Jonathan ‘Johnny’ Clegg was born in Bacup, near Rochdale in England on 7 June 1953. His father was from England but his mother was from Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He left England for Southern Rhodesia where he lived until the age of seven, before he and his mother immigrated to South Africa after her marriage to a South African journalist who worked a crime reporter.  His mother was a cabaret and jazz singer. The family went to Zambia where Clegg spent two years before returning to South Africa. Owing to his step father’s job as a crime reporter, Clegg became exposed to township life when his step father would take him along on his work assignments. Thus, he was exposed to a broader cultural perspective than that available to his peers at the time.

Between the age of 13 and 14 Clegg began playing the guitar, and by chance he came across a guitarist playing in street. After listening he developed a liking for Zulu music.  He began secretly going to townships visiting hostels of migrant workers to practices his guitar and learn to dance. As his visits contravened the provisions of the Group Areas Act(1950) he was arrested. It was at this stage that Clegg met Sipho Mchunu, the man who would later become his music partner.

While teaching Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Clegg began experimenting with mixing English lyrics and western melodies with Zulu musical structures. This blend got the attention of music producer Hilton Rosenthal. He signed up Clegg and his dance partner Mchunu and they and formed the band Juluka, meaning ‘sweat’ in Zulu. In 1979, they released their first album named ‘Universal men’. Their music was a mixture of Zulu and pop music and thus could not receive airplay because of censorship. Apartheid laws forbade public performances with people of different racial groups.

Juluka had to do with private performances and their performances were usually raided on by security police. They would often push the boundaries and perform publicly in universities and having live shows, they became so popular that their shows were often sold out. This had a major impact on profits and as a consequence the band suffered. Undeterred, Juluka carried on and by word of mouth and private performances, the Band’s popularity rose. Clegg’s ability to dance the Zulu dance and to speak the language saw him dubbed the ‘white Zulu’ (‘Le Zulu Blanc’ in Europe).

In 1979, Juluka recorded their first album, Universal Me. The album highlighted the lives of Zulu migrant workers living and traversing two worlds, the rural and the urban. The band’ second album African Litany was released two years later and it was greatly received. Juluka   went on to release more critically acclaimed albums until their split in 1985.

Mchunu decided to go home and pursue cattle farming while Clegg formed another band named Savuka meaning “we have risen”. Savuka carried on the legacy of Juluka in terms of it making cross over music, but Savuka took it to another level by mixing African music with international rock sounds. Savuka’s first album Third World Child was released in 1987 and it broke international sales records in several European countries. This was followed by other albums, ShadowMan in 1988, Cruel, Crazy Beautiful World in 1989 and Heat, Dust & Dreams in 1993. The group disbanded in 1993. Also that same year he was nominated for a Grammy award.

After a temporary reunion with Mchunu that resulted in an album, Ya Vuka Inkunzi. Clegg has since pursued a solo career. He has won several local and international awards and produced several albums and toured Europe on his own. Clegg has been in the music industry for just a little over 30 years and he is celebrating that by performances locally and abroad throughout the 2011. 

Zuleika (Zulei) Sarojini Christopher, the eldest daughter of Advocate Albert Christopher and Ghadija Gool, was born in 1924 in Greenwood Park, Durban, where she also grew up. Advocate Albert Christopher, a member of the moderate grouping of the South African Indian Congress (SAIC), had been involved in politics during Gandhi’s stay in South Africa and took a particular interest in the politics of colonial born Indians. Ghadija Gool was imprisoned as a passive resister in 1946 and served the Durban Indian Child Welfare Society for many decades.  

Zuleika matriculated at the Durban Indian Girls’ High School, Natal (now kwaZulu-Natal). She attended Fort Hare to do a pre-medical course, before transferring to the University of Witwatersrand, where she qualified as a medical doctor at the age of 23. While studying medicine in Johannesburg, Zuleika joined the Progressive Forum, a group of brilliant intellectuals who joined the Non European Unity Movement (NEUM).

In 1951, whilst serving as a locum for her uncle Dr G.H. Gool in Cape Town, she became involved with NEUM members such as I.B. Tabata,Jane Gool and Minnie Gool, and became one of its key members.

 It was during this period that she met future husband Enver Hassim. They married in 1952.

When she returned to Durban, Zuleika worked at a provincial hospital and then opened a medical practice in Warwick Avenue, Durban in 1948 and another in Malvern, Durban in the mid­1950s.  However, both medical practices had to be closed as Zuleika rarely charged her patients for her services. Her husband would foot the bill for medicines she would dispense.  

