This thesis is a study of youth, nationalism, silence, gender and history-making. It explores the study of a distinct `youth politics' after 1976 within histories of South Africa's liberation struggles. In particular it examines a narrative that has suggested youth politics became a masculine pursuit from the mid-1980s onwards. Within the historiographic narratives of youth politics young women often appear as a silent absence. However, it is argued that a project that aimed solely to fill in this historiographic gap would misunderstand the nature of young women's absence from struggle history. This thesis argues instead for a more complex understanding of liberation politics and the production of history as arenas for reifying, contesting and creating gender ideologies. The shifting subjectivities of young women are examined through an exploration of the politics of voice and silence in five connected contexts: the historiography of the struggle; commemorations of June 16th 1976; the public discussions of self-identified youth activists; the legal entanglements between the State and activists (trials, detention and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission); and black women's autobiographical projects. It is argued that the absence of young women from struggle histories is not just a banal twist in the historical record but rather an active, contested and ongoing process.

The period between 1895 and 1915 was one of remarkable decline in British humanitarian conscience, During these two decades, two divergent attitudes, the predominant racist creed and the patronising condescension of traditional philanthropy, were supplemented by a new school of thought which saw itself as the keeper of true colonial conscience in Britain. Originally conceived by Mary Kingsley as a commercial lobby, this 'Third Party' (as i1 called itself) was sustained mainly by the humanitarian idealism of John Holt and E. D. Morel. 'Exeter Hall' continued its traditional function as watch-dog for aboriginal rights arid pressure . group in Imperial affairs, but its former position of primacy was already undermined not only by the fact that its ro3.e and methods were no longer a. deposit of popular and, official attitudes, but al5o by the relative ascendancy of the Third Party as the moat positive public factor in Imperial thought and policy towards West Africa. Indeed, during this period, the personality of Morel was synonymous with a reformist movement which saw the native land settlement as the indispensable bulwark of Imperial policy in West Africa. Questioning the Colonial Office method of developing these tropical 'estates , the Third Party adv,c8ted Imperial administrative reforms there. These pressure-group activities are also examined front the stand-point of British Imperial thought, while the West African responses to these pub]Jo and official attitudes are given their due importance. T1i ideas d activities of these pressure-groups were not totally Gut of tune with the intentions of the Colonial Office, but. since official policy was threatened by its inherent vea1ne Its ad too expeditious methods, by unwholesome alleg1..nce to personal friendships, party affiliations, and indiv11ual commercial adventurism, these hunianitarians strove to keep alive the ideal of Imperial Trusteeship.

On 20 July 1922 the war-time division between Great Britain and France of the former German colony of Kamerun in west Africa was formally confirmed. However, instead of being annexed, the two portions of Cameroon joined fourteen other territories in the Pacific, Africa and the Middle East, in becoming League of Nations mandates. This thesis examines the assertion that during the inter-war years, the two leading League powers, Britain and France, would seek to interpret and apply the mandates system in their territories in a manner which best suited their perceived national interests. In so doing, they did not live up to the high ideals on which the mandates system was supposedly created and they also failed to abide by the legal obligations they had voluntarily undertaken. Part 1 examines the emergence of the mandates system and the League of Nations' machinery for supervising mandated territories. It shows how the mandates system, with all its high-minded commitments, was borne in the highly-charged political environment of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. Part 2 of the thesis provides case studies of the two Cameroon mandates, from their war-time partition between France and Britain, through their transition into League of Nations mandates, and the administration thereof.

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