteristic "political
argument; calls to action... [and] history lessons."4 According to Molefe,
the ANC poets "have a mission" and "offer no apology for being propagan?
dists.'" Where the political is privileged over the personal, there is place
neither for romance, fantasy, or personal angst. Instead an aesthetic of
"pounding reality" is adopted as the means of achieving the "African Revolu?
tion." Above all, the poets speak with a "collective voice" and are "part of the
face of the liberation movement of South Africa" (pp. 4-5).
"Undivided," the ANC women poets commit themselves to the "destruc?
tion of exploitation of man by man" in their country (Molefe, p. 5). They
identify themselves wholly with the struggle waged by the ANC men. The
subtitle of Malibongwe, "Poetry is also their weapon," puts its emphasis on the

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"also": the ANC women use culture as a weapon of the struggle just as their
male counterparts do?Mongane Wally Serote, Keorapetse Kgositsile, and
John Matshikiza. The subtitle of Malibongwe reveals, too, that these women
are combatants whose arsenal includes weapons other than words. Many of
the poets are veterans of the struggle: poet-activist Rebecca Matlou fled
Soweto after the 1976 uprising,5 and Ilva Mackay served two terms of
imprisonment because of her involvement in the resistance movement. But
while Malibongwe means "in praise of women" and while the contributors to
the anthology are all women, these poets perceive themselves primarily as
"ANC Women." They do not address gender because, according to Cherryl
Walker, this issue is "masked by black women's common experience of racial
oppression."6 In South Africa, between the mid-'70s and the late-'80s, the
literate voices of the ANC women articulated resistance to the oppression of
black women insofar as such oppression related to race. The poetry of the
ANC women is a weapon against a system of domination that is defined
variously as fascism, imperialism, racism, and capitalism.
Because of the ANC women's overt identification with the liberation
movement, it may be more appropriate to evaluate their writing as "re?
sistance literature" than as "women's writing." Resistance literature, accord?
ing to Barbara Harlow, "articulate[s] a role for [itself]... within the struggle
alongside the gun."7 The armed struggle is, in Cabral's terms, "an act of
insemination upon history."8 The poetry of the ANC women could thus be
regarded as part of a process that begins with male insemination and ends, it
is hoped, with the birth of a new nation. In the poem "Umkhonto" by Baleka
Kgositsile (pp. 15-18), the dominant images are those of gestation and birth.
Umkhonto, the Spear, is celebrated through the use of similar gestational
images by other poets, most notably by Lindiwe Mabuza. Her praise poem
"Mangaung" (pp. 9-14) commemorates the founding in 1912 of the African
National Congress at Mangaung, a township outside Bloemfontein,9 and
links its birth to that of Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961.10 This poem also
constitutes an act of historical reclamation of Bloemfontein: as the name
that "the enemy" has given to the "cradle" (p. 9, 1. 10) of the African
National Congress, Bloemfontein has become a place where "poisonous
crops / Of injustice / Bloom" (p. 9,11.16-18). Poems such as "Mangaung" and
"Umkhonto" are typical of resistance literature in that they activate a
history described by Edward Said as "repressed or resistant."11
The six sections of the anthology commemorate historical moments in
the national liberation struggle and contain within their arrangement an
implicit narrative. This narrative is defined by Molefe as the liberation of
South Africa by the African National Congress. The opening section,
"Africa shall be free," begins with Mabuzas celebratory recording of the
birth of the ANC and of its military arm and suggests that the narrative of

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the anthology is also that of rebirth. The imagery of birth pervades the
anthology: in a poem entitled "A new child is born," Gloria Mtungwa
records the founding of Umkhonto:

One pitiful scream

a push
and the child
is born
the future
OUR SHIELD
OUR SPEAR
OURM.K. (p. 21,11. 27-34)