In 1954, Zuleika, Enver Hassim and Karrim Essack set up a study group, and in 1955 formed the Durban Branch of the Society of Young Africa (SOYA), which trained young NEUM cadres in field work. 

In 1961, the Durban Branch of the African Peoples Democratic Union of South Africa (APDUSA) was formed.  Zuleika was unanimously elected the Chairperson. Many of the members of the Durban APDUSA Branch were recruited by her.

In 1960, Zuleika, Enver Hassim and Dorrie Pillay formed the Anti­Centenary Celebration Committee in response to those who wanted to celebrate one hundred years of Indians’ arrival in South Africa. The NEUM oriented Committee’s position was that there was nothing for Indians to celebrate about the 100 years of their oppression and humiliation and an ‘only’ celebration flew in the face of the concept of  building a single nation. The community of Greenwood Park where the Anti-Centenary Celebrations Committee was launched were exposed to radical ideas through debate and discussion as the issue of the Celebrations encompassed far more than the arrival of the Indians in South Africa. Public meetings were held and people had a thorough exposure to NEUM ideas.

Both Zuleika and Enver Hassim were served with banning orders early in 1964. In terms of their banning orders, they were prohibited from communicating with each other. During the latter part of 1964, both were detained under the 90­ day detention law.

In 1966, Zuleika and Enver Hassim were charged with breaching their banning orders which forbade them, inter alia, from attending political meetings. They were found guilty and given suspended sentences.

The then United Party controlled Natal Provincial Administration dismissed Zuleika from her position as a senior medical officer. The dismissal, blatantly illegal, was successfully challenged in the Supreme Court.

The couple had to endure almost daily surveillance from the Security Police, their telephone was tapped, anonymous callers made threats, there was unauthorised opening of their mail and police raids. Eventually Zuleika, her husband, Enver Hassim and two sons, Azad and Shaheen were forced to go into exile to Canada.

Dr Zuleika Sarojini Christopher passed away in Canada in March 1992 from natural causes.

Early years

He was born on the 20 July 1925, in the Caribbean Island of Martinique. He was fifth of the eight children; his family belonged to the middle class. His family were descendants of African slaves who had been brought to the Caribbean to work on the sugar plantations. He lost his father Casimir in 1947, who was a customs inspector; his mother Eleanore Medelice resumed the responsibilities of the head of the house. To look after her family she opened a shop selling drapery and hardware. His mother was of the Alsatian origin, Frantz name reflected the Alsatian past. Her mother’s parents disapproved of her marriage to a man of darker colour. Frantz resembled his father’s skin colour as he was the darkest child in the family. Frantz was the least favourite of his mother’s children as he was considered she saw him as a troublemaker. It is said that Frantz did not had a good relationship with his mother, he felt alienated based on his skin colour.

Military career

At the age of 17 he sneaked away from home and sailed to the Caribbean Islandof Dominica, for adventure. From there he went to France to join the Free French Forces who were resisting the Nazi forces of Germany.  While fighting for the French, he spent time in French-colonised Algeria. For his service he was awarded the Croix de Guerre, the French equivalent of the Purple Heart for bravery. While serving for the French military he experienced racism as he noticed that white French women refused to dance with Black soldiers who fought to free them from Nazi occupation.

Psychiatrist and Soldier

While serving in the army he managed to secure support for education in Psychiatry in Lyon, France. During his studies he attended Andre Leroi-Gourhan and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s lectures in philosophy. He had an interest in wide range of readings such the works of Mauss, Heidegger, Levi-Strauss, Marx, Heggel, Lenin and Leon Trotsky, he also completed two plays, Loeil se Noie and Les Mains Parallels. It is where he met and married Marie Josephe Duble, a young White French woman of Corsican and Gypsy heritage , with whom he had a son. He also had a daughter from a previous relationship. Frantz wrote a thesis titled ‘The Desalination of the Black Man’ which was rejected, but it formed the foundation of his book titled ‘Black Skin, White Masks’.

He got his license, through training with the famous Spanish humanist psychiatrist Francois Tosquelles. He wanted to serve as director of any psychiatric ward in the French-speaking world. He applied to numerous institutions and was finally considered at the Blida-Joinville hospital in Algiers in Algeria. The racial discrimination continued, and in 1954 the Algerians rebelled against French repression; in response the French government used physical abuse against its subjects.

