What Kind of Memory Could Be Possible?
They were both young mothers or mothers-to-be, and the sole woman amongst a group of black activists accused of a political crime. Their imprisonment marked a shift in the gendered politics of imprisonment in their respective countries. Specifically, it initiated a beginning of a series of arrests and detainment of black women political activists, which, in turn, became an important symbol of black women’s political empowerment.[1] Yet, their memory within the historical record could not be more different.
Their parallel lives shed light on how black women located in different class and geographic spaces are represented differently within the archive. In this section, I draw attention to these parallels in order to begin to address the question of what we learn about the black international by looking at Ramashamola beside her contemporaries in the United States. Ramashamola reminds us what is lost when we do not incorporate the voices of women of the Third World within the archive. However, this loss is not evident unless we examine Ramashamola alongside black liberation activists like Huggins.
In 1969, Huggins, a twenty-one-year-old member of the Black Panther Party, faced charges for the murder of Black Panther Party Member Alex Rackley. Scholars have written about her literary expression during imprisonment, describing her as a female subject contributing to conversations about liberation.[2] Furthermore, scholars have attributed the trauma she experienced from being separate from her daughter as a result of state violence. [3] The historical record notes Huggins’ struggle as an exemplary one; her political imprisonment became a symbol of survival.[4]
In 1985, Ramashamola, a 24-year-old black South African woman, was sentenced to death along with five men for the alleged murder of Sharpeville deputy mayor. In the incident that became known as the Vaal Uprising, Ramashamola was one of thousands caught up in a wave of political unrest due to increased rent. At the time, Ramashamola was the first woman executed in South Africa for political violence. The African National Congress Women’s Section and other women’s organizations demonstrated in support of Theresa Ramashamola for her actions in opposing apartheid.[5] In the state of South Africa’s legal system in the 1980’s, the rule of law played a repressive role in South Africa and black people were largely removed from its protection. The white minority rule was not simply rule that happened to be composed of white people. Rather, “it was rule by and in the interests of whites”.[6] For the law, it involved the loss of effective independence, and for the accused the denial of justice.
Despite holding similar political significance in their respective liberation movements, Huggins’ memory within the historical record is robust. On the other hand, Ramashamola’s representation within the archive consists of light traces. Their parallel lives reveal the stark differences in their emergence within the archive. In the following section, I investigate the question of how do histories of black women activists default into narratives of revolutionary and quotidian?
[1] Phillips, Mary. “The Power of the First-Person Narrative: Ericka Huggins and the Black Panther Party.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 43, no. 3/4 (Fall/Winter ///Fall/Winter2015 2015): 33–51.; Filippi, Natacha. “Women’s Protests: Gender, Imprisonment and Resistance in South Africa (Pollsmoor Prison, 1970s–90s).” Review of African Political Economy 43, no. 149 (July 2, 2016): 436–450.
[2] See Washburn, Amy. “The Pen of the Panther: Barriers and Freedom in the Prison Poetry of Ericka Huggins.” Journal for the Study of Radicalism 8, no. 2 (2014): 51–78.; Rofel, Lisa, and Jeremy Tai. “A Conversation with Ericka Huggins.” Feminist Studies 42, no. 1 (March 2016): 236–248.; Platt, Tony, and Cecilia O’Leary. “Two Interviews with Ericka Huggins.” Social Justice 40, no. 1/2 (January 2013): 54–71.
[3] Phillips, Mary. “The Power of the First-Person Narrative: Ericka Huggins and the Black Panther Party.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 43, no. 3/4 (2015): 33–51.
[4] Phillips, 44.
[5] Save Theresa Ramashamola. Southern Africa the Imprisoned Society (SATIS). MSS AAM 339. Anti-Apartheid Movement Archive, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. https://bit.ly/35Ixz1e, April 2020.
[6] Parker and Mokhesi-Parker, In the Shadow of Sharpeville., 115.