Dawne Curry

• University of Nebraska–Lincoln

‘Oral and Written Resolutions to Segregation and Transport’ concentrates on the resolutions that these bodies submitted which called for ‘a woman’s only bus’ the transfer of ownership to a public utility; the creation of coupon system to defray costs; and the construction of complexes near places of employment in response to the maintenance of segr...

‘Wake Up!: The Nation Must Be Saved’ introduces this militant cadre of African women who challenged segregation at its discriminatory core. This chapter outlines why these defiant activists sought to save the nation by introducing them through the author’s journey of ‘discovery’ and through the historiography.

‘Daughters of Africa and the Politics of Religious, and Literary Sampling’: presents the intellectual life of the Daughters of Africa, a body that Cecilia Lillian Tshabalala founded in 1932. It examines how this body of mostly middle class African women taught, proselytized, and offered a prognosis for the ailing nation through the musical techniqu...

‘The Roots of Segregation, Apartheid’s Menacing Predecessor’ discusses the origins and the evolution of the policy of segregation in South Africa. This chapter opens with the observations of South Africans (African, White, and Asian) and African Americans regarding separate residential enclaves, race-designated institutions, and the intimacy of the...

‘Introduction: The Journey, the Genealogy, and the Historiography’ charts my discovery of the African women who appear in this book. It also incorporates the scholarly literature and where Social Justice at Apartheid’s Dawn enters the existing discourse.

This chapter surveys the body’s multi-faceted approach to challenging segregation at its core and also at its base through programs that tackled low-income families and health disparities and that promoted racial collaboration.

‘Activist Intellectuals and the Quest to Save the Nation’ explores how Africans employed narratives, poems, musical compositions, and editorials to address the physiological and physical impact of segregation. Ideas are juxtaposed alongside men and other women to underscore similarities and differences in thought. Furthermore, this chapter offers s...

This chapter intersperses theory and the women’s words to chart the distinct ways that these activist intellectuals left behind a roadmap to save the nation. Of all the things the women championed and became involved with, they did not appear to link the South African struggle to broader discussions globally aside from allusions. Therefore, this ch...

‘The Travel Narratives of Globetrotting African Women’ examines African women’s overseas experiences to illuminate how they computed issues of race, gender, and nationality on foreign soil. Their narratives provide early case studies of Black women’s internationalism both within and outside the African continent. Many African women used those exper...

This paper examines the ideology of Cecilia Lillian Tshabalala who spent 18 years in the United States from 1912 to 1930. Within two years of returning to South Africa, she founded the self-help group, the Daughters of Africa in 1932. Tshabalala used the Daughters and the widely read newspapers—Bantu World and Ilanga laseNatal—to define, construct,...

Following the student uprising, concerned parents wanted to find something for students to do besides wander the streets, so they, along with the Alexandra Liaison Committee (ALC), founded the Thusong Youth Centre in 1979, the year of Alexandra’s reprieve.1 Therapy was needed because according to Thusong employee Beauty More, “We didn’t know a pers...

During a routine and highly secretive recruiting trip in South Africa’s Northwestern Province activists Simon “Bafana” Mohlanyaneng1 and David Ramusi approached 15-year-old Solomon Baloyi, who was on his way back from attending a soccer match in rural Jonathan. The operatives planned to extend Alexandra’s theatre of operation by gauging the interes...

In 1971,65-year-old shoemaker and barber Jackson Banyeni received a notice to vacate his property from Alexandra’s governing and policing authority, Peri-Urban Areas Health Board (Peri-Urban). Peri-Urban gained control in 1958, when it replaced the Health Committee1 that had managed the township’s affairs since 1916. Charged with the responsibility...

Sitting back in her worn leather chair, retired domestic laborer Mrs. M. L. Mbatha proclaimed, “when apartheid interfered with funerals, we … found … other ways to grieve, [because] we couldn’t always express our sorrow at funerals or … nourish our spirit with songs.”1 This mother of four had lost her youngest son when he was just 13. Suffering fro...

On November 30, 1976, Mosima Gabriel “Tokyo” Sexwale1 and three others2 waited alongside the road at Bordergate, an area sandwiched between Mozambique and South Africa, and lying approximately 280 miles from Johannesburg. They carried suitcases (presumably booby traps). One police unit observed the wanderers and radioed in to headquarters, promptin...

On June 18, 1976, two days after Sowetans opposed the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction for all classes, Alexandra erupted and joined in solidarity. Around 8 A. M., Alexandrans began attacking Indian owned shops and the WRAB offices. When the upheaval gained momentum two hours later at 10 A. M., marchers had enlarged their followin...

My child died and I clung to her grave. These were the words spoken by Margaret R., a resident of the northeastern Johannesburg township of Alexandra, South Africa when offering her rendition of the 1976 student uprising mounted against the imposition of Afrikaans. In recalling a personal tragedy Margaret R. attests not only to her enduring grief b...

This course explores major themes and debates in African history beginning with early African civilizations and concluding with apartheid's demise in 1990. The course covers these topics: slavery, colonialism: the imposition of colonial rule, different forms of colonial rule, and theories of resistance, the effects of colonialism, nationalism, inde...