Paper long abstract:

Exile in Southern Africa represented the possibilities of intellectual and cultural exchange among activists, scholars, and surrounding communities. Considering these exchanges one must question, which this research seeks to do, how women activists and soldiers were positioned vis-a-vis how they were positioning themselves. According to Shireen Hassim through privileging the liberation of the nation, women's emancipation was subordinated, but the Women's Section of uMkhonto weSizwe was not silent. It was through the political organizing of the Women's Section, throughout various geographical bases, that there was a social cultural and intellectual reimagining of what liberation would manifest as for not only Southern Africa but more specifically for women. According to Hassim and Suttner the question of gender equality in MK was salient prior to the influx of younger radical people after the 1976 protests. Their arrival marked a change in the manner and language in which women demanded gender equality. At the 1985 Kabwe Conference of the MK, the Women's Section circulated a paper within which they argued that “a women's movement is as decisive as the imperativeness of a working-class movement” Hassim, 2004:447). Taking into account their multiple solidarities and transnational sisterhoods, this paper, as part of a larger project, thus concerns itself with tracing the disjuncture between official ANC policy positions and other documentary and oral sources concerning the position of women in the movement and how their imagined future liberation stood to gain for Southern Africa.