South African Women and the Politics of Peace in the 1950s

ABSTRACT

This article uses a feminist intellectual history methodology to analyse debates around ‘peace’ within the Federation of South African Women in the 1950s. While many scholars have produced insightful analyses of the Federation’s work, this article is the first to examine specific debates around the idea of peace within the organisation. Through a close reading of these discussions as they played out in Federation meetings, this article argues that Federation leadership was eager to link with global left-wing peace politics in the 1950s. The membership, however, was more sceptical of the connection: while drawing inspiration from global women’s struggles, many members suggested that peaceful methods were no longer meaningful in their own political context. This study yields new insights into grassroots women’s analyses of apartheid and the strategies they advocated. It argues that intellectual historical approaches offer an important supplement to social historical analyses of women’s politics.

KEYWORDS:

• Federation of South Africa Women
• Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF)
• peace
• African National Congress Women’s League (ANCWL)

Acknowledgements

Over this paper's long development, it benefited from comments from many people. I would particularly like to thank Meghan Healy-Clancy, Jill Kelly, Viviane Saglier, Masha Salazkina, and, always, Gavin Walker. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for this journal. All defects remain my responsibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 University of the Witwatersrand, Historical Papers Research Archive, AD1137 Federation Papers (hereafter Federation Papers), Ae2.5.2, Congress of Mothers, 7 August 1955, ‘Official Notes’; Federation Papers, Ac1.5.2, Inaugural Conference,17 April 1954, H. Watts, ‘Women’s Struggle for Peace’, 14 pp., [includes minutes].

2 See, for example, G. Mhlungu, You Have Struck a Rock: Women Fighting for Their Power in South Africa (Cape Town: Kwela, 2021).

3 C. Walker, Women and Resistance in South Africa (New York: Monthly Review Press,1991), 223–4.

4 I. Berger, Threads of Solidarity Women in South African Industry, 1900–1980 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992); N. Gasa, Women in South African History: They Remove Boulders and Cross Rivers (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2007); S. Hassim, The ANC Women’s League: Sex, Gender and Politics (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2014); S. Hassim, Women’s Organizations and Democracy in South Africa: Contesting Authority (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006); M. Healy-Clancy, ‘The Family Politics of the Federation of South African Women: A History of Public Motherhood in Women’s Antiracist Activism’, Signs 42, 4 (2017), 843–866; J.E. Kelly, ‘Gender, Shame, and the “Efficacy of Congress Methods of Struggle” in 1959 Natal Women’s Rural Revolts’, South African Historical Journal, 71, 2 (2019): 221–241; B. Caine, ‘The Trials and Tribulations of a Black Woman Leader: Lilian Ngoyi and the South African Liberation Struggle’, in F. de Haan, M. Allen, and J. Purvis, eds, Women’s Activism: Global Perspectives from the 1890s to the Present (New York: Routledge, 2012), 90–105; S. Mkhize, ‘Crowds, Protest Politics and Women’s Struggles: A Case Study of Women’s Demonstrations in Pietermaritzburg, August 1959’, Southern African Humanities, 11, 12 (1999): 63–84; J. Schreiner, ‘Women Working for Their Freedom: FCWU and AFCWU and the Woman Question’ (Master’s thesis, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, 1986); Walker, Women and Resistance; J. Wells, We Now Demand! The History of Women’s Resistance to Pass Laws in South Africa (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1993).

