Forgotten Bodies or Silenced Voices? Recasting Women’s Voices at the Bantu Square Massacre of East London, 1952

Abstract

Narratives of political and community struggles often privilege the role of men, painting them as the faces of the struggle. Yet, women have been (and continue to be) active participants who have fought against systems of oppression through active mobilisation and resistance. This article focuses on events on 9 November 1952 at Bantu Square in Duncan Village, East London, when police broke up a meeting and shot and killed hundreds of people, while angry mobs killed two white people in retaliation. ‘Local historians’ point to the crucial role of women in mobilising support for the meeting that day. Women not only attended in their hundreds and died in untold numbers, but have left a lasting impression on the generations that have followed, inspiring activism and the retelling of what they call the Bantu Square massacre. The article draws on life histories, interviews, secondary material (including a film and memoir) and theories about the silencing of black women in the apartheid archive (Bridger and Hazan) and marginalised women generally (Crenshaw), and about the fragmented narratives that are produced when the silenced eventually speak (Markham).