Embracing Activism in Apartheid South Africa: The Sisters of Mercy in Bophuthatswana, 1974–94

In South Africa in the latter half of the twentieth century, the Church shifted from a stance of seeming complicity with the government's racist policies to a more active role with the country's peoples. Religious congregations such as the Sisters of Mercy, Johannesburg, moved to increase their activities in areas such as justice and peace, hunger relief, and especially education and skills training. This article examines the Sisters' varied work with displaced peoples in Bophuthatswana from 1974 to 1994.