African Women Who Fought for Anti-apartheid Resistance
8 women in the archive worked for anti-apartheid resistance. They came from different countries and different centuries, but each of them saw a wrong that others accepted and set out to change it. Read their stories to see how the same cause looked from very different lives.
8 women in the archive
ModernBaleka Mbete
South African politician and poet. ANC veteran; first woman Speaker of the National Assembly; Deputy President; advocate for women's representation and the arts.
ColonialDulcie September
South African anti-apartheid activist. ANC representative in France; assassinated in Paris in 1988; symbol of the regime's reach and of international solidarity with the struggle.
ColonialEllen Kuzwayo
South African teacher, social worker, and activist. President of the Black Consumer Union; accused in the Treason Trial; author of Call Me Woman; champion of Black women's voices.
ColonialHelen Suzman
South African MP who was for 13 years the sole parliamentary voice against apartheid. Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize; visited political prisoners including Mandela.
ColonialLilian Ngoyi
Anti-apartheid leader who became the first woman elected to the ANC executive. Led the 1956 Women's March against pass laws and was tried in the Treason Trial.
ModernMiriam Tlali
The first Black South African woman to publish a novel inside South Africa, whose banned books about township life under apartheid opened the door for generations of Black women writers.
ColonialNadine Gordimer
South African novelist and short-story writer. Nobel Prize in Literature (1991); used her work to oppose apartheid and to explore race, power, and moral responsibility.
ColonialRuth First
Anti-apartheid activist, journalist, and scholar. Exposed apartheid brutality through writing; assassinated by letter bomb in Mozambique in 1982.