THE FIRST APARTHEID GOVERNMENT’S Bantu Education system was designed to trap South Africa’s black population in subservience, and to institutionalise impoverished minds and stunt metaphysical growth. It restricted their teaching syllabus, placing the emphasis on subjects that would qualify pupils for unskilled labour: agriculture, gardening, woodwork, domestic service.
Academic subjects were systematically whittled out of the curriculum, and for decades after the introduction of the Bantu Education Act in 1953, black school leavers were equipped to be little more than carriers of water and hewers of wood. The government’s intent was spelled out clearly by Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, minister in charge of Bantu Education at the time and later prime minister: ‘There is no place for the Bantu in the European [i.e. white South African] community above the level of certain forms of labour. Racial relations cannot improve if the result of Native [i.e. black] education is the creation of frustrated people who, as a result of the education they receive, have expectations in life which circumstances in South Africa do not allow to be fulfilled immediately.’
Winnie was fortunate enough to escape this fate, matriculating two years before the introduction of Bantu Education. As the law that would condemn millions of blacks to a wholly inferior education was being debated in parliament, she was embarking on the journey that would qualify her as a social worker.
For the first time in her life she would travel beyond the small, dusty towns of the Transkei, armed with a knowledge of the outside world acquired from her father and his books, her love of reading newspapers, and her teachers. Going to Johannesburg, South Africa’s biggest city, was a breathtaking adventure, and during the December holidays there was a steady flow of relatives visiting with advice. Winnie had to sit, eyes respectfully downcast, listening patiently, as the older women – most of whom had never ventured out of Bizana – warned her of the dangers in eGoli – the City of Gold. They urged her to beware of strangers, and to be especially wary of tsotsis [gangsters], who were a danger to unsuspecting young girls. Nancy made faces and giggled behind her hand while Winnie tried her best to keep a straight face, although in reality she was growing more impatient by the day to shake off the dust of the familiar and venture into the unknown. Makhulu grumbled that Winnie had enough of an education and had no need to go to Johannesburg. Why could she not stay at home like other girls?
The tribal elders cautioned Winnie not to forget Pondoland, and to live according to the proud traditions of her people. When they were alone, Columbus assured Winnie that there was nothing to be concerned about. He had organised everything and showed her the letters from the college and the Helping Hand Hostel, where he had arranged for her to live. The hostel was in Hans Street, Jeppe, close to the city centre and far from the overcrowded black townships where crime was rife.
Winnie had never been on a train or at a railway station, however, and Columbus was concerned about her safety on the overnight journey to Johannesburg – afraid that men with less than honourable intentions might accost her. Fortunately, two of their tribesmen, Moses and Jeremiah, migrant labourers on the gold mines, were travelling to Johannesburg on the same train, and Columbus asked them to take care of Winnie.
On the day of their departure, Winnie followed her two escorts to the crowded third-class carriages reserved for blacks. They pushed and shoved until they found an empty space on one of the hard, wooden seats. Winnie squeezed in next to the window and arranged her cooked mealies, fruit and cold tea – refreshments for the journey. Meals were served in the comfortable first- and second-class carriages that had separate compartments for between two and six people, but these were ominously marked ‘Europeans Only’. Black passengers in the dirty and uncomfortable third-class coaches had to provide their own food, or go without.
On the platform, Columbus maintained his stoic dignity while he said his farewells, but Nancy was openly weeping. Winnie shed no tears while waving to her father and sister as the train jerked and began to move slowly away from the station. She had inherited her father’s self-restraint, and she was excited. As the train gathered speed she sat quietly, wondering what lay ahead. Faster and faster, the train rushed past all that was familiar, heading for a strange place that was nothing but a legend.
There wasn’t much time for reverie, however. Moses and Jeremiah began to tell her about life in the city and the black townships, the hardship of the miners who lived in hostel compounds, the lack of privacy and family life, the puny wages. Winnie was perturbed by what she heard. At home she had seen how the migrant labour system disrupted families, leaving wives to take care of homes and children on their own, often eking out a living from the land without any financial support, while husbands and fathers struggled to survive on the mines. She considered writing to her father and asking him to discourage men from going off to work on the mines, but realised they had little choice. There was widespread poverty in the Transkei, and for many men there was no other way of paying the compulsory taxes.