The second section of Malibongwe is entitled "Birth and genocide." Her

the women portray themselves as the mothers of soldiers. In Baleka Kgos
sile's "For my unborn child," the play on words links the birth of a son to
dawn of a new era and to "hundreds of sons / who will be Africa's sun" (p.
11. 33-34). In this poem, the ANC woman addresses her unborn child in
manner that simultaneously recalls and contradicts Roy Campbell's "Th
Zulu Girl" (1930):12 the mother in Kgositsile's poem is the conduit
historical memory, linking the experience of the past to the future, as t
humiliations of her own life determine her child's destiny:

born with each determined kick and move

with each ripple on my stomach
like the anger of my people
Mould of life
come join us
Together we must hunt the fascist down (p. 26, 11. 46-51)

The third section records specific events in the history of the resistance
movement. Entitled "Spirit of Soweto: the ghetto, massacres, resolve," it
commemorates the commitment of the women celebrated. In Lindiwe
Mabuza's poem "Soweto wishes," the fighting talk of the women is unam?
biguous as they demand rather than plead: "Please put a gun / In this itching
hand" (p. 42,11. 1-2):

With gun in hand

I could feel the fire of joy
For I would be one with many (p. 42,11. 16-18)

The desire for solidarity and communal identity is repeated in Rebecca

Matlou's "Mother patriot." Here the poet's sense of individual identity is

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expanded into an inclusive, communal self as the personal pronoun "I" is
conflated into the first person plural. A common awareness of injustice
forges a new identity: "me you us" (p. 44,1. 10). The Soweto uprising signals
the era of resistance, and in Matlou's poem, the communal identity of "me
you us" expands even further into an inclusive category, "mother- wife patriot
human being woman" (1. 22). The category "woman" is not separated?or
separable?from that of mother-wife, soldier, and member of the human
race.

The fourth section of the anthology contains poems deali

specific contribution of women to the struggle. This section, "W
struggle," records the activities of Charlotte Maxeke (foundi
the ANC), Lilian Ngoyi (leader of the 1955 and 1956 women
campaign marches and president of the ANC Women's L
Moodley (grassroots organizer), and Dorothy Nyembe (leade
contingent in the 1956 march, subsequently imprisoned for f
The ANC women poets' voices thus participate in a long tradi
women's resistance. Alice Ntsongo's poem "Women arise" (pp.
this history back to 1913, the year in which Charlotte Maxek
woman executive member, led the "warrior-women" (p. 49,
successful anti-pass campaign in Winburg.
The realistic images in the early part of Mabuza's praise poem
visionary images of a future that the defiant rural woman
create. Section four of the anthology also includes a poem th
anonymous rural woman whose strength is a paradoxical by
apartheid. In her praise poem "Super-Women (Grown by
Mabuza records the haunting, defiant voice of the anonymous
who suffers the triple oppression of race, class, and gender:

everyday everywhere
beleaguered by laws and
bound to infant and hut
she must face a land criss-crossed
and dissected by droughts (p. 52, 11. 21-25)

But despite her abject situation, the dispossession and physica

is able creatively to reassert her newly emergent self. While it
a note of bitter longing, the tone is one of confidence, if no

without a man
i am man
without a husband
i am husband-wife (p. 53,11. 36-39)

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Clearly?even ironically?the woman's identity is forged out of her experi?
ence of lack and deprivation, the legacy of apartheid laws such as the Land
Act, Group Areas Act, and influx control:13

do you hear her song?

without without without always
i must be without (p. 54,11. 73-75)

This woman's identity is constructed within and by the actual circumstances

of her historical situation. The role to which she is traditionally consigned14
is expanded beyond that of agriculturalist; she must purge the land of the evil
legacy of colonial conquest. This experience results in "mounting anger"
(p. 55,1.140), as the women's "strong and stern... faces unshroud / revealing
a blaze concealed by custom / and time" (11. 142-44). Their consciousnesses
raised, their identities expanded, they actively engage in a process of ending
apartheid oppression: "she, the woman, the man / exorcises the land" (p. 56,
11. 149-50).
Together with her people, she has refused the lot thrust upon her;
together with her sons, she has determined to "claim [their] land" (p. 56,1.
159). The poem broadens into a vision of a future where her quest for justice
has obviated the need for "arms" as well as "alms" (p. 56,11. 183-84). In this
future, the traditional role of woman in the family is affirmed, and her
traditional identity recreated:

with all
i am
with man
i am human
with husband
i am wife
with father
the children must grow (p. 57,11. 194-201)

