Provides a new perspective on the struggle against apartheid, and contributes to key debates in South African history, gender inequality, sexual violence, and the legacies of the liberation struggle.

In this transnational account of black protest, Nicholas Grant examines how African Americans engaged with, supported, and were inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement. Bringing black activism into conversation with the foreign policy of both the U.S. and South African governments, this study questions the dominant perception that U.S.-centered anticommunism decimated black international activism. Instead, by tracing the considerable amount of time, money, and effort the state invested into responding to black international criticism, Grant outlines the extent to which the U.S. and South African governments were forced to reshape and occasionally reconsider their racial policies in the Cold War world. This study shows how African Americans and black South Africans navigated transnationally organized state repression in ways that challenged white supremacy on both sides of the Atlantic. The political and cultural ties that they forged during the 1940s and 1950s are testament to the insistence of black activists in both countries that the struggle against apartheid and Jim Crow were intimately interconnected.

"In 1986 'Comrade September', a charismatic ANC operative and popular MK commander, was abducted from Swaziland by the apartheid security police and taken across the border. After torture and interrogation, September was 'turned' and before long the police had extracted enough information to hunt down and kill some of his former comrades. September underwent changes that marked him for the rest of his life: from resister to collaborator, insurgent to counter-insurgent, revolutionary to counter-revolutionary and, to his former comrades, hero to traitor. Askari is the story of these changes in an individual's life and of the larger, neglected history of betrayal and collaboration in the struggle against apartheid. It seeks to understand why September made the choices he did - collaborating with his captors, turning against the ANC, and then hunting down his comrades - without excusing those choices. It looks beyond the black-and-white that still dominates South Africa's political canvas, to examine the grey zones in which South Africans - combatants and non- combatants - lived." -- Publisher.

This book documents the experiences of Black women during the apartheid era in South Africa from 1948 through 1994. Before the arrival of Europeans, the Indigenous groups that made up what later became known as South Africa had instilled in their sons and daughters different gender roles based on the dominant cultural standards. Women were expected to take care of the home while the men were supposed to serve as breadwinners and leaders. Following the the decision by European travelers to establish a ‘service station’ at the Cape of Good Hope in 1662, Black women became more marginalized in the political, economic, and social aspects of family life and at the national level. At the same time, Black woman were reduced to ‘maids’ serving at the pleasure of European families and were confronted with the three-fold challenge of discrimination based on race, class, and gender. Readers will be exposed to the strategies and tactics Black women adopted in response to discrimination in and outside their homes which participating in the collective struggle against the apartheid system.

Ruth First and Joe Slovo, husband and wife, were leaders of the war to end apartheid in South Africa. Communists, scholars, parents, and uncompromising militants, they were the perfect enemies for the white police state. Together they were swept up in the growing resistance to apartheid, and together they experienced repression and exile. Their contributions to the liberation struggle, as individuals and as a couple, are undeniable. Ruth agitated tirelessly for the overthrow of apartheid, first in South Africa and then from abroad, and Joe directed much of the armed struggle carried out by the famous Umkhonto we Sizwe. Only one of them, however, would survive to see the fall of the old regime and the founding of a new, democratic South Africa. This book, the first extended biography of Ruth First and Joe Slovo, is a remarkable account of one couple and the revolutionary moment in which they lived. Alan Wieder’s deeply researched work draws on the usual primary and secondary sources but also an extensive oral history that he has collected over many years. By weaving the documentary record together with personal interviews, Wieder portrays the complexities and contradictions of this extraordinary couple and their efforts to navigate a time of great tension, upheaval, and revolutionary hope.

A trenchant and compelling book that reveals a cross-section of South African women who have been part of the courageous struggle against apartheid. The women talk of the past, the violent years leading to change, their roles in the new govern- ment, and their hopes for the future. These women include black women who risked death and torture by opposing the government's racial laws and white women who openly protested the same policies which gave them privilege, and as they speak about their fight for freedom it is apparent that South Africa would not have evolved as it has without them.