Sisters for Justice

Small Acts in the Transformation of Apartheid South Africa

Catherine Higgs (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

364 Seiten

2026
University of Wisconsin Press (Verlag)
978-0-299-35230-1 (ISBN)

Noch nicht erschienen (ca. Februar 2026)
Versandkostenfrei
Auch auf Rechnung

Artikel merken

Sisters for Justice explores the activism of a select number of Catholic religious sisters in South Africa, beginning in the 1960s. Catherine Higgs analyzes how these individuals’ seemingly small actions in a variety of spheres helped shift policy and contribute to the dismantling of the apartheid state. As she reveals, they helped provide basic medical services to displaced Africans, opened private convent schools to children of all races despite segregationist laws, advocated for African pension rights, served on justice and peace commissions, and joined protests—all while working within the context of a hierarchical male-led church initially hesitant to criticize a state openly hostile to Catholics.

Based on extensive oral history interviews with white and Black sisters as well as deep archival research, this groundbreaking book reveals a largely untold story, nested within the broader literature of women’s activism in South Africa. The result is a new perspective that expands and intensifies our understanding of a dramatic period during which individual actions, in the aggregate, contributed to social change.

Catherine Higgs is a professor of history at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of The Ghost of Equality: The Public Lives of D. D. T. Jabavu of South Africa, 1885–1959 and Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery, and Colonial Africa and the coeditor of Stepping Forward: Black Women in Africa and the Americas.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations

Introduction
1 Catholic Sisters in Southern Africa, 1849–1961
2 Embracing Change, 1962–1969
3 Education, White Sisters, and Black Sisters, 1970–1972
4 “Opening” Schools, 1973–1976
5 Embracing Risk, 1977–1984
6 Turning Point, 1985
7 Years of Fear and Resilience, 1986–1989
8 Transition to a New South Africa, 1990–1994
Conclusion

Note on Method
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag	3.2.2026
Zusatzinfo	17 b&w illus., 2 maps
Verlagsort	Wisconsin
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	454 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
ISBN-10	0-299-35230-7 / 0299352307
ISBN-13	978-0-299-35230-1 / 9780299352301
Zustand	Neuware