5 Hassim, ANC Women’s League, 26.

6 For example, T. April, ‘Charlotte Maxeke: A Celebrated and Neglected Figure in History’, in A. Lissoni, J. Soske, N. Erlank, N. Nieftagodien and O. Badsha, eds, One Hundred Years of the ANC: Debating Liberation Histories Today (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2012), 97–110; D.Y. Curry, ‘“What Is It That We Call the Nation’: Cecilia Lillian Tshabalala’s Definition, Diagnosis, and Prognosis of the Nation in a Segregated South Africa’, Safundi, 19, 1 (2018): 55–76; M. Healy-Clancy, ‘The Politics of New African Marriage in Segregationist South Africa’, African Studies Review 57, 2 (2014): 7–28; M. Healy-Clancy, ‘Women and the Problem of Family in Early African Nationalist History and Historiography’, South African Historical Journal, 64, 3 (2012): 450–471; S. Hassim, ‘Decolonising Equality: The Radical Roots of the Gender Equality Clause in the South African Constitution’, South African Journal on Human Rights, 34, 3 (2018): 342–358; J.E. Kelly’s forthcoming work on Nokukhanya Luthuli, Athambile Masola, ‘Excavating Forgotten Histories in South Africa’, Africa Is a Country (blog), September 24, 2018, https://africasacountry.com/2020/02/excavating-forgotten-histories-in-south-africa, accessed xxx; S. Makana, ‘Owning Her Rightful Place: The Intellectual and Activist Life of Charlotte Manye Maxeke’, Gender and History, 31, 2 (2019): 444–459.

7 S. Hassim, ‘Postponing the National Question: Feminism and the Women’s Movement’, in E. Webster and K. Pampallis, eds, The Unresolved National Question in South Africa: Left Thought under Apartheid and Beyond (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2017), 218.

8 For example, K.N. Blain, Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018); A.K. Joseph-Gabriel, Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019); C. Higashida, Black Internationalist Feminism: Women Writers of the Black Left, 1945–1995 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011).

9 Wells, We Now Demand!, 10.

10 M. Neocosmos, Thinking Freedom in Africa: Toward a Theory of Emancipatory Politics (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2016), 9.

11 Ibid., 12.

12 Hassim, The ANC Women’s League, 16.

13 See discussion of these occlusions in J. Kelly, ‘The (Archives of the) First Ladies of the African National Congress’, unpublished manuscript; H. McGee, Radical Antiapartheid Internationalism and Exile: The Life of Elizabeth Mafeking (Oxford: Routledge, 2019).

14 P. Bonner, ‘Fragmentation and Cohesion in the ANC: The First 70 Years’, in A. Lissoni, J. Soske, N. Erlank, N. Nieftagodien and O. Badsha, eds, One Hundred Years of the ANC: Debating Liberation Histories Today (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2012), 7.

15 University of the Witwatersrand, Historical Papers Research Archive, A1985 Helen Joseph Papers (hereafter Joseph Papers), A4.1.1, Helen Joseph to Gwen Carter, 19 August 1981.

16 Joseph Papers, A1, Julie Frederikse interview with Helen Joseph, 1986.

17 Walker, Women and Resistance in South Africa, xvi–xvii; Hassim, Women’s Organizations and Democracy, 31–32.

18 Hassim, Women’s Organizations and Democracy, 22.

19 M. Healy-Clancy, ‘Women and Popular Politics in Twentieth-Century South Africa’, in D. Magaziner, ed., The Oxford Handbook of South African History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020); Hassim, The ANC Women’s League.

20 Joseph Papers, P4, Jenny Schreiner, NUSAS Conference Presentation, July 1982; University of the Witwatersrand, Historical Papers Research Archive, A2729 Sylvia Neame Papers (hereafter Neame Papers), E7.2, Sylvia Neame interview with Ray Simons, 16 May 1988; and discussion in Hassim, Women’s Organizations and Democracy.

21 Simons, All My Life, 261.

22 Neame Papers, E7.2, Sylvia Neame interview with Ray Simons, 16 May 1988.

23 M. Healy-Clancy, ‘The Politics of Friendship in the Federation of South African Women’, UJ Departmental Seminar Paper, 2022, 13.

24 Hassim, The ANC Women’s League, 32.

25 ‘Hilda Bernstein’, South African History Online, https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hilda-bernstein, accessed 2 September 2023.

26 See B. Caine, ‘“A South African Revolutionary, but a Lady of the British Empire’: Helen Joseph and the Anti-Apartheid Movement’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 34, 3 (2008): 575–590; Caine, ‘The Trials and Tribulations’; H. Bernstein, The World that Was Ours: The Story of the Rivonia Trial (London: SA Writers, 1989); R.A. Simons and R. Suttner, All My Life and All My Strength (Johannesburg: Real African Publishers, 2004).

27 C. Donert, ‘From Communist Internationalism to Human Rights: Gender, Violence and International Law in the Women’s International Democratic Federation Mission to North Korea, 1951’, Contemporary European History, 25, 2 (2016): 313–333.

