We are All Radical Feminists Now: Reflections on 'a Bit on the Side' (Reflection‪)‬

We published this paper in Transformation 5 (1987) in the cauldron of a particularly volatile period in South African politics. The mid-1980s in Natal was a time of the most enormous violence and uncertainty, a time of civil war and states of emergency. Yet what strikes us most, reading this paper in hindsight, is the tremendous sense of hope and optimism that another world was not only possible but was, indeed, looming on the horizon. Moreover, as 'academic-activists' we saw our responsibility as being to help in shaping the nature of that future. Hubris? For sure! We wrote with the aim of developing a theoretically robust and empirically grounded scholarly argument that at the same time engaged political debates within the national liberation movement. We offered a sympathetic insider critique of the internal politics of the United Democratic Front (UDF) (in which all of us were involved to a greater or lesser extent) and its relationship with the ANC (in which some of us were also involved), both internally and in exile. The 'woman question' position adopted by the ANC and linked to the movement's adherence to the notion of 'colonialism of a special type' seemed to us flawed. Our objective was to highlight the weaknesses and limitations of this approach and to insist on the importance of bringing the private into the context of political struggle, experienced differently by women and men as gendered beings. We argued that this would determine not only the nature of politics but also policies, which were never gender neutral.