Tuesday, 3 November 2026

Ntando Mbata's research on Kroonstad Prison, which held black female political detainees from 1960 to 1990, found black women faced harsher treatment than white women held in the same facility.

Women detained there were forced to request sanitary napkins publicly and stand for long periods while menstruating, and interrogators used a failed-mother narrative, falsely claiming children or spouses had died.

Women prisoners organised protests and hunger strikes and kept studying behind bars, while some reported that the more militant they became, the more authorities isolated them in solitary confinement.

South Africa's Hartebeeshoek station was a key partner in 1961 for tracking international space missions, including NASA's Apollo missions, giving the country a long space heritage.