Grace and The Townships Housewife: Excavating black South African women's magazines from the 1960s1

Abstract

abstract Grace and The Townships Housewife, two black women's magazines published in South Africa between 1964 and 1969, have slipped into obscurity. In what follows, I reassess their role in the history of the black popular press in South Africa. Grace and The Townships Housewife appear to be the first women's magazines in South Africa aimed specifically at black women, preceding other more familiar titles such as True Love (1974), Pace (1978) and Thandi (1985). Besides a brief reference to these two magazines in Switzer and Switzer's The Black Press In South Africa And Lesotho (1997:157–158), no research has ever been done on Grace and The Townships Housewife. The first section provides general information (staff, content, target audience) on the magazines. The second part foregrounds the colliding voices that infuse the magazines’ content: at times the magazines promote modernity (which they often equate with ‘white’, ‘western’ lifestyles); at other times they critique modernity as destructive of cherished African traditions. The final section involves a brief comparison between the representation of black women in Grace and The Townships Housewife and the representation of black women in Drum magazine (1950s) and in Die Huisgenoot, Sarie Marais and Fair Lady (1960s). Critical to this discussion will be the sense of self-authorship presented in Grace and The Townships Housewife.