“S’obashaya Ngamatye”: Women and Sixty Years of the Armed Struggle in South Africa

This project brings together chapters written by 17 women former guerrillas from uMkhonto we Sizwe, the African National Congress military wing and the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA) and the Azanian National Liberation Army, the military wing of the Azanian People’s Organisation (AZAPO). The women detail their process of their political awakening, the event/s that shaped their decision to join an armed wing, their journey to exile, political education, military training and their participation in combat. The book also surfaces women’s interior lives during their process of becoming guerrillas, their spirituality, love, family and friendship in exile and their lives in democratic South Africa. Beyond contributing to the limited literature on women and the armed struggle, the book aims to provide a quotidian experience of women in the three decades of South Africa’s armed struggle from various arenas and political traditions. The project also hopes to surface the kinds of methodologies and the material, intellectual and psychological support needed for women veterans to be able to write about their lives.