This book investigates women’s political activism and conflict in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, using play texts, alongside interviews with female playwrights and women who worked within the theatre, to examine issues around domestic violence, racial abuse and women in detention without trial.

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.

Women in Solitary offers a new account based around the narratives of four women who experienced detention and torture in South Africa in the late 1960s when the regime tried to stage a trial to convict leading anti-apartheid activists. This timely book not only accords the four women and others their place in the history of the struggle for freedom in South Africa, but also weaves their experiences into the historical development of the anti-apartheid movement. The book draws on extended interviews with journalist Joyce Sikhakhane-Rankin, trade unionists Shanthie Naidoo and Rita Ndzanga and activist Nondwe Mankahla. Winnie Mandela's account of her time in detention is drawn from earlier published accounts. The narrative brings to light the unrelentingly brutal and comprehensive character of the attempt to silence resistance and break the spirit of the activists, both to disrupt organisation and to intimidate communities. It is testament to the triumph and strength of conviction that the women displayed. It also reflects the comprehensive nature of the resistance. The women fought not only as organisers, recruiters or couriers, but also in solitary confinement, resisting all its deprivations, the taunts by interrogators and anxieties about their children. And when they took the fight into the courtroom, they prevailed. The book weaves their experiences into the historical development of the struggle in a way that highlights broader issues, drawing out the particular ways in which women's experience of activism and repression differs from that of men, both in terms of the behaviour of the police and of the women's ties with community, family and children. The book's broad timespan underpins the psychological effects of sustained solitary confinement and its traumatic legacy, asking whether, by not attending more consistently to healing the trauma done to a generation by brutal repression, we allow it to contribute to social ills that worry us today. Women in Solitary is ideal reading for anyone interested in the history of apartheid, the criminalization of activism, and women's imprisonment, as well as scholars and students of penal and feminist studies.

"The play focuses on three central characters: Sdudla, Mambhele and Mampompo living and working in a Cape Town township trying to eke out a living in a racially, socially and economically unequal world. There are few work opportunities and there is a great deal of red tape to be self-sufficient. Men are glaringly absent from this world - working as cheap migrant labour in urban areas. Women have to undertake great risk to see their husbands and to try keep a semblance of family cohesiveness. Helicopters fly above and state security police surveil the area. The play shows how these women work miracles to ensure the survival and wellbeing of their families at all cost"--Provided by Publisher.

This book investigates women’s political activism and conflict in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, using play texts, alongside interviews with female playwrights and women who worked within the theatre, to examine issues around domestic violence, racial abuse and women in detention without trial.

A unique look at the political experiences of women in two regions of the world--Latin American and Eastern and Central Europe--which have moved from authoritarian to democratic regimes. By examining various political attitudes and efforts of women as they learn to participate in the political process, contributors offer important new insights into democratic consolidation.

When women took to the streets during the mass protests of the Arab Spring, the subject of feminism in the Middle East and North Africa returned to the international spotlight. In the subsequent years, countless commentators treated the region’s gender inequality as a consequence of fundamentally cultural or religious problems. In so doing, they overlooked the specifically political nature of these women’s activism. Moving beyond such culturalist accounts, this book turns to the relations of power in regional and international politics to understand women’s struggles for their rights. Based on over a hundred extensive personal narratives from women of different generations in Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, Nicola Pratt traces women’s activism from national independence through to the Arab uprisings, arguing that activist women are critical geopolitical actors. Weaving together these personal accounts with the ongoing legacies of colonialism, Embodying Geopolitics demonstrates how the production and regulation of gender is integrally bound up with the exercise and organization of geopolitical power, with consequences for women’s activism and its effects.