Struggling to Speak? Young women, the historical record, and political activism in Apartheid South Africa
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Event details
Join us for research seminars hosted by the Department of History with a selection of visiting academics, alongside University of York researchers. All students and staff are very welcome.
A zoom link will be made available for distance learning PhD students on request. Please contact Dr Purba Hossain (purba.hossain@york.ac.uk) if you have any questions.
You can view the full schedule for the semester here: History Research Seminar Schedule Autumn 2025
Speaker: Dr Rachel Johnson, Associate Professor in Modern African History, Durham University
Abstract:
In this talk I will examine the life and death of a young, Black, South African woman - Masabata Loate - as it was captured in the archives of the Apartheid state and the liberation struggle against it. In doing so, I argue for the importance of understanding the place of speech and silence within histories of political activism. There is a gendered history of speaking in and about the liberation struggle which constitutes the historical record of that struggle and continues to do so in the form of oral history interviews. I reflect on the implications of this, and the changing nature of the digitised historical record, for writing histories based on archival fragments.
Image: On the streets of Soweto, Johannesburg everyone rejoiced at the news of Nelson Mandela's release. 11.02.1990.© Sue Kramer / Africa Media Online'