[I]t is perceived as the norm that men will not only lead [political] processes, but also that their participation is never questioned or subject to scrutiny and debate in the same manner as women's participation or leadership roles. This reinforces the notion that conflict, politics and peace building processes are vividly about male power and domination.

This paper moves from the premise that there are various Black women's intellectual legacies in South Africa and that they are not self-evident is due to a variety of racialised and gendered processes that mask, mythologise and delegitimise women's agency. Women are (dis)remembered and celebrated similarly across academic, political and other public spheres. On the one hand, we find women in stereotypical, stoic, mother roles, hypersexualised, passive and supportive roles; parading as the full spectrum of women's presence, they render all other forms of women's subjectivity unrecognisable. On the other hand lie attitudinal and institutional discourses where women's relevance is simply functional and contained in ‘women's issue’ topics. Both hands contribute to the ‘invisibilisation of black women's work’.

In June 2011, as the country mourned the death of the anti- apartheid struggle leader Albertina Sisulu, the bulk of the public discourse referred to her role as Walter Sisulu's beloved wife, the matriarch of the Sisulu extended family, who mothered some of the Mandela children during Nelson Mandela's incarceration, having introduced Mandela to her cousin Evelyn.