Guerrillas and Combative Mothers


Book Description

Guerrillas and Combative Mothers is a narrative of women participating in the armed struggle against apartheid from 1961 to 1994 and their lives in a democratic South Africa. Focusing on their agency, commitment, beliefs and actions, it describes how women got politicised and the decisions and circumstances that led them to join the armed struggle in South Africa and exile. Siphokazi Magadla discusses the forms of military training they received, the combat activities and their transformation as women and soldiers. Magadla also talks about their participation in the South African National Defence Force-led demobilisation process and their contributions to the democratic revolution of the SANDF. By illuminating the different eras and arenas of their participation, this book shows the broadness of the armed struggle against apartheid as a historical truth and as a matter of gender equality and justice for an inclusive and more democratic future.




Guerrillas and Combative Mothers


Book Description

"Guerrillas and Combative Mothers offers a first-hand account of women's participation in the armed struggle against apartheid from 1961 to 1994 and their lives in a democratic South Africa. It is based on 40 life histories of women who fought with the rural-based Poqo, the military wing of the Pan Africanist Congress; the exile-based uMkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the African National Congress; and the township-based self-defence units. Centring women's agency, commitment, beliefs and actions, it details the various ways in which women came to be politicised and the decisions and circumstances that led them to join the armed struggle inside South Africa and in exile. Siphokazi Magadla discusses the forms of military training they received, combat activities, their personal transformation as women and as combatants, their participation in the South African National Defence Force-led demobilisation process and their contributions to the democratic transformation of the SANDF. By illuminating the different eras and arenas of women's participation, this book shows the broadness of the armed struggle against apartheid as a historical truth and as a matter of gender equality and justice for an inclusive and more democratic future." --




Out of Quatro


Book Description

Luthando Dyasop tells a vivid account about his life during apartheid. From growing up on the Wild Coast and the frustrations brought by Bantu Education, he takes the reader on a long journey to join the military wing of the ANC (MK) in a harsh exile, with time spent in the ANC's notorious Quatro camp and back home to a deferred dream.




The Joshua Generation


Book Description

"The Joshua Generation examines the book of Joshua's many lives, from its relationship to ancient political forms to the present Israeli Occupation. Its scope encompasses the nationalist celebrations and the stringent critiques of the biblical volume along with their impacts on political discourse and lived space"--




Academic Mobility through the Lens of Language and Identity, Global Pandemics, and Distance Internationalization


Book Description

This book takes a critical perspective on international academic mobility and contextualizes this mobility through different key factors including global pandemics, identity construction, intercultural sensitivity, and cultural engagement. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the volume investigates the current trends of international mobility programs with consideration to the new normal through social, political, economic, and educational factors among mobility exchange actors. Contesting established approaches to international academic mobility in paradigmatic contexts, the volume investigates the effects and implications of distance internationalization as an emerging concept, juxtaposing the traditional context of academic mobility with a newly emerging virtual one as a key catalyst for change. Offering a range of authentic studies, reviews, and cases to challenge international global education, this timely book will appeal to researchers, scholars, and postgraduate students in the fields of higher education research, international and comparative education, and the sociology of education more broadly.




Red Road to Freedom


Book Description

Definitive and gripping narrative history of the Communist Party of South Africa.




The Origins of War in Mozambique


Book Description

The book focuses on an area called Maúa, not because I believe Maúa represents the whole of Mozambique as such, but because highlighting a specific area and people helps to understand the Mozambican history more deeply and comprehensively. In any case, it would be impossible to study the experience of all Mozambicans. I am not attempting to write a history textbook of Mozambique, or a glorious history of the liberation struggle, but rather trying to fill a gap in the descriptions of contemporary Mozambican history by delving into matters that have not been written about before.







A Train in Winter


Book Description

“How can you do this work if you have a child?” asked her mother. “It is because I have a child that I do it,” replied Cecile. “This is not a world I wish her to grow up in.” On January 24, 1943, 230 women were placed in four cattle trucks on a train in Compiegne, in northeastern France, and the doors bolted shut for the journey to Auschwitz. They were members of the French Resistance, ranging in age from teenagers to the elderly, women who before the war had been doctors, farmers’ wives, secretaries, biochemists, schoolgirls. With immense courage they had taken up arms against a brutal occupying force; now their friendship would give them strength as they experienced unimaginable horrors. Only forty-nine of the Convoi des 31000 would return from the camps in the east; within ten years, a third of these survivors would be dead too, broken by what they had lived through. In this vitally important book, Caroline Moorehead tells the whole story of the 230 women on the train, for the first time. Based on interviews with the few remaining survivors, together with extensive research in French and Polish archives, A Train in Winter is an essential historical document told with the clarity and impact of a great novel. Caroline Moorehead follows the women from the beginning, starting with the disorganized, youthful and high-spirited activists who came together with the Occupation, and chronicling their links with the underground intellectual newspapers and Communist cells that formed soon afterwards. Postering and graffiti grew into sabotage and armed attacks, and the Nazis responded with vicious acts of mass reprisal – which in turn led to the Resistance coalescing and developing. Moorehead chronicles the women’s roles in victories and defeats, their narrow escapes and their capture at the hands of French police eager to assist their Nazi overseers to deport Jews, resisters, Communists and others. Their story moves inevitably through to its horrifying last chapters in Auschwitz: murder, starvation, disease and the desperate struggle to survive. But, as Moorehead notes, even in the most inhuman of places, the women of the Convoi could find moments of human grace in their companionship: “So close did each of the women feel to the others, that to die oneself would be no worse than to see one of the others die.” Uncovering a story that has hitherto never been told, Caroline Moorehead exhibits the skills that have made her an acclaimed biographer and historian. In this book she places the reader utterly in the world of wartime France, casting light on what it was like to experience horrific terrors and face impossible moral dilemmas. Through the sensitive interviews on which the book is based, she tells personal and individual stories of courage, solace and companionship. In this way, A Train in Winter ultimately becomes a valuable memorial to a unique group of heroines, and a testimony to the particular power of women’s friendship even in the worst places on earth.




Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs


Book Description

Founded during the Nicaraguan revolution, the Mothers of Heroes and Martyrs of Matagalpa comprises women who supported the revolution but did not carry guns. The author focuses on the group to explore 'maternal identity politics'.