Making history, gendering youth : Young women and South Africa's liberation struggles after 1976

This thesis is a study of youth, nationalism, silence, gender and history-making. It
explores the study of a distinct `youth politics' after 1976 within histories of South
Africa's liberation struggles. In particular it examines a narrative that has suggested
youth politics became a masculine pursuit from the mid-1980s onwards. Within the
historiographic narratives of youth politics young women often appear as a silent
absence. However, it is argued that a project that aimed solely to fill in this
historiographic gap would misunderstand the nature of young women's absence from
struggle history. This thesis argues instead for a more complex understanding of
liberation politics and the production of history as arenas for reifying, contesting and
creating gender ideologies. The shifting subjectivities of young women are examined
through an exploration of the politics of voice and silence in five connected contexts: the
historiography of the struggle; commemorations of June 16th 1976; the public
discussions of self-identified youth activists; the legal entanglements between the State
and activists (trials, detention and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission); and black
women's autobiographical projects. It is argued that the absence of young women from
struggle histories is not just a banal twist in the historical record but rather an active,
contested and ongoing process