During the long struggle against apartheid, the African National Congress (ANC) was not only focused on dismantling a system of racial segregation but also on imagining a free and inclusive South Africa. Historian Rachel Sandwell, an assistant professor of history at Cornell University’s College of Arts and Sciences, argues that this vision of liberation was profoundly shaped by the women of the ANC in exile.
Sandwell’s recent book, National Liberation and the Political Life of Exile: Sex, Gender, and Nation in the Struggle against Apartheid, examines how women’s diplomatic work and advocacy on issues such as sexual education, birth control, family life and childcare influenced the organisation’s political evolution. Her work challenges traditional historical narratives that have often marginalised women’s contributions to liberation movements. The book is available through Ohio University Press.
Founded in 1912, the ANC is Africa’s oldest political organisation. Its transformation over the course of the twentieth century reflects the shifting nature of South Africa’s political and social struggle. Initially a male dominated and African only movement focused on petitions and formal appeals, the ANC underwent profound change in the 1940s and 1950s through the emergence of militant leadership figures such as Nelson Mandela, and through the growing mobilisation of Black women who protested against apartheid’s restrictions on movement and autonomy.
From the mid 1960s to the late 1980s, as the ANC operated in exile across African, European and Eastern Bloc cities, it evolved from a liberation organisation into a political and diplomatic body that sought to represent all South Africans. According to Sandwell, this period was pivotal in shaping the ANC’s understanding of gender, community and nationhood. Women within the movement played a central role in defining what it meant to belong to a liberated South Africa.
Motherhood emerged as both a political tool and a personal struggle for women in exile. The ANC often used the moral authority of motherhood to symbolise care and sacrifice within the liberation struggle. Yet many women activists were separated from their children when they joined the ANC abroad. In the 1970s, as younger women fled South Africa and entered exile, the movement faced new challenges in accommodating mothers. Efforts were made to establish child care facilities, but these were fraught with contradiction. While some women sought to participate fully in the guerrilla war, others wished to remain close to their children. These tensions revealed the complex intersection between revolutionary commitment and family life.
Sandwell’s research highlights how the ANC’s responses to such issues demonstrated its gradual transformation from a liberation movement into a proto state. The organisation was forced to confront questions of social welfare, childcare and gender equity as matters of governance rather than mere internal policy.
By the 1950s, women had succeeded in securing full and equal membership within the ANC, marking a significant departure from many contemporary political movements across the globe. Their efforts also connected the ANC to broader international networks of progressive women’s organisations, positioning South African women as both contributors to and shapers of global feminist discourse.
Women such as Gertrude Shope, Ruth Mompati, and Winnie Madikizela Mandela played key roles in diplomacy, international advocacy and the shaping of policy within the movement. Some underwent military training, while others represented the ANC at international forums. Their leadership helped embed gender equality as a principle of the ANC’s political vision.
The inclusion of women’s rights in South Africa’s post apartheid constitution can be traced directly to this legacy. Today, the South African constitution stands among the most progressive in the world in its definition and protection of women’s rights. Yet as Sandwell notes, gender based violence remains a serious challenge in South Africa, illustrating the ongoing struggle to realise the ideals articulated during the liberation period.
This history also challenges dominant narratives that position feminism as an export of the global North. The role of South African women in shaping the ANC’s political ideology demonstrates that feminist thought and practice emerged within the African liberation context itself, grounded in the lived experiences of women who sought both national and personal emancipation.
Sandwell’s work reframes the understanding of South Africa’s anti apartheid history by recognising women not as peripheral figures but as architects of a broader political and moral vision. Their activism in exile illustrates that the struggle for liberation was never only about dismantling apartheid, but also about reimagining the meaning of equality, family and nation.
