Black Consciousness women’s organizing intimacies and the coldness of European anti-apartheid solidarity

ABSTRACT Mmagauta Molefe and Oshadi Mangena internationalised Black Consciousness womanism and leveraged a gendered critique against the anti-apartheid movements in Europe. This article shows that the contradiction between intimacy and coldness offers a lens through which we can understand both the goals of anti-apartheid as a type of anti-colonial organising, as well as the limits of narrow anti-apartheid solidarities driven by European organisers. Mangena and Molefe challenged white women’s racism and paternalism within European campaigns, and demonstrated how international solidarity sometimes amplified divisions between liberation groups.