Activist and freedom fighter

These were the events which led to Frantz’ final stage of political radicalism, as the result he began secretly helping the rebel group called Front de la Liberation Nationale (FLN). He became more committed to the cause and later resigned from his post and became a full-time organiser and writer for the FLN. His involvement came with a great personal cost and he began to receive death threats from France. 

In early 1957, he was exiled to Tunisia by the French colonial government. This move escalated his interest in political activism, which he pursued in Tunis and this made him popular amongst the locals. He became a mouthpiece for various African independence movements and travelled around the continent preaching the gospel of independence. Among his work was establishing a magazine called Moudjahid and being the ambassador for the Algerian rebel movement’s provisional government.

He trained FLN members in techniques for resisting torture and combat techniques he had learned from his years as a soldier.  He eventually resigned from his post and became a full-time organiser and writer for the FLN. As a freedom fighter he travelled to their camps from Mali to Sahara, he gave refuge to other fighters and he trained nurses to dress wounds. In 1957 Fanon survived the slaughter, in which FLN killed 300 suspected supporters of a rival rebel group. He also survived an assassination attempt in Libya. In 1959 he was attacked on the border of Morocco and Algeria and was severely wounded.

Last years

By 1960, after completing a massive intelligence operation from Mali to Algeria he was diagnosed with leukaemia. In 1961 he went to the then Soviet Union for treatment and was informed that the best care available was in the United States of America. He then took the advice and went USA using a false identity under the name of Ibrahim Fanon. Upon his arrival in the US, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) detained him for ten days without his treatment. He ended up contracting pneumonia which led to his death on 6 December 1961. His body was taken to Algeria where he obtained his citizenship. His body was welcomed and received a hero’s’ ceremony and military recognition as an important revolutionary and was buried in an FLN veteran’s graveyard.

His writings

·         Black Skin, White Masks (1952), translation by Charles Lam Markman (1967)

·         A Dying Colonialism (1959), translation by Haakon Chavalier (1959)

·         The Wretched of the Earth (1961), translation Constance Farrington (1963)

·         Toward the African Revolution (1964), translation by Haakon Chavalier (1969)  

Article first published in The Sunday Independent January 4 2015 at 10:37am By Sam Mathe

Johannesburg - Pianist, singer and composer Pat Matshikiza, 76, who died on Monday night at his Queenstown, Eastern Cape home, will go down in the annals of South African music as one of the jazz pioneers who played a pivotal role in the birth and evolution of our kind of jazz.

History will also remember him as the creator of a township jazz evergreen which he composed at a time when the genre was relegated to a cultural wasteland owing to the massive exodus of jazz artists into exile in the 1960s and ’70s.

But the release of Tshona! in 1975 with the great altoist Kippie Moeketsi symbolised the resilience of a creative spirit and the staying power of township jazz against all odds. Like Abdullah Ibrahim’s Manenberg and Mankunku Ngozi’s Yakhal’inkomo, this intoxicating tune has since occupied pride of place in the great South African jazz songbook.

It is one of the country’s most recognisable township jazz tunes. Despite his ability as one of the country’s accomplished jazz pianists, unfortunately Matshikiza will also be remembered as a woefully under-recorded artist as his discography attests.

Born in a prominent family of pianists, his father Meekly “Fingertips” Matshikiza was an official pianist for the eisteddfods in Queenstown – a musical place with an enviable reputation of being the country’s cradle of jazz. Its moniker, Little Jazz Town, says it all.

Pat’s brother, Todd Matshikiza, pianist, jazz scholar, journalist, world-renowned composer of King Kong fame and probably the only vibraphonist of his generation in the country, was one of his teachers.

The family played a broad variety of music, ranging from George Handel to Duke Ellington.

Pat and his six brothers were taught to play the piano and read music from an early age.

He started playing the piano and organ from the age of seven. After matric, he enrolled at St Matthew’s College – a missionary teachers’ training institution in Keiskammahoek, a small town in the Eastern Cape, where he became a resident organist during church services.

He continued in this role when he was transferred to Lovedale College, where he completed his teachers’ diploma in 1957.

Unable to secure a teaching post, he landed odd jobs, working variously as a petrol attendant, clerk, page, steward and nightclub pianist before relocating to Joburg in 1962 where he met the great pianist, composer and music teacher Gideon “Mgibe” Nxumalo who taught him some of the key points of the music world.

