This book brings together over 120 selections by women in six countries of southern Africa, in English and in translation from over 20 different languages, ranging from wedding songs and work songs to letters, prison diaries, poetry, memoirs, and recent testimony before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The famous are here (Doris Lessing, Sindiwe Magona, and more), but most of the voices are new, and they open up worlds too long excluded from the history books. The authoritative, readable introductory notes to each selection provide essential background and biography, but whether the context is the German genocide of the Herero people during WW I or today's AIDS epidemic in Botswana, the focus always is on how it affects the daily lives of people at home. One of the most moving pieces is about the Widows of the Reserves, their husbands torn away as migrant labourers, the women alone with work and family. The first in a projected series of four regional African collections, this is a must for women's studies and African history and literature collections.

What happens to women in the aftermath of war and internal armed conflict? Are gender and inter-generational relations transformed during the process of post-war reconstruction? This book asserts that there is no aftermath for women -- a truce does not bring an end to gendered violence. It shows how the post-war period is too late for women to transform patriarchal gender relations; the foundations for change must be built during conflict. The first part of this book asks how transitions from war to peace and from authoritarian to democratic regimes can be used as opportunities to move beyond the reconstruction of pre-war institutions to real social transformation. It presents an honest accounting of what women lose and gain in wartime and how they organise, as well as an analysis of why they fail to consolidate their gains. It explores the many dimensions of violence against women before, during and after war. It reflects on how war changes identities, on the myths that men and women invent about each other in wartime, and on the problems of reconciliation and women's solidarity; and it focusses specifically on shifts in gender relations in the context of post-conflict reconstruction and transformation. Finally, the contributors consider the relation of the state to society in the aftermath, searching for a vision of the transformed society. The evidence presented in the second part of this book documents the varied nature of war and the many post-war situations, including Haitian and Balkan examples, Asian cases, and experiences in different African conflict zones. The contributors analyse what women endure and what they construct during and after conflict, what obstacles they encounter in their search for autonomy and what bonds of solidarity they create in building peace.