Transnational choices and anti-apartheid resistance: African–Chinese movements

After more than 25 years South Africa’s democratisation in 1994, marks a point to re-interrogate the relations between South Africa and China. During the apartheid regime, colonial rule was perpetuated and unleashed its effects in a gendered manner. The dawn of South Africa’s democracy introduced a formal decolonisation, which guaranteed equal rights and the end of systematic discrimination for all its citizens; it also brought with it a change in the international relations the government maintained. To underline the gendered dynamics of such relations, I show how women within liberation movements, who overall have not received due attention in China–Africa engagements, have always been a part thereof. Whereas transregional ties bolstered anti-apartheid resistance in the country, the legacies of South Africa’s previous authoritarian system remain palpable today. Calls for substantive decolonisation geared towards addressing the multi-layered injustices of the past take place alongside longstanding, contested South African–Chinese relations. In this article, I thus provide an inclusive transregional political history of gendered liberation politics and refer to an era where transnational choices in anti-colonial resistance extended to include exchanges with China. By doing so, I complicate narratives of Chinese–African cooperation and reflect on the potential to democratise such politics.