The poem ends with a single image of communal solidarity. This solidarity
underpins the poem's final affirmative vision of a future where the unyield?
ing, drought-stricken earth of an apartheid South Africa is transformed into
one of fertile abundance:

the earth brings forth

without without
we will no longer be
without (p. 57,11. 203-06)

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 It should be no surprise that the fourth section, devoted to the contribu?
tion of women to the liberation struggle, is followed by a longer section
called "Our men who fought and died and fight." This section documents the
histories of heroes: Duma Nokwe, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, and the
young Soweto martyr figure, Solomon Mahlangu. The relatively privileged
position that this section enjoys reflects the historical reality that more men
than women have been able to participate actively in the struggle. Through?
out this anthology, the soldier's uniform and gun override the issue of gender.
The final section, "Phases of struggle: resolution, exile, perspective, love,
call to justice and arms," records the emotional and psychological effects of
exile, as the mood swerves from defiance and hope to the nostalgia and pain
of Baleka Kgositsile's "Exile Blues" (pp. 90-91). In this section, lyrical voices
may be heard, full of what Molefe describes as the "sweetness of heavy
harmony" (p. 4), but the poets' overriding preoccupation remains the libera?
tion struggle. In Lindiwe Mabuza's lyrical love poem "Faces of commitment"
(pp. 106-07), individual loneliness and longing are finally obscured?or
even erased?by the central motif of war and resistance:

I awoke
With the thought of you
This morning
You of that land
Where jacarandas scorn
This miscarriage of justice
There where our people
Battle for birth (p. 107,11.35-42)

The poem ends with the terrible affirmation that, though war may destroy
and divide?it "scatters [the lovers] apart" (p. 107,1. 72)?at the same time,
"It also defines precisely / To bind us closer" (11. 73-74).
Malibongwe clearly fulfills Harlow's definition of the role of poetry in the
liberation struggle: "a force for mobilizing a collective response to occupa?
tion and domination"; the poetry is, simultaneously, a "repository for popu?
lar memory and consciousness."15 The women portray themselves as partici?
pants in the historic struggle for national liberation. The woman resistance
poet, who uses words as her weapon in the struggle against an oppressive
white minority regime, valorizes solidarity with her male compatriots.
Feminism has recently entered the discourse of ANC women members,
but gender issues were not the major concern of the ANC or of the ANC
women at the time Malibongwe was published,16 and so the "women's
voices"?as opposed to the "ANC women's voices"?that one hears in the
anthology are submerged, solitary, and fragmented. Yet while the voice of

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the ANC resistance soldier dominates the anthology, there are other voices
to be heard. Molefe invites the reader to listen for the "singular voices," to
"discover some peculiarities" (p. 4). One such voice is that of Jumaimah
Motaung, who registers resistance of another kind: resistance to the oppres?
sion that women suffer within the ANC?an oppression that relates to the
general condition of women under patriarchy. Motaung's poem "The great
day?August 9th" commemorates the women's march to the Union Build?
ings in 1956 and celebrates the women's resolve to "show the regime / They
were not what the regime thought they were?robots" (p. 58, 11. 7-8). The
poem implies, however, that the women are perceived as being robots not
only by the regime, but also by their husbands, thus raising the issue of male
interference in women's political activity:

One husband might have reprimanded the wife,

"What do you people think you are up to?"
And the wife might have answered bravely,
"We know our aims and objectives
We mean to carry them out"
Your Mother and my Mother. (11. 9-14)

