African Women and Apartheid: Migration and Settlement in Urban South Africa

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Description

In this compelling study, Rebekah Lee explores the process and consequences of settlement through the everyday lives and testimonies of three generations of African women in Cape Town during the apartheid (1948-94) and post-apartheid periods. How did African women experience apartheid How did they create a sense of belonging in a city that actively denied and resisted their presence Through detailed analyses of women's management of domestic economies, their participation in township social organizations, their home renovation priorities and patterns of energy use, this study evokes a larger history of gendered and generational struggles over identity, place and belonging. It provides a deeper and more nuanced understanding of African women in apartheid and post-apartheid society, and of urbanization in South Africa. Drawing together scholarship and new methodologies from anthropology, history, human geography and development studies, "African Women and Apartheid" will be valuable to anyone with interests in South Africa, gender, urbanization, the African family, oral history and memory.

Reviews

"Lee has many acute and modest things to say about life history oral testimony, acknowledging problems of memory, of myth, of incomprehension...the reader trusts the sound and feel of Lee's citations" -- Terence Ranger, "The Round Table"

Author Bio

Rebekah Lee is Lecturer in the Department of History, Goldsmiths College, University of London. She has published on the social and cultural history of South Africa, and her research interests include gender and migration, religion, identity, health and material culture. She is currently engaged in a collaborative project on the history of death in Africa from c. 1800 to the present day.