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Review by Sue Rakoczy IHM
St Joseph’s Theological Institute, Cedara
Grace & Truth 2013/1
This is a powerful book which tells stories too long unknown. After democracy and freedom in 1994, it gradually emerged that during the Struggle women’s and men’s experiences had often been vastly different. The years of the most intense opposition to apartheid in the 60s, 70s and 80s coincided with the rise of feminist movements in the West. Yet the dignity and equality of women was an issue on the far back burner of the South African liberation movements. Political liberation was first and foremost.
But the women were there, as they always are. Sometimes they were accepted as comrades in MK, sometimes raped in the camps. From Sharpeville (1960) on, increasing numbers of South Africans left the country to work for liberation. The men led the movements; the women followed with their children. This book tells the moving stories of seventeen women who spent time – often more than twenty years – in exile. Some are familiar names such as Brigalia Bam, who chaired the Independent Electoral Commission and Baleke Mbete, current national chairperson of the ANC. Lauretta Ngcobo, the editor, spent thirty-one years in exile and has won several prestigious literary awards. Ellen Pheko tells her story, but two of her daughters, Liepello and Mohau, tell theirs too, offering a different perspective. They were born in exile (as was Ellen’s third daughter) and as they travelled from country to country were told constantly that eventually they would ‘go home’. This, of course happened in the 90s – but South Africa was a strange new country, not ‘home’ as it was for their mother. Ruth Carneson and Elizabeth Trew describe their years of exile in poetry.
Neither the PAC nor the ANC were open and supportive of women. Ngcobo’s husband A.B. was an important PAC leader but when she arrived in Zambia she states that “...we discovered that our own organisation was not ready to accept us as full members of the PAC because we were women” (:121). AnnMarie Wolpe describes the ANC position: “Unfortunately, the ANC was not sympathetic to the women’s movement at all, even after there had been a breakthrough in 1988 with Oliver Tambo recognising the role women played. There was still a feeling that the women’s movement would prove a distraction from the real struggle issues in South Africa” (:207-208). Barbara Bell remembers “the levels of sexism and the harassment suffered by many of the young women in Mazimbu (Tanzania), often at the hands of visiting leaders or male staff members” and that women who fell pregnant would have their studies terminated while the men “were sent for brief periods of punishment in the fields before carrying on as before” (:25).
All the stories tell of immense personal courage. Some read as intricate travelogues, as the women and their children moved from one African country to another, and some eventually to England. For a few, Swaziland was the first place of exile. Several speak of the warmth of hospitality of the people of Zambia. Although the Soviet Union provided military training to both men and women, interestingly there is no narrative of exile there.
The decision to go into exile was sometimes made very quickly; this was Nomsa Judith Mkhwanazi’s experience, who left her one-month old daughter with her parents. The women had full responsibility for their children as they moved from country to country while the men were involved in political work and military training. Ngcobo comments that her husband A.B. “had no job, never having worked in all our married life except as a student here and there” (:129).
Various people who held or now hold important government positions appear throughout the book: Jacob Zuma, Mac Maharaj, Manto Tshabalala, Joe Modise, Ronnie Kasrils, Joe Slovo, together with others such as Chris Hani and Oliver Tambo.
The narratives describe the splits in the PAC and the tensions in the ANC. They also speak of a type of apartheid in the exile experience, with white women having a somewhat easier experience. But England and the United States were still places of exile even though some aspects of Western culture were familiar.
Although the women who speak in this book have diverse experiences, there are common threads. There is flight and fear – for themselves their children, their husbands. Raids from the South African Security Branch and informers often took place in Swaziland, Botswana and Lesotho. There is displacement from one country to another, beginning anew as they moved. There is the struggle to provide food, clothing and education for their children. The distance from their families in South Africa was painful; communication was poor and letters could be lost or intercepted. Sometimes they learned of the death of family members only much later.
For those who spent their exile years in England or the United States, the experience while still difficult, provided advantages. Women such as Mathabo Kunene who earned a bachelor’s degree in English in the US and Nomsa Judith Mkhwanazi who pursued a bachelor of education degree in England had educational opportunities that were impossible in South Africa and their children had the benefit of escaping Bantu education.
Beginning in 1990 the women began to return to a very different South Africa. They had changed and so had the country. The South Africa they left in the 60s or 70s was gone. So readjustment was difficult even as they came home. Ellen Pheko writes that when she returned “there is also the perception held by many people that I am some sort of ‘exile queen’ . . . To many people my life is one of privilege . . . According to belief commonly held by South Africans, money is the one thing everybody in exile has. Yet, nothing could be further from the truth: (:153). Now that Rajes Pillay is ‘home’, she says that “Frequently, I have heard several acquaintances boast that they had been the sole driving force of the revolution. That is inexact and untrue” (185).
Since it is twenty-three years since the ANC and PAC were unbanned and Nelson Mandela walked free, the tensions and displacement of the exile years can read as strange and exotic stories. But they are not. They are the stories of every woman refugee today who leaves Syria for Turkey or Mali for Morocco or Zimbabwe for South Africa. The context of exile from South Africa may be different but the psychological trauma and challenges remain the same.
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