28 E. Armstrong, ‘Before Bandung: The Anti-Imperialist Women's Movement in Asia and the Women’s International Democratic Federation', Signs, 41, 2 (2015): 305–331; E. Armstrong, ‘Peace and the Barrel of the Gun in the Internationalist Women’s Movement, 1945–49', Meridians, 18, 2 (2019): 261–277; C. Donert, ‘Women’s Rights in Cold War Europe: Disentangling Feminist Histories', Past and Present, 218, Suppl. 8 (2013): 180–202; F. de Haan, ‘Con- tinuing Cold War Paradigms in Western Historiography of Transnational Women's Organisations: The Case of the Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF)', Women's History Review, 19, 4 (2010): 547–573; F. de Haan, ‘Eugénie Cotton, Pak Chong-Ae, and Claudia Jones: Rethinking Transnational Feminism and International Politics', Journal of Women's History, 25, 4 (2013): 174–189; Y. Gradskova, The Women's International Democratic Federation, the Global South and the Cold War: Defending the Rights of Women of the ‘Whole World’? (London: Routledge, 2021).

29 Hassim, The ANC Women’s League, x.

30 Donert, ‘From Communist Internationalism to Human Rights’, 318.

31 Neame Papers, E1.1, Sylvia Neame interview with Hilda Bernstein, 1 August 1986.

32 Barbara Caine notes that when Lilian Ngoyi and Dora Tamana travelled to WIDF events in Europe, they were profoundly moved by accounts of the Holocaust and a visit to Buchenwald. Caine, ‘The Trials and Tribulations’; Berger, Threads of Solidarity, 122–123. See also discussion in J. Hyslop and K. Brasken, ‘Political and Intellectual Lineages of Southern African Anti-Fascism’, South African Historical Journal, 74, 1 (2022): 1–29.

33 Walker, Women and Resistance, 100.

34 Ruth Mompati, Interview with Iris Berger, Lusaka, Zambia, 25 July 1989. (I am grateful to Iris Berger for generously sharing this interview with me.)

35 See especially Healy-Clancy, ‘The Family Politics of the Federation of South African Women’; also Caine, ‘The Trials and Tribulations’; McGee, Radical Antiapartheid Internationalism and Exile; Walker, Women and Resistance.

36 Joseph Papers, P4, Jenny Schreiner, NUSAS Conference Presentation, July 1982.

37 M. Healy-Clancy, ‘The Politics of Friendship in the Federation of South African Women’, UJ Departmental Seminar Paper, 2022, 13.

38 Caine, ‘A South African Revolutionary’.

39 Healy-Clancy, ‘The Politics of Friendship’, 12–13.

40 Neame Papers, E1.1, Sylvia Neame interview with Hilda Bernstein, 1 August 1986.

41 Federation Papers, Ac1.5.2, Inaugural Conference, H. Watts, ‘Women’s Struggle for Peace’, 14-page manuscript, 17 April 1954.

42 Caine, ‘The Trials and Tribulations’; Healy-Clancy, ‘The Politics of Friendship’.

43 Federation Papers, Ac1.5.2, Inaugural Conference, H. Watts, ‘Women’s Struggle for Peace’, 14-page manuscript, 17 April 1954.

44 See discussion in M.J. Zwane, ‘The Federation of South African Women and Aspects of Urban Women’s Resistance to the Policies of Racial Segregation, 1950–1970’ (Master’s thesis, Rand Afrikaans University, Johannesburg, 2000); Joseph Papers, P4, Jenny Schreiner, NUSAS Conference Presentation, July 1982.

45 See discussion in Healy-Clancy, ‘The Family Politics of the Federation of South African Women’; McGee, Radical Antiapartheid Internationalism and Exile; N. Grant, ‘Black History Month: Lilian Masediba Ngoyi (1911–1980)’, Women’s History Network, 17 October 2010, http://womenshistorynetwork.org/blog/?p=498.

46 Donert, ‘From Communist Internationalism to Human Rights’, 317.

47 P. Goedde, The Politics of Peace: A Global Cold War History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), Chapter 1.

