Reviews
Incredible book about a black South African woman wife to a beloved man, her life as a daughter, wife, mother and a struggle hero against cruel apartheid and its injustices and her role in some injustice in her own community
Her complicated story is handled with the care and gentleness it requires.
Very short read.
Highlights
By and large, the authorities leave African women alone because they are supposed to be governed through their men. When laws referred to "natives," they usually meant African men; African Women are seldom singled out as political subjects, as they were legal minors under custo- mary law and thus not proper "persons" in their own rights.
African patriarchy provides a shield - albeit a flimsy one– for women, protecting them from the intense racist sCrutiny of the state. (Of course, the state tends not to pro- tect the women abused by those men.)