As night fell, the passengers tried to make themselves as comfortable as possible on the hard benches, and the carriage grew quiet as they drifted off to sleep. At daybreak, Winnie was surprised to see that the countryside through which the train was passing was flat and uniformly brown, except for the occasional splash of green. With images of the rolling emerald hills of Pondoland still fresh in her mind’s eye, she was disappointed by the anticlimax of the Transvaal landscape. Even the sky was different – not the bright, brilliant blue she was used to, but a muted blue-grey. In a moment of panic Winnie thought she would never be able to stay in this ugly place. Little could she know that, in time, she would love it even more than the Transkei.
As the train crawled slowly towards the city, Moses and Jeremiah pointed out large, yellow sandy hills in the distance – Johannesburg’s landmark mine dumps. After the gold was extracted from the crushed rock, the remaining slag was poured around the mines, forming man-made mountains. On the outskirts of the city, the dumps towered high above the train like the walls of a fortress, golden and formidable. Behind them lay the uneven skyline, etched against a backdrop of muffled sunlight and pale blue sky.
Moses and Jeremiah said goodbye and left Winnie on the platform, a bewildered country girl with her luggage balanced on her head, surrounded by a noisy, jostling crowd. Soon, two white women found her and introduced themselves as Mrs Phillips and Mrs Frieda Hough. Mrs Phillips was the wife of Professor Ray Phillips, head of the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work, while Mr Hough was a lecturer and the fieldwork director at the school. Mrs Phillips reassured Winnie that although Johannesburg might seem frightening at first, she would soon settle down once she met the other students. Winnie, whose only previous experience of whites had been hostility and condescension, was pleasantly surprised by the warmth of the two American women. Mrs Phillips and her husband were Congregational Church missionaries, while Mrs Hough, a social worker herself, was the daughter of missionaries. She had married an Afrikaner, Michiel Hough, one of a small number of whites who did not support apartheid and who later became a professor and head of the sociology department at Fort Hare. The Hofmeyr School was the only one of its kind in South Africa, and had been established in 1943 to train social workers to support the black South African troops in North Africa during World War II. After the war the school was turned into a college for training black social workers, but Winnie was the first student from a rural area.
The two women drove their charge to the Helping Hand Hostel. It was a weekday, and although still early morning the streets were alive with people, traffic and noise. For Winnie, it was love at first sight. In an instant she knew that this was where she belonged, among the fashionably dressed throngs, the cars and the imposing buildings.
The hostel had been set up by the Congregationalist American Board to offer safe and alternative accommodation to domestic workers, who often lived in tiny rooms in the backyard of their employers’ homes. In time, teachers and nurses also came to live there, and a section was reserved for students such as Winnie, who would stay in the hostel for the next four years. The authorities waged a constant battle to move the facility out of the white residential area into one of the black townships, but this would only happen some years later.
After Mrs Phillips and Mrs Hough had settled her into her new home, some of the other students took Winnie into the city to show her around. She was mesmerised by the elegant shop window displays, especially the beautiful clothes and shoes. But she also realised that just beyond the glamorous façade, the ugly face of poverty cast a dark shadow over the city. For the first time in her life she saw beggars on the streets, some blind or crippled, huddled in hopeless bundles on the sidewalks, dressed in rags, hands outstretched for coins from passers-by. All the beggars were black.
Despite the marked contrast to her life in Bizana, Winnie adapted quickly to her new surroundings. Hostel life suited her, being used to an extended family and years at boarding school. She soon made friends and began to copy the examples they set.
Many of the girls used cosmetics, creams and fragrant toiletries, sleeping in nightdresses and slipping into dressing gowns in the morning. Winnie slept in her petticoat and dressed as soon as she arose. The other girls routinely dressed, undressed and showered in front of one another, but at first Winnie’s decorous upbringing prevented her from doing the same. Gradually her roommate, Sarah Ludwick, who was slightly older, introduced her to modern underwear and sanitary products, comfortable pyjamas and sheer nightgowns, high-heeled shoes and elegant dresses.
