Dear Comrade Chief Rep

Love, marriage and the family in the ANC in Exile in Tanzania

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2137808
AutoresArianna Lissoni (0000-0003-2262-4554, University of the Witwatersrand, autor correspondente)
Ano2017
Volume76
Fascículo1
Páginas1-21
Data de publicação2017-01-02
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAfrican Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0002-0184 • E-ISSN: 1469-2872
EditoraInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00020184.2017.1285666
OpenAlexW2588124823
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas25

Most studies about the South African liberation struggle have focused on political and strategic concerns at the level of formal organisations and their leadership. Yet the anti-apartheid struggle also impacted on personal relationships and the social life of those who put their lives in its service. This article draws on correspondence between members of the African National Congress in exile based in Tanzania and the organisation’s chief representative in the region concerning permission, recognition and guidance on love, marriage and family-related matters in the period from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. It analyses how the demands of the struggle, and the difficult exile context, shaped love and family relationships and conceptions, and the ways in which individual cadres negotiated their personal lives while engaging in a political struggle as part of a collective movement. The disciplinary and parental role that the ANC in exile exercised through the bureaucratic process developed to manage these relations is also examined through the prism of the correspondence. The article argues that the governance of personal life by the ANC in exile was an integral part of nation-building and state-making – fulfilling both bureaucratic and affective functions

Bureaucracy · Context (archaeology · Corporate governance · Ethnology · Management · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Tanzania · African history and culture studies · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Gender Studies · History · Law · South African History and Culture