'All the wives' become ANC gatekeepers

Shireen Hassim, Mail & Guardian

Reading the history of a political organisation is an exercise in reading against powerful official narratives – powerful both in their capacity to tell a story and in their rootedness in the hearts of their supporters. In the case of the ANC, that official narrative is one of a progressive and natural line of development, an arc of redemption from oppression. It is history told as a triumphal march rather than a series of conflicts, several of which may remain unresolved.

The ANC Women's League: Sex, Politics and Gender

ANC Women’s League: A history as complex and varied as women themselves

Amidst all the confusion over whether SABC COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng was indeed offered a woman as a present by Venda leaders, one aspect was utterly unremarkable: that the ANC Women’s League did not make a peep of protest. It’s the silence we’ve come to expect from a League which seems to have a decidedly idiosyncratic approach to which issues affecting SA women it chooses to make a noise about. But as a fascinating new book on the League’s history explains, it’s a body which has been mired in ideological contestation virtually from its inception. By REBECCA DAVIS. The Daily Maverick