Regina Gelana Twala

On 8 March 2025, we celebrate International Women's Day and highlight the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. On this occasion, we would like to call attention to the remarkable life of Regina Gelana Twala and the recent publication of her archive. 

Twala (1908–1968) was a feminist activist, writer, teacher, researcher, evangelist, and liberation leader in South Africa and eSwatini. She became the second Black woman to obtain a degree from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and focussed on women's issues and native customs in southern Africa. As a writer, Twala contributed newspaper columns to several publications in Swaziland, including Umteteli Wa Bantu and Izwi lama Swazi.

Twala was a pioneering African feminist and liberation leader, active in the anti-colonial and anti-apartheid movements. Her political activity included co-founding the Swaziland Progressive Party in 1960, in which she was an influential figure. She died in 1968, one month before Swaziland gained independence.

(Source: Wikipedia accessed on 6 March 2025)

Selected Publications

Badri, Balghis, en Aili Mari Tripp, Women’s activism in Africa: struggles for rights and representation (London, 2017).

Boswell, Barbara, And wrote my story anyway: black South African women’s novels as feminism (Johannesburg, 2020).

Cabrita, Joel, Written out: the silencing of Regina Gelana Twala (Athens, 2023).

Jaffer, Zubeida, Beauty of the heart: the life and times of Charlotte Mannya Maxeke (Bloemfontein, 2016).

Masola, Athambile, en Xolisa Guzula,10 besondere leiers, aktiviste & baanbrekers (Auckland Park, 2021).

Masola, Athambile, ‘“Bantu women on the move” Black women and the politics of mobility in The Bantu World’, Historia 63 (2018) 93-111.

Matsebula, J. S (eds.), The history of emaSwati in South Africa (Mbombela, 2016).

Naidoo, Shanthini, Women in solitary: inside South Africa’s female resistance to Apartheid (Abingdon, 2022).

Ngcobo, Lauretta G en Barbara Boswell, Lauretta Ngcobo: writing as the practice of freedom (Cape Town, 2022).

Orton, Bev, Women, activism and apartheid South Africa: using play texts to document the herstory of South Africa (Bingley, 2018).