Intersectionality, Memorialization, and Activism in South Africa: The Case of Nokuthula Simelane

To this day, the contributions of South African women to the dismantling of the apartheid state remain insufficiently recognized, with serious consequences not only for the memorialization of anti-apartheid activists but also for the visibility of contemporary dissidents, as became apparent in the marginalization of female student activists during the FeesMustFall-movement of 2015/16 (Naidoo 2018). While today’s political activists insisted on an intersectional framework for women’s political activism and recovered the militant language of their activist predecessors, referring to women as imbokodo (rock) and wearing the doek (head wrap), official discourses and heritage practices have continued to struggle with exclusive understandings of “resistance” and “activism,” and with a memorial landscape primarily honoring the biographies of “great men” (Marshall 2019; Madida 2020). In the context of this contested political landscape, my paper focuses on the life of Nokuthula Simelane, a member of uMkontho weSizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress, who was abducted by apartheid security police in 1983 and whose fate remains unclear since the perpetrators, rather than disclosing the circumstances of her abduction when testifying before the TRC, resorted to racialized and misogynist discourses to disparage the young female activist, while some fellow ANC members trivialized and sexualized her role in the liberation movement. Using an intersectional approach to feminist memorialization (Mahali and Matete 2022), my paper addresses the decades-long efforts of Nokuthula’s sister and mother, political activists in their own right, to work toward transformational discourses and practices that would render Nokuthula’s activism publicly visible and legible. Specifically, I argue that their efforts offer empirical and theoretical grounds on which to reconsider 1) the contributions of women to the “infrastructure of resistance” (Cock 1991; Gasa 2007) as they navigated the unique opportunities and precarities resulting from their gendered, classed and racial identities 2) the failure of democratic state institutions (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, National Prosecuting Authority) to address the intersectional experiences of female activists, and 3) the collaborative design of alternative practices of commemoration that expose dominant discourses of betrayal and reconciliation.