"The only one who was thought to know the pulse of the people": Black women's politics in the era of post-racial discourse
Abstract
Theorizing black women’s high level of participation in contemporary South African protests for public water, electricity, and housing requires attention to the long history of women’s rural and urban revolts against apartheid passes and Section Ten laws, which proscribed black women’s mobility and delegitimized their access to public services. Examining the role of ibandlas (women’s assemblies/prayer unions/mothers unions) in three literary works: Lauretta Ncgobo’s And They Didn’t Die, Sindiwe Magona’s For My Children’s Children, and Njabulo Ndebele’s The Cry of Winnie Mandela, I argue that black women mobilize against enduring conditions of particular vulnerability, as post-racial discourse suppresses the social relations of blackness in the face of the “after-life of apartheid.” Indeed, post-racial discourse misreads the “pulse of the people.”