You are invited to join Rory Riordan, author of Apartheid’s Stalingrad: How the townships of the Eastern Cape defied the apartheid war machine, in conversation with Janet Cherry, human rights activist and academic, on Wednesday, 29 March at 18h00.

Rory and Janet will discuss how the people’s resistance through the church, the civic structures and the underground in the townships of Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage in the mid-1980s was instrumental in the demise of apartheid.

The state threw everything it had at these uprisings – and the people stood and fought and fought and stood.

‘And to see so many unsung heroes, Dr Njongwe, Ernest Malgas, Henry Fazzie, Ivy Gcina and others, now clearly placed in the picture of our struggle – this is great.’ – Mkhuseli ‘Khusta’ Jack

‘… for the first time we have a well-researched and comprehensive account of those difficult, terrible and yet wonderful years of the struggle.’ – Nkosinathi Benson Fihla

Rory Riordan founded the Human Rights Trust in 1986 and its magazine Monitor. He worked extensively in the troubled townships of Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage in the late 1980s. He is a former columnist for the Eastern Province Herald.

Janet Cherry is a human rights activistand academic based in Gqeberha. She is Professor of Development Studies atNelson Mandela University. She has a history of human rights and developmentactivism, including current involvement in the climate justice movement. Duringthe liberation struggle in the 1980s she was an activist in the AfricanNational Congress, the United Democratic Front and the End ConscriptionCampaign.

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Did the 1980s resistance in the townships of the Eastern Cape hasten the end of apartheid?