Motaung's poem does not investigate the implications of the husband's

question. His voice "What do you people think you are up to?" is identical in
tone to the voice of the typical white policeman. It is the universal voice of
patriarchy. But while the women of the 1956 march succeed in asserting
themselves against patriarchy in the guise of the regime, the poem as a whole
merely confirms the fact that the regime, as distinct from the male authority
figure, is the target of the women's resistance.
The ANC women poets do not examine the effects of traditional roles on
their ability to become full participants?and hence beneficiaries?in the
struggle for national liberation. There is no explicitly articulated dismay at
the voice of patriarchy within their own ranks. Diana Russell draws a
correlation between the low percentage of women political detainees (five to
twelve percent) and the fact that "women are underrepresented not only in
leadership positions but also in the rank-and-file of the movement."17 By
1975 there was still only one woman on the National Executive Committee;
women continue to be underrepresented, notwithstanding a recommenda?
tion in 1991 by the ANC Women's League that women should comprise at
least thirty percent of the elected National Executive Committee of fifty
members. This proposal was rejected at the 1991 National Conference of
the ANC after lengthy and acrimonious debate (eleven of the current fifty-
two member NEC are female). This de facto situation of women has changed
little, even though the issue of the struggle for women's rights has recently

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been foregrounded.18 The creed has been that national liberation is a
prerequisite for women's liberation.
Gloria Mtungwa's poem "Militant Beauty" rejects western feminism,
implying that it is the concern of bourgeois white women in a context
dominated by consumerist, capitalist values. Mtungwa's militant ANC
woman scorns such aspirations as "luxurious apartments and flashy cars"
(p. 51, 1. 3); she rejects a "distorted" woman's liberation that devalues the
traditional, supportive function provided by women in the context of racial
oppression:

Distorted womens lib

refusing to mother kids
and provide family comfort
harassing a tired enslaved dad
have never been her deeds. (11. 5-9)

The ANC soldier-poet deliberately chooses the role of mother and nurturer:
she produces sons who fight "the corrupt illegal minority" (1. 23). Moreover,
she willingly assumes the role of supportive wife who sustains the "enslaved"
father of the oppressed black family. Her own freedom depends on her
identification with "progressive ideology" (1. 25)?the democratic non-
racialism of the ANC?which did not yet formally include the notion of
non-sexism. Mtungwa blames the white minority regime entirely for
women's enforced "passivity" (1. 26)?a state from which women can escape
only by becoming the "essence of militancy" (1. 27). The battle of women is
for "liberty" (1. 20) and "justice for all humanity" (1. 29); it is not waged on
behalf of the mother who remains oppressed within the family structure,
"slaving for [its members'] well-being" (1. 12). However, the use of the word
"slaving" here represents a slip in the heroic discourse of resistance, signify?
ing the submerged woman's voice amid the chorus of ANC women's voices.
In its avoidance of a potentially divisive issue such as that of gender
oppression within the movement's ranks, the poetry of the ANC women
reveals a negative feature of resistance literature: in Maxime Rodinson's
words, the "narcissism" whereby "the slightest criticism is seen as criminal
sacrilege." "In particular," he continues, "it becomes quite inconceivable
that the oppressed might themselves be oppressing others."19 A corollary of
this avoidance is, as Harlow argues, the tendency of resistance writers to
focus outward, to direct their consciousness toward "the larger arena [of the
struggle against imperialism and exploitation] within which they write."20
Thus Baleka Kgositsile celebrates "ZAPU, ZANU, SWAPO, PLO, POLI-
SARIO" (p. 18, 1. 146) in her poem "Umkhonto"; and Lindiwe Mabuza

