African Women Who Fought for Political Freedom
6 women in the archive worked for political freedom. They came from different countries and different centuries, but each of them saw a wrong that others accepted and set out to change it. Read their stories to see how the same cause looked from very different lives.
6 women in the archive
ModernAdelaide Tambo
South African anti-apartheid activist and wife of ANC president Oliver Tambo. While her husband led the ANC in exile, Adelaide was an activist and organiser in her own right, supporting liberation networks, raising her children alone under constant pressure, and dedicating her life to the freedom of her people.
ContemporaryAsmaa Mahfouz
Egyptian activist whose video blog posts in January 2011 called on Egyptians to protest in Tahrir Square and helped spark the Egyptian Revolution that toppled President Hosni Mubarak. She was 25 years old. Her four-minute video is considered one of the most significant acts of citizen activism in the history of the Arab world.
IndependenceDoria Shafik
The Egyptian philosopher and publisher who stormed parliament with 1,500 women and starved herself until Egypt promised women the vote, then was erased from history for defying Nasser.
ColonialNadine Gordimer
South African novelist and short-story writer. Nobel Prize in Literature (1991); used her work to oppose apartheid and to explore race, power, and moral responsibility.
ModernNawal El Saadawi
Egyptian feminist writer, psychiatrist, and activist who spent five decades fighting patriarchy, religious conservatism, and female genital mutilation at great personal cost: losing her job, being imprisoned, and living under death threats. Author of over 50 books translated into more than 30 languages. Called 'the Simone de Beauvoir of the Arab world.'
ModernVictoria Mxenge
South African lawyer and anti-apartheid activist who defended political prisoners during the apartheid era and was assassinated by apartheid government agents in 1985. Her husband had been murdered by the same forces four years earlier. She knew the danger and continued anyway.