The hostel was comfortable, companionable and centrally situated, and Winnie realised she was privileged compared with the vast majority of black women in Johannesburg. Rural women worked hard and lacked many comforts, but they were relatively protected, shielded by tradition and convention from the demands and challenges of cities divided by apartheid. Live-in domestic workers were separated from their families, while factory workers endured harsh conditions. From conversations with the working women living in the hostel, Winnie learned that black women in the city all had two things in common: long hours and pitiful salaries. As weeks turned into months, Winnie began to understand more fully her father’s commitment to teaching his pupils about the injustices inflicted on black South Africans. She wrote long letters to Columbus, questioning the fairness of a system that allowed whites to live in comfortable homes set in elegant suburbs, while blacks were crowded into neglected townships, denied the right to live and work where they pleased, or enjoy the many benefits reserved for whites alone. When Columbus replied, it was to remind her to focus on her studies, and that politics was not for girls.
But Winnie found it impossible to ignore the rising tide of black politics. Most of the students at the Hofmeyr School were members of the ANC, and they often discussed among themselves the struggle against racial discrimination. The ANC was actively organising, and there was growing support for a black trade union movement, though it would be thirty years before one was recognised. Torn between a desire to become actively involved in the political movement and the need to fulfil her father’s expectations, Winnie concentrated on her studies, using whatever spare time she had to read and learn about political developments. Her father had paid her tuition fees for the first six months in advance, but if she performed well enough she might be considered for a scholarship, which would greatly ease the financial burden on Columbus. Nancy, too, was working hard to help pay for Winnie’s education, stripping the bark from wattle trees in her father’s plantation and selling it to a white man from a tannery in Durban. Trade in the bark, used in shoemaking, was illegal, but the little money Nancy made provided Winnie with much-needed money for books, stationery and personal items. Nancy also sent Winnie her first pretty dresses after Winnie wrote and told her that her clothes were totally unsuitable for city life. She sent some pictures torn from magazines to illustrate what was fashionable, and Nancy immediately bought material from the local store. She asked their cousin, Nomazotsho Malimba, who was a dressmaker, to make clothes for Winnie like those in the pictures.
When she was awarded the Martha Washington bursary, things changed for the better, and Winnie threw herself with abandon into activities offered by the college. She proved especially good at netball, shot put, javelin and softball, and earned a host of nicknames: ‘Steady but Sure’, ‘Commando Round’ and ‘Pied Piper’, referring in turn to her round face and long nose; and ‘The Amazon Queen’ and ‘Lady Tarzan’ because she solved many problems using her physical strength. She also joined the Gamma Sigma Club and met students from the University of the Witwatersrand, St Peter’s Seminary and the Wilberforce College.
Winnie’s closest friends were Marcia Pumla Finca and Harriet Khongisa, while Ellen Kuzwayo, an older student, assumed the role of chaperone, protecting the younger girls from unwelcome male attention. Ellen would later become a well-known social worker, political activist and writer, but as students the four were inseparable. Together they took cookery lessons at the sprawling old Wemmer complex, run by the Johannesburg city council, where blacks traded traditional herbs, clothing, foodstuffs and traditional drinks. Winnie also learned to dance, joined a choir and attended Non-European Unity Movement meetings at a hall in Doornfontein. She realised just how much she had grown when Professor Phillips invited her to a dinner for a group of American professors who were visiting South Africa, and wanted to meet ‘the rural student’ they had heard was adapting successfully to city life and doing well in her studies. She talked to the American academics and answered their many questions in perfect English, and after dinner they expressed their disappointment to Professor Phillips that ‘the rural student’ had not been present. They were more than a little surprised to learn that the unsophisticated tribal girl they had been expecting was, in fact, the eloquent young woman they had met. This was Winnie’s first exposure to Western prejudices about Africa, and she was both proud to have been taken for a city girl and shocked to realise that people from abroad assumed everyone from the rural areas to be raw and unrefined.
Though she still thought of herself as a country girl, Winnie certainly did not believe that this automatically made her backward or in any way inferior, and her intelligence, enthusiasm and the compassion she brought to field projects soon gained her recognition as the school’s star pupil.
Practical experience was a key component of the social work course, and Winnie’s first assignment was at the Salvation Army home for delinquent girls, Mthutuzeni. Where Winnie came from there was no such thing as a delinquent girl. Some were more challenging than others, yes, but none had real problems with their parents or would have dared to run away from home to make their own way. But the girls at Mthutuzeni all came from broken homes or were orphans. They suffered from depression, were argumentative, and some were totally uncontrollable and confused, with no sense of their place in the world. Winnie found that she could get through to some of them, not by applying the theory of social work she had been taught, but by getting them involved in sport, and her first practical course ended successfully.