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recalls the struggles of Zimbabwe in "To Zambia" (pp. 94-97) as well as those
of Chile and Vietnam in "To a comrade" (pp. 100-02).
It has not been possible for me to discuss Malibongwe without referring to
its "lacks," its "avoidances." Yet the gaps and silences in this anthology of
poetry by women may be explained in terms of historical and cultural
realities. Poets like Mtungwa regarded traditional gender roles as providing
women with an enabling function. ANC activist Elaine Mohamed recently
argued in this way:

I think women's role in the struggle is a very strong one. Like my mother, they
are the supportive base in holding families together.... If men had to cope
with the responsibilities that women shoulder, their role would be much more
difficult.21

The fact that the Malibongwe poets consistently collapse the categories of
woman, wife, and mother bears out this assertion. In addition, as I have
already indicated, the personal is submerged in the political. Although this
writing does not concern itself with the feminist project as defined, for
example, by Andrea Dworkin?as the destruction of male domination, a
project whose success depends on the subversion of "patriarchal culture,
based on father-right and nation-states,"22 we need to be circumspect in
applying Anglo-American or European critical paradigms to the assessment
of writing such as that produced by the ANC women. Malibongwe is writing
by women; clearly, however, it refuses the notion of a universal category of
"women's writing," if such a category is predicated on an essentialist notion
of woman. The poetry of the ANC women subverts, problematizes, and
redefines such a category.
Nonetheless, there is room for cross-over between Anglo-American criti?
cal discussions and South African literature, as long as the particular
historical and cultural situation is held clearly in view. In 1982 South
African exile Dabi Nkululeko argued that research undertaken on the
subject of the "native women under colonialism" will be invalidated if the
"Euro-settler" researcher carries with her the trappings of her historical
position (her links with imperialism), her class position (petty bourgeois),
and her affiliation with the colonist-settler nation. Nkululeko proposed that
theorization undertaken by the "settler-woman" should occur within the
context of the struggles in society as a whole.23 But the term itself "Euro-
settler woman," far from possessing a universal validity, is likely to have
currency only in extreme Africanist discourse today. It is problematic
because it reifies racial and gender categories and reinforces the binarism
that underpins racist and sexist thought-systems. Nkululeko's caveats have
come under scrutiny. Research undertaken by whites on black women was

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recently defended by Cherryl Walker in her study "Women and Gender in
Southern Africa to 1945." Walker dismisses the "over-concern" of contem?
porary researchers with the correctness of their theoretical position in
regard to debates on race and class, arguing that this concern merely results
in critical paralysis and retards the development of local women's studies.
Walker, however, endorses Nkululeko by proposing that a historical rather
than a purely theoretical approach be adopted.24
In what might tentatively be described as postresistance South Africa, the
simple opposition between black and white, native and settler, is being
abandoned in favor of more complex models. In a seminal ANC paper
entitled "Preparing Ourselves for Freedom," Albie Sachs advanced the idea
of a richly inclusive local culture in a South Africa where

each cultural tributary contributes towards and increases the majesty of the
river of South African-ness. While each one of us has a particularly intimate
relationship with one or other cultural matrix, this does not mean that we are
locked into a series of cultural "own affairs" ghettoes.25

A relationship with a western cultural matrix does not, by implication,

disqualify the critic from contributing to the flow of this river. Sachs's
organic image subverts?it may even negate?the binary models that in the
past have been set up in, as well as by, South African discourse. The
Charterist notion of non-racialism has entered the flow of the nation's
discourse; to shift the metaphor, a space has been created in which concepts
that may have been dismissed as mere colonial trappings (such as feminism)
are today perceived as offering the possibility for paradigm shifts. As new
conceptual spaces are carved out, oppressive practices may become more
vulnerable to attack. It is encouraging that feminism has entered the current
discourse of ANC members?female as well as male.
The Malibongwe poets produced a particular cultural artifact at a specific
historical conjuncture. The circumstances surrounding the production and
publication of Malibongwe should therefore be taken into account. Because
the ANC was, at the time, a banned organization, and the writing of most of
its members was banned, Malibongwe was published in the early 1980s by two
Swedish anti-apartheid groups during the period of black resistance that Sue
Williamson dates from 1976 in her study Resistance Art in South Africa.26
According to Williamson, 1982?the year that marks the ANC's seminal
Botswana conference on culture?is a significant date in the development of
the culture of resistance.27 The publication of Malibongwe should be viewed
against the background of this broad emphasis on culture as a means of
resistance within the liberation movement. The contributors to Malibongwe
were members of the ANC Women's Section, which was set up when the

