South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle reflected an ideal of heroic masculinity that ignored and depreciated women as active political agents. This has contributed to a post-apartheid social order that accepts formal gender equality but that perpetuates gender inequality by discounting women's experiences. This article examines the little-known and short-lived Yu Chi Chan Club (YCCC) and National Liberation Front (NLF). Tiny Cape Peninsula-based breakaways from the Non-European Unity Movement – an African National Congress rival – the YCCC and NLF were exceptional amongst early 1960s underground groups in their systematic attempts to theorize guerrilla struggle and assess its applicability to South African conditions and, in the NLF's case, to build a cell structure through political education. Although the NLF's idealized notion of revolutionary life was premised on an abstract individual with traits then associated with public and vocal male activists, nonetheless women participated as equal abstract individuals. The NLF's relatively horizontal cell structure, small cell size, and lack of hierarchy made participation easier for both women and men, allowing women to operate equally within the political space. From their gendered upbringing and early experiences in hierarchical organizations to their brief experience of equality within the YCCC and NLF, the women were then forced into a prison system with an extremely rigid and unequal gender divide. Subjected to the state's regendering project, the political space available to the NLF's women prisoners shrank far more than it did for their male comrades, whose prison experiences became the measure of anti-apartheid politics.

南非的反种族隔离斗争反映了一种英雄男子气概的理想，这种理想忽视和贬低了女性作为积极的政治代理人。这促成了后种族隔离社会秩序，该秩序接受正式的性别平等，但通过贬低女性的经历使性别不平等永久化。本文考察了鲜为人知的昙花一现的玉池禅俱乐部（YCCC）和民族解放阵线（NLF）。在 1960 年代初期的地下团体中，YCCC 和 NLF 与非欧洲统一运动（非欧洲人国民大会的竞争对手）分离，以开普半岛为基础，他们系统地尝试将游击斗争理论化并评估其对南非条件的适用性，并且在NLF的案例，通过政治教育建立细胞结构。虽然 NLF' 理想化的革命生活概念是以抽象个体为前提的，该个体具有随后与公众和直言不讳的男性活动家相关的特征，但女性作为平等的抽象个体参与。NLF 相对水平的单元结构、较小的单元规模和缺乏等级制度使得女性和男性更容易参与，使女性能够在政治空间内平等地运作。从她们的性别成长和早期在等级组织中的经历，到她们在 YCCC 和 NLF 中的短暂平等经历，这些女性随后被迫进入一个有着极其严格和不平等的性别鸿沟的监狱系统。受国家重新改造项目的影响，全国解放阵线女囚可用的政治空间比男性战友的政治空间缩小得多，