Winnie was easy-going, and her warmth and sunny nature helped her to make friends easily. Many of the friendships she formed during her early years in Johannesburg would remain intact for decades. The other students often teased her for not having a boyfriend, but photographers soon discovered her beauty. They often visited the hostel in search of pretty models for ‘glamour shots’ in the popular magazines aimed at black readers. She became a firm favourite and was frequently asked to pose for the cameras. She saw her participation as a bit of fun, but one of those who photographed her was Peter Magubane, who would become an acclaimed lensman and a lifelong friend.
Winnie had been in Johannesburg for some months before she first went to Soweto. The sprawling township’s name was a contraction of South-Western Townships, of which there were twenty-six, with a combined population of more than a million people. She and some friends made the twenty-five-kilometre trip in a bus, and Winnie’s introduction to the vast and unattractive place that she would grow to love and call home, was a shock. The Helping Hand Hostel was in Jeppe, a clean, safe suburb, with electricity and street lights that came on after dark. Late-afternoon Soweto, and the area around as far as the eye could see, lay under a grey cloud of smoke from thousands of fires. There was no electricity in most of the township, and people cooked on open fires, or on coal or paraffin stoves. There was a pervading odour of kerosene in the air, and the dirt roads were riddled with potholes. It was growing dark, and the blackness spread unhindered, cloaking row upon row of identical matchbox houses. Some sections of Soweto were less squalid than others, but the majority of residents lacked not only comfort, but also the basic amenities. Some of the tiny houses sat proudly in minute gardens with neatly tended flower and vegetable beds, and inside they were clean and surprisingly cosy, the odd piece of good furniture polished to a soft gleam. When Winnie’s work took her into the townships later, she was filled with respect and admiration for the courageous efforts of the residents to create homes from such inhospitable surroundings.
Gradually, Winnie was beginning to understand what lay at the heart of black political aspirations, but apart from attending a few meetings of the Trotskyist Unity Movement with her brother, she avoided getting actively involved. Nelson Mandela was the patron of Hofmeyr College, and the school’s motto was ‘Know Thyself’. The students, including Winnie, came to associate this concept with his name. The hostel residents introduced Winnie to the ANC’s slogans and literature, as well as the idea of a trade union movement. Invariably, the names of Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Duma Nokwe were mentioned, along with that of the ANC president, Chief Albert Luthuli.
Johannesburg was exciting beyond Winnie’s wildest expectations. The political undercurrent created an atmosphere of breathless anticipation, as though the world was poised to undergo great change. The ANC was the star player in this unfolding drama, holding protest meetings and endless debates about the aims and success of a policy of peaceful protest. Many of the organisation’s followers disagreed with the passive approach, which the government flatly ignored, and demanded action. Winnie discovered daily newspapers and became an avid reader – as were her fellow students and residents – of the Rand Daily Mail, seen as a ‘liberal’ white newspaper. Another favourite was the black newspaper Golden City Post, which was soon to be banned.
In 1955, excitement mounted with preparations for the Congress of the People. Meetings were held across the country, delegates were appointed, and the people’s grievances and demands recorded. The National Action Council invited all interested organisations to submit suggestions for inclusion in a freedom charter with the following message: ‘We call upon the people of South Africa, black and white – let us speak together of freedom! Let the voices of all the people be heard. And let the demands of all the people for the things that will make us free be recorded. Let the demands be gathered together in a great charter of freedom.’
The congress took place on 25 and 26 June 1955. It was a massive gathering at Kliptown, outside Johannesburg, and people from all levels of society were represented by the 3 000 delegates. The overwhelming majority were black, but there were more than 300 Indian representatives, 200 coloureds and 100 whites. It was a vibrant, colourful event. Women wore Congress skirts, blouses and scarves, the men Congress armbands and hats. No one took any notice of the dozens of policemen and Security Branch members taking notes and jotting down names. The Charter was read section by section, and adopted by acclamation. On the afternoon of the second day, as the final vote of approval was to be taken, dozens of policemen suddenly swooped, pushing people off the stage and confiscating every document and piece of paper they could lay their hands on. They even confiscated the signs advertising ‘SOUP WITH MEAT’ and ‘SOUP WITHOUT MEAT’. A police officer announced that they suspected treason, and that no one was to leave without permission. While the police interviewed each delegate in turn, the rest loudly and jubilantly sang ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’.