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movement was forced into exile in the 1960s, but the Women's Section did
not have the autonomy enjoyed by the original ANC Womens League in the
period before exile. The Women s League was "an independent body with its
own constitution and laws, and it could make its own decisions," whereas the
Women's Section was set up under the ANC's proviso that, as Mavivi
Manzini explains, "there should only be one organization in exile, and that
[men and women] should carry out [their] work collectively."28 The psycho?
logical experience of exile may have intensified the need for solidarity
between men and women. Clearly, however, the emphasis on a collective
ANC identity and on the collective struggle against the regime may be
advanced as explanations for the fact that the ANC women reserved the
weapon of poetry to support their comrades.
More recent developments in ANC policy with regard to the question of
gender, however, are likely to influence the nature of black women's writing
in South Africa. The ANC recognizes that it is not enough merely to pay lip
service to the issue of women's liberation. It is no longer enough to insist, as
Gertrude Shope has done, that "the question of women's emancipation be
written into every document of the ANC."29 A correspondent in the official
journal of the ANC recently referred to the persistent underrepresentation
of women on its National Executive Committee, admitting that the ANC
"has a long way to go to put into practice its non-sexist policies," and called
for "the participation of women in decision-making structures of political
organizations and government, at local, regional and national levels."30 But
the re-established Women's League will have to guard against collapsing its
own program into that of the ANC. It can begin by vigilantly monitoring
the implementation of the "National Commission on the Emancipation of
Women" first put forward by the Women's Section in 1987 and officially
taken up by the ANC in 1991. The site of struggle has shifted: todays ANC
women know that a postapartheid South Africa will benefit them little as
long as oppressive practices such as rape, wife-battery, and lobola (bride-
price)?as well as political underrepresentation?persist.
Black women may yet write poetry that is a weapon in a broader liberation
struggle. The "warrior-women" poets of the past may even become legislators
in a future South Africa from which father-figure as well as nation-state have
been exorcised. If so, they may then find that while words are effective
literary weapons, they may also be used to weave.

NOTES

1 A. N. C. Kumalo, "Red our Colour," in Barry Feinberg, ed., Poets to the Peo
South African Freedom Poems (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1980), p.

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 2 Amilcar Cabral, Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings of Amilcar Cabral,
trans. Michael Wolfers (London: Heinemann, 1980), p. 130.
3 Sono Molefe, ed., Foreword, Malibongwe: ANC Women: Poetry is also their
weapon (Sweden: African National Congress, n.d.), pp. 4-5. Sono Molefe's real
name is Lindiwe Mabuza, ANC representative in Sweden in the early 1980s at the
time of Malibongwe's publication. Further citations will appear parenthetically in the
text.

