As women in South Africa, it is important for us to understand the nature of our oppression, for it is only after understanding it, can we identify the target of our attack and plan the appropriate strategy and tactics for our struggle. Black women in South Africa suffer three types of oppression. 1. Political oppression, which is common to all blacks in South Africa, ie. the denial of rights to vote for or choose the type of government we want, and the denial of rights as a people in South Africa. 2. Economic oppression as black workers in South Africa. Black women workers are even more exploited than men workers. They are paid lower wages for the same job, are treated as temporary staff and can be fired at anytime especially if they fall pregnant. 3. Social oppression which stems from the idea that women are born inferior to men and therefore have to play an inferior role in society. The socialization process starts at birth and women and men are geared towards certain roles in society. Men most often towards leadership positions and professional jobs and women towards household duties and secretarial jobs. This socialization process continues throughout ones life such that most people accept it as a natural phenomenon and a way of life. Having understood the forms of oppression, we can see that the struggle is not between men and women, where men are seen as the source of our oppression. Nor is it a struggle for mechanical equality between men and women ie. being paid the same wages as men, and having equal status as men in society, because this will mean equality within the present status quo. Our struggle is a struggle between womenand the existing social order. It is a struggle of the oppressed against oppression. Our main weapons in the struggle for liberation are UNITY and ORGANISATION. Unity is realised through common effort, links are forged through collective work and study, through criticism and self-critcism and through action against opression. Organization can be achieved through women's groups and organization. A women's group's first demand should be the clarification of our ideas, to get rid of miscosepts and erroneous ideas concerning the role and liberation of women. A women's group usually tackles the question of social oppresion, but more important, it must be seen as a stepping stone towards involvement in the broader struggle can we destroy the foundations of exploitative society and rebuild society on new foundations. Foundations built on the demands of the FREEDOM CHARTER. “The fundamental struggle is for national liberation of the oppressed people of South Africa, and any women's organization that stands outside this struggle must stand apart from the mass of women. What was realised by the Federation of South African Women was that it would be impossible for women to achieve their rights as women in a society in which so many fundamental rights are denied to both men and women by virtue of their colour and their class. Therefore just as there can be no revolution without the liberation of women, the struggle for women's emancipation cannot succeed without the victory of the revolution".

D. Tech. (Department of Visual Arts and Design: Fine Art, Faculty of Human Sciences), Vaal University of Technology. / Studies on art made by women have been deprived of their place in the history of art, globally, however, within the South African context, white women were placed firmly within the arts while black women were marginalised. This study makes two assertions, that culture was used as a weapon during apartheid in the 1980s, and that black women, as artists, contributed to South African art history through conferences and exhibitions. The process adopted in securing these two stated positions was to use the frameworks of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and grounded theory as methods to elicit personal experiences through interviews with six women involved in the arts and who contributed to the apartheid struggle during the 1980s. The process used to structure the research and collect data, was an argumentative review of selective literature. Exhibition reviews, conference presentations and proceedings, as well as journal publications between 1982 and 1990. The review concentrated on ‘what’ and ‘how’ statements made on black artists, specifically black women, to understand the reasons for the neglecting of black women artists in the construction of South African art history in the 1980s. Culture as a weapon of the struggle constructed a substantial part of this research as the study considered aspects that constituted struggle culture during the 1980s and the role of black women within this culture. Important to the role of black women as cultural activists was the inclusion of the oppressive nature of class, gender and race as experienced by black women during apartheid to expose the complexities that impacted black women’s roles as activists. A discussion of conferences, and festivals (with accompanying exhibitions), and the cultural boycott against South Africa, the official adoption of culture as a weapon of the struggle, and the resolutions taken at these conferences is investigated. Also of importance was the inclusion of women as a point of discussion at these conferences: their poor position in society, and support for the inclusion of more women into the visual arts. In support of black women’s contribution to South African art history, a discussion on black women as cultural activists is included. This includes interviews with six activists who were part of the liberation struggle during the 1980s who shared their experiences. The study asserts that black artists, specifically black women artists, were prejudiced during the 1980s. This did not however serve as a deterrent to their contribution to a South African art history. Anti-apartheid movements such as the African National Congress (ANC) and the anti-apartheid movement (AABN), Amsterdam, played an integral role in creating alternative cultural platforms that supported a ‘people’s culture’, that enabled the use of culture as a ‘weapon of the struggle’ against apartheid.