Despite the government’s orders that the congress be broken up, it was a landmark event in the political struggle and sent out a clear call for change. It was also the first and last gathering of its kind for forty years. Increasingly stringent legislation prohibited a repeat of such cooperation until the early 1990s, but the Freedom Charter survived as the blueprint for a future, democratic South Africa, and immortalised the maxim: ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white.’ It was a moderate, non-inflammatory document, but the government nonetheless declared it a criminal offence to publish copies. For the ANC, the Freedom Charter was the equivalent of the American Declaration of Independence, and throughout the liberation struggle the organisation remained loyal to its objectives.
In their final year at Hofmeyr College, students had to do practical fieldwork. Winnie was sent to the Ncora Rural Welfare Centre at Tsolo in the Transkei, run by a Mr Zici, himself a graduate of the college. The centre served a large, poverty-stricken community south of Pondoland, as well as Tsolo – the area from which Nelson Mandela came. It was also the seat of Chief Kaiser Matanzima’s royal kraal. Before going to Tsolo, Winnie went home on holiday. At the end of her break, Professor Hough and his wife unexpectedly arrived at the Madikizela home. They had made the long journey from Johannesburg, and then to Tsolo, to ensure that Hofmeyr College’s star pupil was well settled. The conspicuous arrival of the white couple in a smart car caused quite a commotion in the community, especially when it emerged that they had come to fetch Winnie, but she took it in her stride. Columbus’s love and confidence had equipped her to grow into a self-assured young woman of whom her father was immensely proud.
She enjoyed the assignment at Tsolo, felt at home in the rural environment, and was excited about the centre’s involvement in farming and in organising communal markets where people brought their produce for barter. She also attended tribal meetings – an exceptional honour, because women were traditionally excluded from such meetings, but Winnie was admitted because she was a social worker. The meetings were held at Qamata, the Great Place of KD Matanzima, in a large hall that could accommodate 1 000 people at a time, and was always full.
She met both Kaiser Matanzima and his brother George, a generous man whom she found friendly and hospitable. From his successful legal practice he dispensed free advice to needy people, and often made his car – the only one in the area – available for the use of others. His generosity extended to money matters, and he had earned a reputation for donating substantial amounts to worthy causes.
Winnie encountered heart-wrenching poverty at Tsolo. She had grown up among poor peasants, but had never seen such hardship. There was widespread malnutrition and large numbers of small children died as a result. Frustratingly, she could do little to alleviate the suffering, which reinforced her belief that dramatic social change was needed in South Africa.
Towards the end of her term in Tsolo, Winnie was doing paperwork in her office at the Welfare Centre when an elderly woman, who was visiting from Bizana, came by to see her. After the usual greetings, the old woman asked Winnie whether she was pleased about the marriage.
‘What marriage?’ Winnie asked, puzzled.
The old woman laughed slyly. ‘They are arranging for you to marry Chief Ququali’s son, the one who is at Lovedale College.’
Winnie was crushed. No one had mentioned any such plan when she was at home before going to Tsolo, nor since. She knew the chief belonged to the same royal house as Mandela and the Matanzimas, but no matter how beneficial marriage into so prominent a clan would be, Winnie knew that her father would not have made such a decision without telling her. She had never even met the young man in question, so how had the chief decided she would be a suitable future daughter-in-law? Almost certainly, in line with tradition, the tribal elders had arranged this marriage, in which case Columbus would have no choice but to respect their decision. But Winnie saw herself as an emancipated woman and could not conceive of having such an archaic custom imposed on her. Her mind was filled with the prospect of returning to Johannesburg and starting a career as a social worker. She had not studied for three years to be trapped in an unwanted and loveless marriage to a stranger. Quite possibly she would be one of several wives, stranded and isolated in the rural Transkei for the rest of her life. She knew only too well that rural wives were expected to be servile and accept all the restrictions imposed on them, and refused even to consider such a life for herself.
Winnie realised that it would serve no purpose to appeal to Columbus, and that if she stayed in Tsolo she would be abducted and forced into the marriage. The chief’s Tembu tribesmen, on horseback and wearing the white blankets such an act prescribed, would wait for the right moment, kidnap her and keep her locked up until the chief’s son was brought from college, and they would be forced to get married. Columbus would have no choice but to accept the situation and the accompanying lobola. Winnie remembered the drama when her brother brought his wife to their home wrapped in a blanket, albeit with her cooperation. She had witnessed such ceremonies and seen the beseeching eyes of young brides forced into marriage as they emerged from captivity.