4 See Karen Press, rev. of Before Dawn and Unbroken Spirit by Mzwakhe Mbuli, in
"New Coin Poetry," 26, No. 1 (1990), 51.
5 Rebecca Matlou is the nom de guerre adopted by Sankie Dolly Nkondo
currently chief representative of the African National Congress in Bonn, German
An anthology, Flames of Fury and other poems (Fordsburg: COSAW, 1990), wa
recently published under her own name. In keeping with her Malibongwe poems,
these are "poems by a militant... part of the struggle" against "imperialism
apartheid" (Patrick Wilmot, Introduction, pp. 7-8).
6 Cherryl Walker, "Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945: An over
view," in Women and Gender in Southern Africa to 1945, ed. Cherryl Walker (Cap
Town: David Philip, 1990), p. 27.
7 Barbara Harlow, Resistance Literature (New York: Methuen, 1987), p. xvii.
8 Cabral, "National liberation and culture," in Return to the Source: Selecte
Speeches of Amilcar Cabral, ed. Africa Information Service (New York: Month
Review, 1973), p. 55. Quoted in Harlow, p. 10.
9 Soon after the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 and the passin
of repressive laws, Pixley ka Isaka Seme initiated a movement to unite African people
against white minority domination. The South African Native National Congre
was formed on 8 January 1912. It was renamed the African National Congress
1923. One of the three capital cities of South Africa, Bloemfontein (literally "flower-
fountain") is where the Appellate division of the Supreme Court is situated. It is thus
the judicial capital of South Africa.
10 Umkhonto we Sizwe (the Spear of the Nation, also known as "M. K.") wa
established on 16 December 1961, a year after the banning of the ANC in 196
when a State of Emergency was declared and two thousand political activists were
arrested. Nelson Mandela and others decided to form a military organization that
could conduct a sabotage campaign and prepare for guerilla warfare against th
regime. Its Manifesto (1961) states:

The Government has interpreted the peacefulness of the movement [ANC] as

weakness; the people's non-violent policies have been taken as a green light for
Government violence. Refusal to resort to force has been interpreted by the
Government as an invitation to use armed force against the people without
any fear of reprisals. The methods of Umkhonto we Sizwe mark a break with
that past.

Quoted in John Pampallis, Foundations of the New South Africa (Cape Town: Maskew
Miller Longman, 1991), p. 221.

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 11 Edward Said, "Orientalism Reconsidered," Cultural Critique, 1 (1985), 94;
quoted in Harlow, p. 28.
12 Roy Campbell (1901-1957) published "The Zulu Girl" in 1930. Its fourth stanza
presents an image of restraint and passivity that is absent from Kgositsile's poem:

Yet in that drowsy stream his flesh imbibes

An old unquenched unsmotherable heat?
The curbed ferocity of beaten tribes,
The sullen dignity of their defeat. (11. 13-16)

In A Century of South African Poetry, introd. and ed. Michael Chapman (Johan?
nesburg: Ad Donker, 1981), p. 122.
13 The Natives Land Act of 1913 set aside less than 7.5% of South Africa's land as
"reserves," the only areas where Africans, 70% of the country's population, could buy
land. Its direct effects were to prevent African farmers from becoming successful
competitors with whites and to force migrant workers to the mines, industries, and
white farms. The land added by the Native Trust and Land Act of 1936 entrenched
the system of cheap migrant labor; mass removals consolidated the Bantustan system
that eventually deprived Africans of their South African citizenship. The Group
Areas Act of 1950 designated specific urban areas for occupation by particular racial
groups ("Native," later "Bantu"; "European," later "white"; "coloured" or "Indian,"
later "Asian"?according to the Population Registration Act of 1950); it resulted in
the forced removal of urban black residents and traders to "dormitory" townships,
usually located some distance from urban centers, without electricity or proper
amenities. Influx Control Laws restricted the flow of unemployed Africans into
"white" areas.
14 The note to the poem states that certain tasks are "traditionally relegated to
women" (p. 57). The use of the term "relegated" (rather than "delegated") is implicitly
critical of the unfair division of labor in traditional African communities, yet it
significantly glosses over this massive area of oppression and exploitation. See Francis
Wilson and Mamphela Ramphele, Uprooting Poverty: The South African Challenge
(Cape Town: David Philip, 1989), especially pp. 177-80, for an analysis of the
position of rural women. Their predicament is located within the broad context of
colonial conquest described in chapter 10, "The Burden of the Past."
15 Harlow, p. 34.
16 Feminism in the sense of the struggles of women is not a foreign notion in
Africa, however. (The problem with the notion "feminism" is largely a semantic one
since the term usually signifies a western construct emerging from a specific set of
first-world struggles.) As the Malibongwe poems show, black South African women
have waged many historic struggles. They were largely responsible for drawing up the
"Women's Charter" in 1954 at the inaugural conference of the Federation of South
African Women (FSAW). Its Preamble states:

We the women of South Africa, wives, mothers, working women and house?
wives, Africans, Indians, European and Coloured, hereby declare our aim of

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 striving for the removal of all laws, regulations, conventions and customs that
discriminate against us as women, and that deprive us in any way of our
inherent right to the advantages, responsibilities and opportunities that
society offers to any one section of the population.

