Abegail Ntleko: A Memoir of a Zulu Woman’s Independent Self-Fashioning

This article argues that Empty Hands, A Memoir, One Woman’s Journey to Save Children Orphaned by Aids in South Africa (2015) positions Abegail Ntleko as a heroic figure whose caregiving during the HIV/AIDS pandemic in rural KwaZulu-Natal constitutes a site of black women’s epistemology and epistemic resistance. Extending Clenora Hudson-Weems’s Africana womanism and decolonial lenses, the article examines how Ntleko and Zulu women navigate cultural bottlenecks to reconstitute new identities while addressing the social and moral crises wrought by HIV/AIDS in the 1980s. By adopting and caring for children orphaned by the pandemic, Abegail Ntleko constructs a heroic identity in the Zulu community. Unlike self-serving adventure-type heroism, Ntleko’s heroic identity emerges as social and moral agency, demonstrating and restoring dignity and belonging to those affected within her community.