48 University of the Witwatersrand, Historical Archive Research Papers, A3299 Hilda and Rusty Bernstein Papers (hereafter Bernstein Papers), B8.1.1, Michael Harmel, 1973.

49 Bernstein Papers, B8.1.2, Hilda Bernstein, 1973, 6.

50 Ibid.

51 Bernstein Papers, B8.1.2, Hilda Bernstein, 1973, 1.

52 Goedde, The Politics of Peace, Chapter 2, 39.

53 R.R. Edgar, Josie Mpama/Palmer: Get up and Get Moving (Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 2020), 69.

54 Federation Papers, Ac1.8 Correspondence, letter by Ray Simons to Hilda Bernstein, 5 April 1954; cited also in Healy-Clancy, ‘The Family Politics of the Federation of South African Women’, 854.

55 Federation Papers, Ac1.5.2, Inaugural Conference, H. Watts, ‘Women’s Struggle for Peace’, 14-page manuscript, 17 April 1954.

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid.

60 Walker, Women and Resistance, 140–141.

61 Healy-Clancy, ‘The Family Politics of the Federation of South African Women’, 855.

62 Federation Papers, Ac1.5.5, C.A.N. Kuse, ‘Women’s Rights Conference’ (speech).

63 Ibid.

64 D. Johnson, ‘“With the Abyssinian Armies, in Defence of Africa’s Only Native State”: Varieties of South African Anti-Fascism, 1930s–1960s’, South African Historical Journal, 74, 1 (2022): 55–74.

65 Federation Papers, Ac1.8, Correspondence 1954; for ongoing correspondence, see Federation Papers, Ad1.2 Correspondence 1955, 24 March 1955.

66 S. Hassim, ‘Texts and Tests of Equality: The Women’s Charters and the Demand for Equality in South African Political History’, Agenda, 2, 100 (2014): 10.

67 Federation Papers, Ac1.5.4, ‘Freedom Charter’.

68 Gasa, Women in South African History; S. Hassim, ‘Family, Motherhood and Zulu Nationalism: The Politics of the Inkatha Women’s Brigade’, Feminist Review, 43, 1 (1993): 1–25; Healy-Clancy, ‘Women and the Problem of Family’; Z. Magubane, ‘‘Can We as Mothers Not Take Our Fight to the Enemy?’: The Politics of Motherhood in South African Autobiography’, XCP: Cross-Cultural Poetics (2009): 48–75; D. Lewis, ‘Gender Myths and Citizenship in Two Autobiographies by South African Women’, Agenda, 40 (1999): 38–44; A. McClintock, ‘Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism and the Family’, Feminist Review, 44, 1 (1993): 61–80; D. Gaitskell and E. Unterhalter, ‘Mothers of the Nation: A Comparative Analysis of the Nation, Race, and Motherhood in Afrikaner Nationalism and the African National Congress’, in N. Yuval-Davis and F. Anthias, eds, Woman, Nation, State (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989). For non-South African literature, see S. Knott, ‘Theorizing and Historicizing Mothering’s Many Labours’, Past and Present, 246, Suppl. 15 (2020): 1–24.

69 Schreiner, ‘Women Working for their Freedom’, Chapter 1.

70 Federation Papers, Ai8, Article on women for the Golden City Post, September 1957.

71 Ibid.

72 D. Gaitskell, ‘Getting Close to the Hearts of Mothers: Medical Missionaries among African Women and Children in Johannesburg between the Wars’, in V. Fildes, L. Marks and H. Marland, eds, Women and Children First: International Maternal and Infant Welfare, 1870–1945 (London: Routledge, [1992] 2013, 183; M. du Toit, ‘“Anginayo Ngisho Indibilishi!” (I Don’t Have a Penny!): The Gender Politics of “Native Welfare” in Durban, 1930–1939’, South African Historical Journal, 66, 2 (2014): 291–319; Makana, ‘Owning Her Rightful Place’; M. Healy-Clancy, A World of Their Own: A History of South African Women’s Education (Pietermaritzburg: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2013), 109; April, ‘Charlotte Maxeke’. See also Hassim, Fatima Meer (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2019).

73 H. Watts “Women's struggle for peace” 14p. Ms., Inaugural Conference,17 April 1954, AD1137, Ac1.5.2, Federation papers.