Winnie knew she had only one option. She packed her bags, explained her predicament to Mr Zici and hastily left for Johannesburg. No matter what the consequences were, she would not risk being carried off to a degrading life by Chief Qaquali’s men.
The old woman’s unthinking question had given Winnie her one chance to escape, but what she did was unthinkable for a young Pondo woman and a serious affront to the tradition of unquestioning obedience to her parents and elders. She knew her flight would cause both difficulties and embarrassment for her father, and wished she could have spared him.
As soon as Winnie got back to Johannesburg she wrote to Columbus and begged his forgiveness for running away, but told him she could never enter into an arranged marriage. She was also able to tell him that she had been awarded her diploma in social work with distinction, and had won a prize as the best student. Winnie was one of the last graduates of the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work, which was closed down by the government in terms of the Bantu Education Act soon afterwards. Later generations of black social workers were trained at what became known as ‘bush colleges’ in the various homelands.
The years had sped by and Winnie was on the threshold of a career as a fully fledged social worker, but first she had to find a post. Shortly after the final results were announced, Professor Phillips summoned her to his office and told her, with a broad smile, that she had been awarded a much sought-after scholarship and could further her education by studying sociology at a university in America. Winnie was elated. Not only did this news exceed her wildest dreams, but she had no need to worry about whether she would find a suitable position. She was going to America! She immediately rushed to the post office to send a telegram with the news to her father and Hilda.
Her student days over, Winnie moved into one of the hostel’s ten-bed dormitories, reserved for working women. She paid 11 shillings a week for her accommodation, excluding meals but including the use of communal recreation rooms and the kitchen, where they were allowed to prepare their own food. Adelaide Tsukudu, a staff nurse at Baragwanath Hospital, slept in the bed next to hers. She was a Tswana from a farm in the Vereeniging district, about ninety kilometres south of Johannesburg, and she and Winnie became close friends, their futures destined to be entwined in ways they could never have imagined at the time.
Adelaide was already in love with Oliver Tambo, whom she would later marry, and Winnie went with her to many ANC meetings at Trades Hall. Winnie found the meetings exciting on both a political level and because they allowed her to meet the workers, the very people she would deal with as a social worker. It was at Trades Hall that she first heard of SACTU, the South African Congress of Trade Unions.
Adelaide and her other friends were as excited as Winnie herself about the prospect of her trip to America, and they spent many happy hours fantasising over what life would be like in the USA. Typically, Winnie scoured the library for books and information on the far-off land that would be her home for the next few years.
But, one day, the postman brought an official envelope, addressed to her, from Baragwanath Hospital. The hospital was on the outskirts of Soweto, the only one in the area for blacks and the largest in the southern hemisphere. As a student, Winnie had often gone to Bara, as it was known, and had even lectured there, but she was utterly astonished to find that the letter contained the offer of a post as the hospital’s first black medical social worker. Adelaide found her sitting on a bench in the hostel entrance hall, staring incredulously at the letter. Without a word, Winnie handed her the sheet of paper. Adelaide, always high-spirited and demonstrative, shrieked and threw her arms around Winnie in delight.
Winnie was overwhelmed. She had already set her sights on further study in America, but what she really wanted was to be a social worker, and now she had the chance to do so, and in Johannesburg, which she loved. She would have to make an agonising choice, and after weighing all the pros and cons, consulted Professor Phillips. He listened to her carefully, but pointed out that ultimately only she could decide what was best for her. She wished she could have discussed her predicament with Professor Hough as well, but he was furthering his studies in Boston and would not return to South Africa until 1957.
When Winnie wrote to her father for advice, he also counselled that she would have to make her own choice, but as Winnie read his letter she thought she could discern, between the lines, that her father believed their people needed her. She knew her decision would have a profound influence on her life, and in the end was absolutely certain that she had to accept the post at Baragwanath Hospital.
When she told Professor Phillips of her decision, and her regret at not being able to accept the American scholarship, he assured her that she would probably be able to use it at a later date. Some years later, when the occasion did arise for her to study abroad, she again decided against it.
Her fateful decision to stay in South Africa set her on the path of a meeting with Nelson Mandela – and a life of political activism, persecution and imprisonment.