The sheer delight of being a feminist

Prof. Pumla Gqola

Prof. Pumla Gqola first declared herself a feminist as a fifteen-year-old in high school. She had fallen in love with the idea when a friend used it to describe the women at the forefront of the struggle against the violent South African Apartheid regime of her youth. The young Pumla found excitement in the possibility of a better world that could be created by the ideas of these “delightfully dangerous women.” The stubborn optimism they epitomised was an essential source of strength for her and other young women seeking solidarity in their formative years.

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Pumla is a feminist, Pan-Africanist, academic, and author of Rape: A South African Nightmare; Reflecting Rogue: Inside the Mind of a Feminist; A Renegade Called Simphiwe; and What is Slavery to Me?: Postcolonial/Slave Memory in post-apartheid South Africa.