ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on women ex-combatants’ socio-economic and psychological integration into post-apartheid South Africa. It argues that transnationally trained guerrillas and combative mothers transitioned from a life of political struggle to an everyday life of hustling for survival in democratic South Africa. The women who had tertiary education have had more job security than those with only high school, or no education. The provision of the special pension has been the main form of state financial support for women who fought inside the country alongside the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA), MK, and the self-defence units, such as Amabutho. The formal integration and demobilisation process that some women participated in was only one aspect of the reintegration that the women combatants had to undertake after 1994. In the main, most women remain politically involved in African National Congress (ANC), Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and Amabutho structures.
