‘The freezing loneliness made one wish for death,’ journalist Joyce Sikakane-Rankin said of solitary confinement. With seven other women, including Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, she was held for more than a year.

This is the story of these heroic women, their refusal to testify in the ‘Trial of Twenty-Two’ in 1969, their brutal detention and how they picked up their lives afterwards. 

* Such events have been written about before, but conveyed in their own words and seen from their isolated yet shared experience of a single moment in the struggle, the women's stories are brought home in a way that at times is truly painful to read and at other times truly inspiring. * The book's concern is not just to accord the four women - and others - their place in the history of the struggle for freedom, or to bring home their bravery. It weaves their experiences into the historical development of the struggle in a way that highlights broader issues. * Draws out the particular ways in which women's experience of activism and repression differs from that of men, both in terms of the behaviour of the police and of the women's ties with community, family and children. * The book's broad timespan underpins the psychological effects of sustained solitary confinement and its traumatic legacy. The women's stories lead to a chapter reflecting on the trauma and its impact when left unhealed.

* Such events have been written about before, but conveyed in their own words and seen from their isolated yet shared experience of a single moment in the struggle, the women's stories are brought home in a way that at times is truly painful to read and at other times truly inspiring. * The book's concern is not just to accord the four women - and others - their place in the history of the struggle for freedom, or to bring home their bravery. It weaves their experiences into the historical development of the struggle in a way that highlights broader issues. * Draws out the particular ways in which women's experience of activism and repression differs from that of men, both in terms of the behaviour of the police and of the women's ties with community, family and children. * The book's broad timespan underpins the psychological effects of sustained solitary confinement and its traumatic legacy. The women's stories lead to a chapter reflecting on the trauma and its impact when left unhealed.