He first played with revered tenor man Mackay Davashe’s Jazz Dazzlers alongside luminaries such as Kippie Moeketsi (alto), Blythe Mbityana (trombone) and Dennis Mpale on trumpet. Sadly all of them have since died.

He was also a resident pianist for Union Artists’ productions at Dorkay House – notably with Ben “Satch” Masinga’s Back in Your Own Backyard.

The township musical included Victor Ndlazilwane’s Woody Woodpeckers and songbirds Thandi Klaasen, Abigail Kubheka and Letta Mbulu. In 1964 he joined the Early Mabuza Quartet which comprised Early Mabuza (drums), Ernest Mothle (bass) and Barney Rachabane (alto sax).

The highlight of his stay with the combo was when they shared first prize with the Malombo Jazzmen at the 1964 Castle Lager Jazz Festival.

The subsequent recording of five tracks included two of his compositions, Maxhegwana (Little Old Man) and Inyameko (Perseverance). His next prominent band was the ’70s outfit, Spirits Rejoice, whose members included Sandile Shange (guitar), Duke Makasi (sax), Sipho Gumede (bass), Gilbert Matthews (drums), George Tyefumani (trumpet) and Khaya Mahlangu (sax).

A defining moment in his chequered career was in 1975 when he recorded Tshona! with Moeketsi.

The four-track album featured Basil Coetzee (tenor sax), Dennis Philips (alto), Alec Khaoli (bass) and Sipho Mabuse (drums). Recorded during a decade when township jazz had declined remarkably and overtaken by soul and disco, Tshona! became an instant hit in the country and eventually took its place as a classic in the discography of African jazz.

“The vibrant jazz scene at the Dorkay House influenced the composition,” Matshikiza later recalled.

“The message (of Tshona!) is to encourage people to get down and work hard. At the time I belonged to Mackay Davashe’s Jazz Dazzlers band and during breaks I would sit at the piano and do my own compositions.

“The vibrant jazz scene at Dorkay House provided a pulsating atmosphere that gave birth to the song.

“Dorkay was a musical mecca that had everyone deeply involved in music. It was a matter of time before one was inspired to compose something like Tshona,” he added.

The song’s 1976 successor, Sikiza Matshikiza, also recorded with Moeketsi, was a quality album and vintage township jazz.

It featured members of Spirits Rejoice, but never achieved the publicity, praise and staying power that Tshona! still enjoys today.

In the late 1970s he disappeared from the mainstream scene, assumed another identity and lived in the “coloured” township of Eldorado Park in Joburg as Patrick Matthews. He had taken refuge in a new identity with the hope of evading police who wanted to deport him to the Eastern Cape.

Matshikiza spent the next two decades playing on the hotel circuit. He started at the Hillbrow Tower club as leader of a resident band.

But their contract was terminated when the lead singer, Vicky (Busi) Mhlongo, refused to sing one evening after patrons asked her to sing like Shirley Bassey. She felt insulted that the club owners didn’t think much about her own God-given talents.

He then played at hotels in neighbouring countries, notably Swaziland and Botswana. His longest stay was at the Amatola Sun in Bhisho, Eastern Cape, where he spent 14 years, and later the Ulundi Holiday Inn in KwaZulu-Natal, playing classical and folk music for overseas tourists.

Back in Joburg, he briefly performed at Lebo Morake’s Kilimanjaro nightclub in Melrose Arch (2003) and in Kind of Blue in Randburg (2004) as a resident musician.

Seasons, Masks & Keys (2005) was Matshikiza’s last studio album and a retrospective work that also served as an overdue attempt to bring this underrated legend of South African jazz to greater prominence.

This is a landmark project of instrumental and vocal compositions that span half a century, music that in essence is a chronicle of his artistic journey and a tribute to his contemporaries – the likes of Moeketsi and another illustrious son of Queenstown, Victor Madoda Ndlazilwane.

In the mid-2000s he left Joburg for Durban where he lived as a forgotten man of South African jazz – destitute, wheelchair-bound and in poor health.

Five years ago he suffered a stroke. It impacted seriously on his physical and mental well-being.

A week before his death, his wife, Philile Bridgette Matshikiza, died after suffering a heart attack.

Matshikiza is survived by five daughters. His son, Sean, pre-deceased him.

