Sisters for Justice

Small Acts in the Transformation of Apartheid South Africa

Catherine Higgs

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9780299352301
• eBook ISBN:
  9780299352332
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

Sisters for Justice explores the activism of a select number of Catholic religious sisters in South Africa, beginning in the 1960s. Catherine Higgs analyzes how these individuals' seemingly small actions in a variety of spheres helped shift policy and contribute to the dismantling of the apartheid state. As she reveals, they helped provide basic medical services to displaced Africans, opened private convent schools to children of all races despite segregationist laws, advocated for African pension rights, served on justice and peace commissions, and joined protests—all while working within the context of a hierarchical male-led church initially hesitant to criticize a state openly hostile to Catholics.

Based on extensive oral history interviews with white and Black sisters as well as deep archival research, this groundbreaking book reveals a largely untold story, nested within the broader literature of women's activism in South Africa. The result is a new perspective that expands and intensifies our understanding of a dramatic period during which individual actions, in the aggregate, contributed to social change.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Catholic Sisters in Southern Africa, 1849–1961
• 2. Embracing Change, 1962–1969
• 3. Education, White Sisters, and Black Sisters, 1970–1972
• 4. “Opening” Schools, 1973–1976
• 5. Embracing Risk, 1977–1984
• 6. Turning Point, 1985
• 7. Years of Fear and Resilience, 1986–1989
• 8. Transition to a New South Africa, 1990–1994
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Method
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index