Voice, Silence and Gender in South Africa's Anti-Apartheid Struggle

The Shadow of a Young Woman

Rachel E. Johnson

• Publisher: University of London Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781915249456, 9781915249449
• eBook ISBN: 9781915249470
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: History

In 1978, amidst the aftermath of the Soweto Uprisings and after being held in detention without charge for over a year, a young black woman who had just turned eighteen, stepped into the witness box at Kempton Park Circuit Court, north-east of Johannesburg. She was there to testify in the apartheid State's case against eleven Soweto school student activists, on trial for sedition. She confirmed her name as Mary Masabata Loate. Loate would live with the consequences of this decision to talk for the rest of her short life.

Who spoke about the liberation struggle whilst it was ongoing? When did they speak and how? And what effects does the gendered history of speech and silence within anti-apartheid politics continue to have upon our knowledge of the past? Arguing that she is emblematic of the way gendered narratives of the struggle have been made, this book listens for the voice and silence of Masabata Loate and her contemporaries within political trials; newspapers; photography; human rights reportage; creative fiction, drama, poetry and song; autobiography and memoir; and oral histories. The result is an unconventional biography that sees this young woman as a shadow within the story of South Africa's anti-apartheid liberation struggle.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: the shadow of a young woman
• 1.  A methodology for fragments: voice, speech and silence
• 2.  The Soweto Eleven and the sayable: speaking about the struggle
• 3.  Witnessing, detention and silence: speech as struggle
• 4.  Stories of life and death: the struggle to speak
• Conclusion: shadow histories
• Bibliography
• Index