PHOTOS SIORNA ASHBY
“It’s a strange thing for the leader of the Women’s Equality Party to admit, but I think it’s fair to say I was a late developer when it comes to feminism,” chuckles Mandu Reid warmly. “I only really recognised myself as a feminist in my mid 20s.”
Growing up in what was then Swaziland, in the twilight years of the Apartheid regime, young Mandu – with a black mother and white father – wasn’t thinking about feminism, because there was an issue more pressing; inequality and injustice along racial lines, which she says she was “acutely aware” of. “That was most pertinent to my family… Racial inequality was more at the front of my mind growing up.”