A Political Love
The Body Speaks. The Soul Knows.

By Nobonke van Tonder

“A jewel in South African literature” – Ampie Muller

In this deeply personal and politically charged memoir, a White woman reflects on her relationship with a Black freedom fighter – and her pregnancy with their child – during South Africa’s turbulent transition from Apartheid to democracy.

Drawing from meticulously kept personal journals, she examines the pivotal entanglement between the personal and the political at a moment of profound societal change.

What unfolds is an unflinching examination of a complex mixed-race relationship, motherhood in a society on the brink of transformation, and bodies that move with staggering clarity where reason cannot reach. Her choice of this man as the father of her child forces her to contemplate the values and burdens of her Afrikaner upbringing, and to navigate the disquieting shift from political privilege to potential marginalisation in the new era of Black leadership.

Amidst it all, something indomitable emerges: the child’s wise, enduring love – tenderly electing these two bodies as the soul of belonging.

Nobonke van Tonder is an elder in the Mjoli clan of the amaXhosa and a critically acclaimed South African dancer and psychologist. She lives in Cape Town.