* Discography: Castle Lager Jazz Festival 1964 (CCP Records, 1997 reissue); Tshona! (As-Shams/EMI, 1975); Sikiza Matshikiza (As-Shams/EMI, 1976); Seasons, Masks & Keys (Gallo, 2005).

Enuga Sreenivasulu Reddy affectionately known as ES Reddy has been active in support of the South African freedom movement for more than half a century. He played a central role in promoting international sanctions against South Africa and assistance to struggle for freedom. Mr E.S. Reddy was born in 1924 to a politically active family in Andhra Pradesh, South India.

Map showing Andhra Pradesh in Southeast India. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/

His father, Mr E.V. Narasa Reddy, was a follower of Gandhi and president of the Congress in the small town of Gudur. He was imprisoned for three months during the individual satyagraha in 1941. Reddy recalls that his mother gave all her jewellery to Gandhi when he visited Gudar in 1933 during a tour to collect funds for the upliftment of Harijans (untouchables). He learnt much about Gandhi from his family and from his Hindi teacher in school.

Whilst in college his political consciousness was shaped by Jawaharlal Nehru, socialism and Marxism like many of the young people at that time. In late 1943 his interest in South Africa was sparked by pamphlets from South Africa that his cousin gave to him. One of the pamphlets was written by Dr. Yusuf M. Dadoo about Indians, another by Peter Abrahams about mine workers going to Johannesburg. At the same time, Indian newspapers reported about the movement by Africans and Indians against racial discrimination. In a 2004 interview with Lisa Brock, Mr Reddy explains his interest in South Africa:

'I was already interested in the anti-apartheid movement in the 1940s, when the struggle in South Africa took on new forms and Indians and Africans were cooperating in the struggle. During the Second World War, the United States and Britain talked about four freedoms in the Atlantic Charter, but those freedoms didn't apply to India or South Africa. As Indians we were very much interested in South Africa, because a lot of Indians were there and they were treated as second-class citizens or worse. And of course Nehru was talking about South Africa, Gandhi was talking about South Africa and so on.'

Mahatma Gandhi

After his arrival in the United States in March 1946 he initially struggled to get news about South Africa. Kumar Goshal, an Indian revolutionary who came into exile in America in the 1920s, was a member of the Board of the Council on African Affairs led by Paul Robeson informed him about the Council’s reading room and so his journey with the Council on African Affairs commenced.

Reddy points out that the Council on African Affairs was one of the first solidarity movements for freedom struggles in Africa. He grew close to the Council and its leaders – Paul Robeson, Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, and Dr. Alpheus Hunton (the educational director and later the Executive Director). He was present at the huge mass meeting organised by the Council at the Madison Square Garden on June 6, 1946, to denounce racial discrimination in South Africa and call on the United States government to support African freedom. He recalls that at a reception by the Council on 8 November 1946, he met the delegation led by Dr. A. B. Xuma, President-General of African National Congress (ANC). The delegation had arrived in New York to lobby at the United Nations General Assembly which was to consider the Indian government complaints concerning the treatment of Indians in South Africa, and to advise the Indian delegation. The delegation included H. A. Naidoo and Sorabjee Rustomjee of the Indian Congresses and Senator H. Basner, a Senator representing African voters. He attended meetings organised by the Council for the delegation – e.g. a briefing for a number of trade unions and other organisations, and a public meeting at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem on 17 November. Mr Reddy led a few Indian students to a demonstration organized by the Council in front of the South African Consulate in 1946.

In 1948, E.S. Reddy did an internship at the United Nations and shortly thereafter applied for a job. In May 1949 he obtained a position as a researcher in the Section for Middle East and Africa (in the Department of Political and Security Council Affairs). He worked at the United Nations for 35 years. From 1963 to 1984 he was the U.N. official in charge of action against apartheid, first as principal secretary of the Special Committee Against Apartheid and then as director of the Centre against Apartheid. United Nations action both legitimated and was influenced by the momentum of popular mobilization against apartheid. Reddy was probably the most consistent and influential of the U.N. officials working behind the scenes, ensuring that the United Nations not only represented governments but also helped build bridges between liberation movements and their supporters around the world. He was Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1983 to 1985.

