This blog looks at some of the material held in LSE Library relating to women, Africa and the African diaspora. The Library has recently put together a digital archive of its resources and has an online curated collection allowing you to only search for items published in Africa, writes Gillian Murphy.
Caption: Elizabeth Makeking with some of her children (ref: 7NBE)
This image shows Elizabeth Makeking, an organiser for the Food and Canning Workers Union of Paarl, Western Cape in South Africa. In 1959, she received a banishment order because of her activism was told to move a thousand kilometres away to Vryburg in the northern Transvaal, a remote place on the edge of the Kalihari desert leaving her children and family behind. Just before the order came into force, Elizabeth fled to Basutoland (now Lesotho).
This photo comes from the archive of journalist Nan Berger, who visited South Africa in 1962 under the sponsorship of the Women’s International Democratic Federation to interview some of those who had been banished. Her report includes discussions she had with Eizabeth and the activist, Lilian Masediba Ngoyi, and about the interracial campaigning group, Federation of South African Women, of which Elizabeth and Lilian were members.
Caption: From left to right: Ronke Doherty, Irene de Lipkowski, Leona Chesson, Doris Banks-Henries (ref: 2IAW/1/J/2/4)
The International Alliance of Women (IAW) is an international umbrella organisation of affiliated societies and individual members that has been lobbying for women’s rights since 1904. The Library holds historical records of the IAW. Amongst them is a large collection of photographs, many of which relate to conferences organised by the IAW. The photograph above shows Ronke Doherty (President of the National Council of Women’s Societies in Nigeria), Irene de Lipkowski (President of the IAW 1973-1979), Leona Chesson, Doris Banks-Henries (writer and educator in Liberia) at the IAW conference in Tehran in September 1978.
Caption: Image showing members of the Sierra Leone Women’s Movement (ref: 2IAW/1/J/2/5)
Since 1947, the IAW has held general consultative status to the United Nations Social and Economic Council and many photographs in the Library’s collection relate to UN projects. There are also photographs of different women’s groups such as this one showing members of the Sierra Leone Women’s Movement founded in 1951 by Constance Cummings-John. The Movement campaigned for trading rights and education for women. Many of the photographs in this collection are of unnamed women. If you are interested in doing some picture research, do get in touch.
Caption: Images from the anti-apartheid protest outside South Africa House in the late 1980s
Next is a photograph from the continuous protest that took place outside South Africa House in Trafalgar Square from April 1986 until 1990 when Nelson Mandela was released from prison. The Library holds many photographs of the women’s groups involved in this protest. During this period, they marked various anniversaries of apartheid history such as Namibian Women’s Day in 1986. On 10 December 1959, an uprising against apartheid took place in the Namibian capital of Windhoek in which some protestors were killed. For International Women’s Day on 8 March 1987, around 400 women gathered in Trafalgar Square for an event organised by the South-West Africa People’s Organisation, ANC Women’s Section andAnti-Apartheid Women’s Committee. They collected signatures and presented a petition to the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, at Downing Street.
The groups also commemorated South Africa Women’s Day on 9 August 1987. On that day in 1956, 20,000 South African women marched to the Union Building in Pretoria to protest against the introduction of passes for ‘black’ women.
[image of the flyer for play Wenzani]
Caption: Flyer for the play ‘Wenzani’ in 1984 (ref: 6WIE/46)
The Library also holds papers of individuals and organisations involved in the anti-apartheid movement. This includes leaflets for workshops and plays organised and promoted by the campaigning organisation Women in Entertainment. This flyer is for the play ‘Wenzani (Zulu: What are you doing?) Women, anti-apartheid and exile’ was first performed at the Elephant Theatre in 1984 and featured Dorcas Faku and Diane Taylor.
Caption: (ref: HCA/Journals/172T)
The Hall-Carpenter Archives is a large collection of LGBTQ+ archives, journals and ephemera. The journals are international in scope and amongst them are newsletters from GALZ (Gay and Lesbians in Zimbabwe) which was founded in 1990 to promote rights for LGBTQ+ people in Zimbabwe.
Books and print material
Amongst The Women’s Library are books and journals about or by women in Africa.
SPEAKby the Speak Collective in Durban, South Africa. The issues we hold from the 1980s and 1990 cover topics such as domestic abuse, and the effects of war in Natal along with articles with antenatal advice.
Women, the journal of the Babiker Badri Scientific Association for Women’s Studies in Sudan. The Library hold issues from the 1980s and 1990s. The anti-colonist, Babiker Badri, set up the first girls’ school in Sudan in 1907. The Babiker Badri Association was founded in 1979 initially to promote the welfare and education of women in Sudan and then broadening to include women’s empowerment, equality and peacebuilding.
Zimbabwe Women’s Resource Centre and Network for August 1993 gave information and articles on a range of topics of interest to women.
Myra Sadd Brown Library
Myra Sadd Brown was a suffragette in the UK. She worked with the International Alliance of Women and the British Commonwealth League which she co-founded in 1925. After dying suddenly in 1938, the London Society for Women’s Service set up a library in her memory. The library contains books and journals on international women’s activism, mainly from Commonwealth countries. This is what is published in Africa from the Myra Sadd Brown Library.
An example from the Myra Sadd Brown library is the journal The Black Sash. Founded in Johannesburg in 1955, Black Sash was an organisation of white, liberal women who campaigned against apartheid. Protests were peaceful and dignified with women wearing a black sash symbolising the mourning of the South Africa constitution. Legislation was later passed to stop them from protesting as a group and they then formed one-woman vigils. We hold an incomplete run of its journal Black Sash from 1960 until 1983 when the journal was called The Sash. The organisation is still active today as a human rights campaigning group.
Wangari Maathai’s memoir is also part of the Myra Sadd Brown Library which is on display in our current exhibition ‘Women of the World Unite: The United Nations Decade for Women and Transnational Feminisms 1975 to Now’. Maathai was involved in preparation for the first UN International Conference on Women in 1975 through her work with the National Council of Women in Kenya. Although Maathai was unable to attend the conference in Mexico City herself, it did serve as a catalyst for her idea of planting trees to help rural women and the environment. It led to the founding of the Green Belt Movement in 1977. Maathai was a delegate at subsequent UN World Conferences on Women in 1985 in Nairobi and in Beijing in 1995.
We welcome researchers who want to work with our collections. If you are interested in doing so, please get in touch.
Find out more:
About The Women’s Library collection.
About our LGBT+ collections.
Read about the history of the Hall-Carpenter Archives.
Read more about Myra Sadd Brown and her library.