Dawn Breaks: the anti-colonial legacy of the ANC Women’s Section radio segment

ABSTRACT

This article is an auto-ethnographic study that explores how its author came to study South African exiles after stumbling upon archival material of a radio segment called “Dawn Breaks,” while at the Liberation Archives at The University of Fort Hare in Alice, South Africa. Dawn Breaks was the African National Congress (ANC) Women’s Section’s weekly 30-min radio segment of the exiled ANC’s radio programme, “Radio Freedom,” that broadcasted primarily from the radio programme’s headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia, throughout the 1980s. This article argues that Dawn Breaks, as a cultural product of this movement, offers a significant model to studying how and why scholar-activists like the author, but more particularly Black women in times of struggle, are politicised into joining anti-apartheid movements and are able to find their anti-colonial voice. This kind of work is indebted to entities like the Women’s Section’s radio segment because it amplified the Women’s Section’s growing voice and activism across the clandestine ANC organisation in exile through the airwaves.

KEYWORDS:

• Dawn Breaks
• radio freedom
• ANC in exile
• ANC women’s section
• democratisation
• anti-apartheid
• South Africa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This was a two-day series of plenaries and workshops with over 120 attendees from UCSD and nearly every other UC campus, held January 29–30, 2015 at UCSD.

2. Pierre’s work, particularly (Pierre 2012), is an excellent example of considering the necessity to studying the construction and effects of “Blackness” and “Anti-Blackness” within and beyond the continent of Africa, especially as a tenet of colonialism.

3. Ochieng (2015) provides an excellent account of the racial politics that were at the epicentre of this struggle. Other texts that provide statistical evidence for these persistent forms of inequality include: (Durrheim, Mtose, and Brown 2011), (Klein 2007) and (Cliffe 2000, 274)

4. Texts that are helpful to consider the history, formation, and ideologies of Black Lives Matter: Ransby (2018) and Garza (2014).

5. Ibid.

6. Texts that are helpful to consider how these Black radical networks are formed are: Edwards (2003) and Head (1991). Edwards considers how radical politics are shared transnationally through translation of global texts. Head, a prolific South African writer, creates a global Black radical community through letters to colleagues around the world. Also, Gilroy (1993) theorises Black networks through the transnational cultural exchange routes found in the Atlantic world.

7. See: Bloom (1961) and Rogosin (1959).

8. For about Sharpeville and its aftermath, See: (Lodge 2011)

9. For more about the ANC in exile, see: (Ellis 2013).

10. Such repression included The National Party government destroying thriving arts communities like Sophiatown (beginning in the mid-1950s) and imposing the 1963 Publications and Entertainment Act, to censor, ban, imprison or exile outspoken anti-apartheid writers, artists and entertainers.

11. For more information about Radio Freedom, its formation, and ideologies, see: Lekgoathi (2010) and Davis (2009).

12. I use the term “propaganda” here because beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the ANC and its media outlets began to describe their conflict with the South African government as a “People’s War.” In the People’s War strategy, which was developed by the Chinese Communist Revolutionary Mao Zendong and later used by the Vietnamese in the Vietnam War, it is important to maintain the support of the masses through propaganda campaigns and to mobilise these masses to engage the enemy deep in the countryside employing guerilla warfare tactics. As such, the ANC began referring to all of their media outlets as propaganda, including Radio Freedom.

13. With a 1983 report of a Radio Freedom Workshop, it speaks of five active stations at the time located in Luanda, Angola; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Antananarivo, Madagascar; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Lusaka, Zambia; and in addition a sixth station in 1984 in Maputo, Mozambique. See: “Report of the Radio Freedom Workshop Held in Lusaka From the 28–30 April 1983 The Year of Unified Action.” (1983). Pps. 9–10.

14. Lekgoathi (2010) and Davis (2009) are two of the few but foundational articles on Radio Freedom that discuss the programme in distinct but interrelated ways. Davis’ essay traces the history of Radio Freedom as a way to discuss the dynamics of the relationship and the influence of the South African Communist Party (SACP) on the ANC in exile, while Lekgoathi’s essay adds to the history uncovered in Davis’ piece by focusing on the audiences of Radio Freedom, why and how these audiences listened to Radio Freedom and the impact Radio Freedom had on their lives.

15. Texts that outline the contributions of women to the anti-apartheid struggle include (Brooks 2008; Bridger 2021).

16. Note on sources: For the sections that follow, the majority of the history of ANC Women’s Section is indebted to the work of Shireen Hassim. The primary source materials particular to Dawn Breaks are documents I uncovered at the Liberation Archives at the University of Fort Hare.

17. I use substantive citizenship here as is defined in Glenn (2004), 53.

18. Hassim writes to this point that, “The Year exposed the ANC’s weaknesses in integrating issues of gender equality into the core work of the movement. Despite the creation of a committee to oversee the Year’s programme of action, it soon became the responsibility of the Women’s Section rather than the movement as a whole. (Mavis) Nhlapo argues that the Year of the Women failed in its most crucial task, that of ‘making the women’s issue a national issue and not just a women’s issue.’”

19. Collison quotes former MK commissar Andrew Masondo as saying, “In Angola there are at one time 22 women in a group of more than 1 000 people.” Collison also has entire section of his article speaking about the silence regarding women’s abuse in the camps subtitled, “The deafening silence on rape in MK camps lingers.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martin L. Boston

Martin L. Boston is an Assistant Professor of Pan African Studies and Ethnic Studies at California State University, Sacramento (Sacramento State). He holds a doctorate in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego), and has also taught at DePaul University, UC San Diego, and Washington State University before joining the Ethnic Studies Department at Sacramento State.