Born in Diepkloof, Soweto in 1969, Lucy first became involved in South Africa's liberation struggle through her school's SRC around the age of fourteen. As an SRC representative she campaigned against the poor quality of education in her school – Bopasenatla Secondary – and was soon encouraged to join COSAS by older, male student activists. Lucy was an excellent storyteller – a quality which led me to interview her several times over three years. In each of our meetings she discussed her childhood experiences of racialised inequality, her views on gender, and the strong relationships she forged with her male comrades. Yet almost an hour into our first interview I still had little sense of her day-to-day tasks and activities as a comrade. ‘Can you tell me a bit more about some of your tasks?’ I asked. ‘Or what activities you participated in?’ Lucy responded:

After experiencing a number of attacks from police and security forces at school or in Soweto's streets, Lucy learned to walk around the township with her pockets full of stones so that she would always be ready to fight. ‘They were so heavy,’ she lamented, ‘but we know we have to fight’. ‘Sometimes,’ she continued, ‘we’ve got matches and all that. Then when they come and attack us, we have to attack back with petrol bombs.’

Throughout our interviews, Lucy's description of her ‘tasks’ as a comrade repeatedly focused on confrontations in Soweto's streets such as those described above. She spoke candidly about throwing stones at police vehicles, making and using petrol bombs, and punishing suspected gangsters or informers. She repeatedly emphasised how her actions in the struggle were no different from those of her male comrades. Lucy's memories contrast starkly with depictions of township streets during the 1980s as deeply masculine spaces, ‘clearly demarcated as the social territory of young men only.’