I did not choose politics; politics chose me', she says. ' It chose me because I was born of a poor African woman, a domestic worker', in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. Arrested, tortured and imprisoned, she suffered, 'not because of my activism alone, but because I dared as a women, a black women, to challenge the system'. The experience propelled her into a lifelong struggle for freedom from oppression, including gender oppression. But they could not deal with a female African species', she reflects. But going into exile for nearly two decades, she encountered patriarchy, 'within the liberation movement.