Guerrillas and Combative Mothers: Women and the Armed Struggle in South Africa by Siphokazi Magadla [New]

ISBN: 9781869145163 / 186914516X - Guerrillas and Combative Mothers: Women and the Armed Struggle in South Africa by Siphokazi Magadla. Published by UKZN Press, 2023. New. 222 pp.

Guerrillas and Combative Mothers offers a first-hand account of women’s participation in the armed struggle against apartheid from 1961 to 1994 and their lives in a democratic South Africa. It is based on 40 life histories of women who fought with the rural-based Poqo, the military wing of the Pan Africanist Congress; the exile-based uMkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the African National Congress; and the township-based self-defence units.

Centring women’s agency, commitment, beliefs and actions, it details the various ways in which women came to be politicised and the decisions and circumstances that led them to join the armed struggle inside South Africa and in exile. Siphokazi Magadla discusses the forms of military training they received, combat activities, their personal transformation as women and as combatants, their participation in the South African National Defence Force-led demobilisation process and their contributions to the democratic transformation of the SANDF. By illuminating the different eras and arenas of women’s participation, this book shows the broadness of the armed struggle against apartheid as a historical truth and as a matter of gender equality and justice for an inclusive and more democratic future.

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