Ellen Kuzwayo activism included serving as the president of the Black Consumer Union of South Africa and the Maggie Magaba Trust. On the 1985 publication of her autobiography, "Call Me Woman", in which she described being beaten by her husband, Kuzwayo became the first black writer to win South Africa's leading literary prize, the CNA Award. After Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South African president in 1994, Kuzwayo became a member of the country's first multiracial Parliament, aged 79, and served for five years until June 1999, when she was South Africa's longest-serving parliamentarian. With director Betty Wolpert, Kuzwayo was involved in
Feminism in South Africa involved in agriculture and service work, two sections of labor that were not covered by protective labor legislation until 1994. For several decades, anti-apartheid causes and protests took precedence over gender equality initiatives. Following the abolition of apartheid in 1991 and a transition to democracy in 1994, more attention was devoted to women's rights. Some have argued that feminism in South Africa was often associated with white, middle class women. For black South Africans, feminism may often be a highly charged position to take up; it has been seen as a colonial importation, white and middle-class. There are contemporary black