Apartheid crumbles, Women in the turmoil of the 1980s

Women from the Crossroads squatter camp demonstrate outside parliament demanding protection from Witdoek (white headband vigilantes for the right to rebuild their bent-out hopes). Cape Town. June 1986. © Guy Tillim

The 1980s saw escalating state repression and mass detentions. In a frenzy of desperate reaction, the government declared a series of back-to-back states of emergency from 1985 to 1987. In 1988 a number of organisations including the UDF and COSATU were restricted. In 1984 PW Botha made a desperate effort to make reforms by introducing the tricameral constitution: three parliaments were set up, one each for whites, Coloureds and Indians. But this was widely rejected by the Coloured and Indian people and seemed doomed to fail from its very inception.

Conflict rose to unprecedented heights and even went beyond black-white unrest, with Inkatha clashing with the ANC/UDF and breaking their ties. Press freedom was restricted; there was turmoil everywhere and South Africa had in effect become a police state. When Botha suffered a stroke in 1989 and FW de Klerk took over it had become abundantly clear that a process of reform had to begin. He released a group of prominent political prisoners, including Walter Sisulu and began to consult with them.

Throughout the 1980s women were again at the forefront of the struggle. Prominent female activists like Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi continued to leave the country and go into exile. In 1980 she joined the ANC in Zimbabwe and worked in political structures under Joe Gqabi. She then enlisted in Umkhonto we Sizwe receiving her training in Angola. Other women who had remained in South Africa began to establish women's organisations again and to align these to the newly-formed UDF, which was widely described as the ‘ANC in disguise'.

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