Chapter 7. Women, Protest and Theatre

Abstract During the apartheid era many women, such as Albertina Sisulu and Lilian Ngoyi to name only two, spent time in solitary confinement. Women were punished for taking part in political activities by being issued with banning orders or placed under house arrest. Women placed under banning orders were treated differently to men. At the Special Hearings which were organised by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) women were provided with an opportunity to talk about their experiences as women living under apartheid instead of talking about what had happened to someone in their family. The silencing of women continued even after the new government came to power. This is clearly illustrated in the negligible space allotted to the experiences of women’s oppression and human rights violations in the hearings before the TRC. My concern that an understanding and appreciation of the suffering, oppression, political activism and contribution by South African women during apartheid will be lost to future generations is shared by Annie Coombes’s statement in her book History After Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South Africa (2003).