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Early in 1996 a group of Southern African women came together to compile the first historical anthology of Southern African women's writing. The decision was made possible partly because the 1994 democratic elections in South Africa had brought an end to the time when most feminist academics and activists preferred to focus their energies on topics and issues relating to racial rather than gender inequalities. Partly, too, South Africa's entry into democracy and the end of the armed struggle against apartheid (this had involved all Southern African countries in one way or another) meant new geopolitical identifications became possible. Primarily, however, the decision was made through the enterprise of the New York publisher, Florence Howe of Feminist Press, who — with others on her team, notably Tuzyline Allen — envisioned a series of anthologies under the general title Women Writing Africa, intended to represent women's oral and literary production through the African continent. Seven Southern African editors were brought together by the publisher and series editors, who wished the Southern African volume to be the first in the African series.¹ The publishers had in mind as their major market the North American educational system.

To some, an anthology with an exclusive focus on women will seem dated. Moreover, even to select texts on the basis of gender — and on race, as we did to some extent — is to posit a relation between the text and its author or authors in a way that flies in the face of contemporary poststructuralist theory, if not yet poststructuralist feminist practice.² Yet in the Southern African context an anthology of women's writing is, in contrast, belated. Whereas other countries with a comparably well-established record in literary production have already devoted historical anthologies solely to women, South Africa has produced only two, and the other countries of the region none, although there have been anthologies of contemporary writing by women. Moreover, there are so far no historical anthologies linking the entire Southern African region; and, apart from a relatively recent spate of feminist revisionist texts and occasional writing on masculinity, most Southern African literary and historical accounts pay unequal attention to women and men, and exclude gender as an analytical tool, so that political and cultural agency is still generally seen as male, and male writers and performers still tend to be more widely known than women, apart from the few `canonized' white women.³

Women Writing Africa: Southern Africa as a Post-Apartheid Project