74 Ibid. For an in-depth discussion of Tamana's work and thought, see Nicholas Grant, “Dora Tamana: travel, home and the transnational politics of African motherhood,” Safundi 23, 3-4 (2023): 124-145.

75 Federation Papers, Ba4.1.4, Rent Increases Conference, 14 November 1954 (the report is contained within the correspondence files).

76 Ibid.

77 Ibid.

78 Ibid.

79 Ibid.

80 Ibid.

81 Ibid.

82 See Healy-Clancy, ‘The Family Politics of the Federation’.

83 Federation Papers, Ae2.5.2, Congress of Mothers, 7 August 1955, ‘Official Notes’.

84 Maggie Resha remembers Hilda Walaza as a tough activist notably opposed to the breakaway Pan African Congress (PAC). At a meeting with Potlako Leballo, who would co-found the PAC, Resha recalls that ‘Mrs Walaza, a tall and hefty woman from Orlando, stood up and went straight to him. Grabbing him by the lapels, she started to shake him, and said: “Leballo, either shut up or get out!”’ M. Resha, My Life in the Struggle (Johannesburg: SA Writers, 1991), 96.

85 Federation Papers, Ae2.5.2, Congress of Mothers, 7 August 1955, ‘Official Notes’.

86 Federation Papers, Ae 2.3, Congress of Mothers, 7 August 1955, ‘Notes’.

87 Federation Papers, Ae 2.3, Congress of Mothers, 7 August 1955, ‘Notes’. In fact, it should be noted that the ANC’s campaigns against Bantu Education met with limited success, as many parents sought education for their children despite its poor quality. See discussion in Healy-Clancy, A World of Their Own, 128.

88 C.H. Muller, ‘Dealing with a Hot Potato: The Commemoration of the 1959 “Potato Boycott”,’ Historia, 55, 2 (2010): 76–98.

89 Neame Papers, E1.1, Sylvia Neame interview with Hilda Bernstein, 1 August 1986.

90 Federation Papers, Ae2.5.1, Congress of Mothers, 7 August 1955, ‘Rough Notes’.

91 Federation Papers, Ae2.5.2, Congress of Mothers, 7 August1955, ‘Official Notes’.

92 Federation Papers, Ae2.5.3, Incomplete Report on World Congress of Mothers.

93 H. Watts “Women's struggle for peace” 14p. Ms., Inaugural Conference,17 April 1954, AD1137, Ac1.5.2, Federation papers.

94 Ibid.

95 Ibid.

96 Joseph Papers, A1, Julie Frederikse interview with Helen Joseph, 1986.

97 Federation Papers, Bd3, ‘Conference: Minutes and Resolution’, East Rand Region, 1957.

98 Ibid.

99 Ibid.

100 Ibid.

101 Walker, Women and Resistance, Chapter 19.

102 Resha, My Life in the Struggle, 124.

103 Quoted in Walker, Women and Resistance, 230.

104 Federation Papers, Cb1.3.3, ‘Report of National Anti-Pass Council to Conference’, signed Duma Nokwe, Secretary General of ANC. Capitalisation removed for readability.

105 Walker, Women and Resistance, 233–234.

106 Kelly, ‘Gender, Shame’.

107 Mkhize, ‘Crowds, Protest Politics and Women’s Struggles’, 83.

108 C. Rassool, ‘Rethinking Documentary History and South African Political Biography’, South African Review of Sociology, 41, 1 (2010), 32.

109 J. Soske, ‘The Origins of Non-Racialism: White Opposition to Apartheid in the 1950s (Review)’, Transformation, 76 (2011): 153.

110 For example, see A. Drew, ‘A Gendered Approach to the Yu Chi Chan Club and National Liberation Front during South Africa’s Transition to Armed Struggle’, International Review of Social History, 67, S30 (2022): 179–207; C. Rassool, ‘The Politics of Nonracialism in South Africa’, Public Culture, 31, 2 (2019), 343–371.

Additional information

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Rachel Sandwell

Rachel Sandwell is Assistant Professor of History at Cornell University. Her research explores the intersections between women's politics and national liberation movements in South Africa and in transnational contexts.