It thus predates the Freedom Charter of 1955 and perhaps even provided a model
for it.
17 Diana E. H. Russell, ed., "Introduction: Revisiting the Land of My Birth," lives
of Courage: Women for a New South Africa (New York: Basic Books, 1989), p. 24.
18 In 1987 a conference was held that for the first time put women's issues on the
agenda. Two years later, the ANC Constitutional Guidelines (1989) included a
special clause for women: "Women shall have equal rights in all spheres of public and
private life and the state shall take affirmative action to eliminate inequalities and
discrimination between the sexes." Recent debates have problematized such clauses,
however. See Gertrude Shope, Cosmopolitan (South Africa), January 1990, pp.
42-44; Dorothy Driver, "Not at Home: in quest of our own voices," Sash, 34, No. 2
(1991); and Frene Ginwala, Maureen Mackintosh, and Doreen Massey, "Putting
Women on the Agenda," Conference held at the University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, November 1990. The form that women's struggles have taken does,
however, coincide with those elsewhere in the third world where, as Kumari Jayawar-
dena demonstrates, women's emancipation has generally been "acted out against a
background of nationalist struggles aimed at achieving political independence,
asserting a national identity and modernizing society." Issues such as women's
subordination within the family, for example, have not formed the specific focus of
such struggles. In Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World (London: Zed Books,
1986), p. 3.
19 Maxime Rodinson, Introduction, People without a Country: The Kurds and
Kurdistan, ed. Gerard Chaliand (London: Zed Press, 1980), p. 5; cited in Harlow,
p. 29.
20 Harlow, p. 46.
21 Elaine Mohamed, "Sexual Terrorism," in lives of Courage, p. 25.
22 Andrea Dworkin, Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics
(London: Women's Press, 1982), pp. 61-62.
23 Dabi Nkululeko, "The Right to Self-Determination in Research: Azanian
Women," in Christine N. Qunta, ed., Women in Southern Africa (Johannesburg:
Skotaville, 1987), pp. 101-02.
24 Walker, p. 3.
25 Albie Sachs, "Preparing Ourselves for Freedom," in Spring is Rebellious: Argu?
ments about cultural freedom by Albie Sachs and respondents, ed. Ingrid de Kok and
Karen Press (Cape Town: Buchu, 1990), p. 25. Sachs's arguments have provoked a
variety of responses that problematize many of his own assumptions on such difficult
areas as cultural identity. These responses have been published in two recent
collections: Spring is Rebellious and Exchanges: South African Writingin Transition, ed.
Duncan Brown and Bruno van Dyk (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press,
1991).

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 26 Sue Williamson, Introduction, Resistance Art in South Africa (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1989), pp. 8-10.
27 The festival and conference held in 1982 in Gaborone, Botswana, under the
title "Art Towards Social Development and Change in South Africa" had as its theme
culture and resistance and drew over eight hundred South African participants. A
resolution taken held that "cultural work is part and parcel of the struggle for freedom
in South Africa" ("Sechaba," August 1982). The Department of Arts and Culture of
the ANC was established in 1983.
28 Mavivi Manzini, "Women and the African National Congress," in lives of
Courage, p. 127.
29 Gertrude Shope, "ANC women's launch in August," New Nation, 14-21 June
1990, p. 12.
30 ANC, "Affirmative Action," Ma^ibu^e, August 1991, pp. 27-28.

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