Feminist gertrude fester-wicomb (PhD London School of Economics) is of Indigenous/slave descendant. Her 1980s political activism included establishing grassroots women’s political organisations including the Women’s National Coalition which successfully advocated gender rights in the South African constitution. As a political prisoner in solitary confinement, she composed a play in her head, The Spirit cannot be caged. She published Prison Notebook: V2957/88 and South African Women’s Apartheid and Post-Apartheid Struggles (Western Cape):1980-2014.
Past positions include teaching, being a Member of Parliament, Gender Equality Commissioner, and various roles at the Centre for African Studies (UCT), Wynona Lipman Chair, Center for American Women and Politics(Rutgers), Rwanda a.o.
She publishes fiction and non-fiction. She has just submitted a manuscript on women’s struggles, including a chapter on the ‘fun side of political struggles, Singing, Struggling and … Still We Survived.
