Pieces of a (Wo)man: Feminism, Gender and Adulthood in Black Consciousness, 1968–1977

Abstract

More than three decades after the death of Steve Biko and the banning of Black Consciousness organisations, the movement's ideology, politics and political philosophy are subject to heated debate. Nowhere is this more evident than in the areas of gender and women's participation, subjects about which the Black Consciousness archival record is reticent. This article argues that since Black Consciousness was a political philosophy concerned, above all, with the politics of self-identification, its era offers valuable insights into gender's fraught role in South African and African social movements. It traces a politics of gendered identification from the late 1960s – when multi-racial activists associated with both the South African Students' Organisation and University Christian Movement entertained the possibility of women's liberation – through the mid-1970s, when women asserted themselves as vocal, self-confident ‘black men’ in new political groups. By the late 1970s, however, gendered ideas about suffering and sacrifice were limiting women's political possibilities, and led some to advocate new forms of resistance that promoted a domestic space apart from politics.