Sash

Sash, published as The Black Sash from 1956 to 1969, is a detailed record of the activities of the Black Sash organisation, which was founded in 1955 by South African white women. The organisation initially campaigned against the government’s removal of mixed-race voters from the voters’ roll in the Cape Province. In the following decades, it demonstrated against the Pass Laws and other apartheid legislation, and campaigned for the release of political prisoners. It also organised advice offices to help Africans experiencing problems as a result of the Pass Laws, and compiled documentation on the apartheid system and its consequences. Sash is a record of this activity, detailing the organisation’s petitions, protests, marches, vigils, press releases, and conference papers.

In a speech in 2005, Black Sash national director Marcella Naidoo, reflecting on those early years, noted that its members ‘used the relative safety of their privileged racial classification to speak out against the erosion of human rights in the country. Their striking black sashes were worn as a mark of mourning and to protest against the succession of unjust laws. But they were not only on the streets. Volunteers spent many hours in the national network of advice offices and in the monitoring of courts and pass offices’.

In its earlier years, Sash appeared on an almost monthly basis, an astonishing feat, considering that for nearly 40 years, the magazine was produced on a volunteer basis by a succession of editors and contributors, sometimes under very difficult circumstances. However, it became increasingly difficult to find women who could undertake the task; the changing position of women in society meant that full-time volunteer involvement was becoming a rarity. This was one of the factors that made a restructuring of the organisation necessary, and in some later periods the magazine was produced by an editorial team or a system of rotating editors. By 1995, when the last issue was published, the magazine was considerably larger, but published only three times a year.

The Aluka Digital Library contains 173 issues of Sash, from 1956 to 1994, digitised by Aluka partner Digital Imaging South Africa (DISA). In addition to being a record of the organisation’s work, it provides commentary on many of the major issues, debates, and events of this period.

For additional information on Sash, including a listing of editors, see the historical note by Mary Burton on the DISA website (http://disa.nu.ac.za), from which this introduction is adapted. A guide to the Black Sash Archival Collections in South Africa, compiled by Black Sash and the University of Cape Town Libraries, can be found on the Black Sash website (http://www.blacksash.org.za).