In Brief: Thandi, Liberation: My Struggle for South Africa as an Exile in America

By Thandeka Luthuli Gcabashe. Africa World Press, 2024. 238 pages. $29.95/paperback.

This memoir begins with a concise history of twentieth-century South Africa. It briefly traces the development of the African National Congress and the passing of national segregation laws that were modeled after the Jim Crow system in the United States. It documents massacres of anti-apartheid protestors, such as the slaying of 176 demonstrators who participated in the Soweto Uprising in 1976, and discusses the international boycott of South Africa.

The author, who has used the name Thandi since she was young, writes of her father, the late Albert Luthuli, chief of her hometown of Groutville, president-general of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1952 to 1967, and recipient of the 1960 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his nonviolent approach in the anti-apartheid movement. Gcabashe’s childhood home was full of company: mostly Africans, including Nelson Mandela. White visitors came to the house in violation of laws requiring them to get special permits to visit Black residential areas, despite the presence of numerous informants who could have betrayed them to the authorities.

In 1960, the apartheid government banned the ANC along with most other anti-apartheid groups. In 1970, Thandi and her husband, Thulani Gcabashe, along with their four children, moved to the United States. The South African government intelligence service had learned that ANC youth meetings were being held in the Gcabashe family’s apartment and they feared imprisonment. The couple became friends with Coretta Scott King, CEO of the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta, Ga., and widow of Martin Luther King Jr., and she became one of the family’s immigration sponsors.

Thandi was hired in 1981 by American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) to direct the Southern African Program for the southeastern region. Based in Atlanta, she organized the 1980s boycott of Coca-Cola to persuade the Atlanta-based company to divest from South Africa. The book includes an appendix listing highlights of AFSC’s involvement with Southern Africa beginning in the late 1950s.

Friends looking for an accessible introduction to the international struggle against apartheid in South Africa will find this book a welcome addition to their libraries.

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Sharlee DiMenichi is staff writer at Friends Journal and a member of Lehigh Valley Meeting in Bethlehem, Pa.