Making History and Writing the Present: The WCCR and Black Feminism at the University of Cape Town

In this article, Gabeba Baderoon narrates her experience as a member of a transformative feminist collective at the University of Cape Town in the 1990s, the Women of Colour Consciousness Raising group. The article locates the group within the radical work of South African feminists in reshaping both the private and broader culture of that decade and, centrally, their role in reinventing the post-apartheid academy. The 1990s was an interstitial time marked both by dreams of freedom and the lingering pall of apartheid. Baderoon draws on the voices of WCCR members to outline the relations of care, critique, creativity, and a bodily assertion of intellectual belonging crafted within the group, arguing that these constituted a way of living freedom into being during that crucial period. The article traces formative moments in the WCCR’s history, its complex ties with the university, and the relationships of mutuality and support forged within the collective. The article incorporates an archive of documents, memories, and ongoing conversations among WCCR members to offer an insight into the shaping of a generation of post-apartheid feminists, who have gone on to become some of the most eminent scholars, teachers, activists, and artists of the contemporary period.