The Wits-based Women’s Health Project newsletter, changed into the more sophisticated-looking WHP Review, The Quarterly Journal of Women’s Health Project. Barbara Klugman and Nana Kgosidintsi, respectively, served as its managing editor.

Posted to a mailing list, the newsletter conveyed crucial information to all participants in the Women’s Health Conference which took place in Berea, Johannesburg, at the end of 1994. It also distributed pamphlets with policy information in 14 content areas in the lead up to the conference.

The newsletter fed into the conference proceedings edited by Debbie Budlender. Titled Health in our Hands, Proceedings and Policies of the 1994 Women’s Health Conference, the proceedings, like the newsletter, was self-published in 1995. Both the newsletter and proceedings fed into The South African Women’s Health Book by Women’s Health Project which Barbara and I, Vossie Goosen co-edited and which was published by Oxford University Press in 1996.

The publications are unique and remain unique because they represent the wide conscious raising and solidarity building of the women’s movement at the time. All three of them were and still are examples of key leftist and democracy building sites. Women in academia, grassroots community-building organisations, the trade union movement, progressive church leaders, the health professions and nursing, in particular, are among the many participants in the process and the publications.

Trawling through the internet it appears as if the only archive for the newsletter is at the UCT Libraries Gender Studies Library Guide where it has been put in the African Studies library. There are mentions of the proceedings but no evidence of a copy. The South African Women’s Health Book is in a number of libraries across the world and can be bought second hand at several outlets here and outside South Africa. It is crucial that these publications which helped establish women’s rights in our country are not lost. It is hoped that the Revolutionary Papers book project will help us stave off their erasure.