He convened and participated in a number of international conferences and seminars against apartheid, supported campaigns for action against the apartheid government and administered funds for scholarships and for assistance to political prisoners and their families in Southern Africa. The contribution of Mr. Reddy to the international campaign against apartheid has been recognised by activists of the South African liberation movement around the world. For example, Oliver Tambo, President of the ANC from 1967 to 1991, expressed "very deep appreciation of your work and your infectious devotion and commitment to the liberation struggle in South Africa." Similarly, Nobel Peace Prize and former United Nations Commissioner for Namibia, Sean MacBride said at a public meeting addressed by Mr. Reddy in Dublin on March 19, 1985:

"It has been my privilege to work with E.S. Reddy for close on 20 years, and I can say without fear of contradiction that there is no one at the United Nations who has done more to expose the injustices of apartheid and the illegality of the South African regime than he has. E.S. Reddy has done so with tremendous courage and ability; he dedicated his entire energy and skills to the liberation from oppression of the people of Southern Africa. He had to face many obstacles and antagonisms, coming from the Western Powers mainly, but he had the skill, courage and determination necessary to overcome the systematic overt and covert opposition to the liberation of the people of Southern Africa."

Dr. Enuga Reddy, former Principal Secretary of the UN Special Committee against Apartheid.

E.S Reddy received the Joliot-Curie Medal of the World Peace Council in 1982 for his contribution to the struggle against apartheid. After his retirement from the UN in 1985, he was a senior fellow of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (1985-1993) and a member of the Council of Trustees of the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa (1986-1992). The University of Durban-Westville awarded him the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy in 1995 in recognition of his contribution to the struggle against apartheid and scholarly work on South Africa. He has written extensively on the history of the South African liberation movement and its leaders, United Nations action against apartheid, anti-apartheid movements and campaigns, and relations between India and South Africa.

His papers and parts of his private collection have been donated to the Yale University Library in the United States, the Nehru Memorial Museum in New Delhi, and the Universities of Witwatersrand and Durban-Westville in South Africa, and several other institutions including South African History Online (SAHO). They are valuable resources to understand the the struggle for liberation in South Africa and its international repercussions. Mr. Reddy has acted as a consultant to the ANC Department of Information in developing the sites on Historical Documents and United Nations action. He currently resides in New York.

Percy Ndithembile Konqobe was born in 1939 in Nigel, Transvaal (now known as Gauteng Province). He completed school through standard six (now Grade Eight) before leaving to work. He was employed at several jobs and spent some years in prison until around 1976, when he felt called to become a sangoma or traditional healer. Since that time he worked as a traditional Zulu healer in Soweto. This work has informed his art, instilling a sense of mysticism in many of his pieces.

Konqobe began creating works of art in the early 1970s, encouraged by the sculptor Sydney Khumalo. Konqobe credited Khumalo with being his mentor and a source of inspiration for the style and subject matter of his art. Still, Konqobe was a largely self-taught artist. He worked largely in clay, a medium closely integrated with the spiritual belief in the significance of soil as the ancestral resting place.

In the early 1980s, Konqobe visited Europe several times. He attended the Shaman Symposia, showing some of his pieces there. His clay sculptures received high praise, encouraging him to devote more time to his artistic work in 1986. Around 1980s, he also began casting his sculptures in bronze. Konqobe’s first solo exhibition at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg in 1988 met success.

Konqobe’s sculptures have been described as “lyrical”, and largely take images of human beings as their subjects. Most of his pieces remained relatively small in size, though critics noted their potentially monumental qualities. His figurative interpretations channel religious and cultural themes and Konqobe cites his dreams as major sources of guidance and inspiration. He felt a recurring dream he had in the late 1980s, involving a lion hatching from an egg, foretold the unbanning of the African National Congress and release of Nelson Mandela from prison. He created three sculptures based on these dreams, one of which was presented to Mandela in November 1990. 

Article by Sandra Rowoldt Shell, University of Cape Town.

When Neville Alexander used to visit his maternal grandmother Bisho Jarsa as a boy, he never suspected the extraordinary story of how she had come from Ethiopia to the South African city of Port Elizabeth.

Bisho was one of a group of Ethiopian slaves freed by a British warship in 1888 off the coast of Yemen, then taken round the African coast and placed in the care of missionaries in South Africa.

"We were overawed in her presence and by the way she would mumble to herself in this language none of us understood," recalls Mr Alexander, now 74.

This was Ethiopia's Oromo language, Bisho's mother tongue, which she reverted to as she grew older.

Mr Alexander, who was a political prisoner in the 1960s, sharing Robben Island with Nelson Mandela, is today one of South Africa's most eminent educationists.

He remembers his younger siblings asking their mother, Dimbiti: "What's Ma talking about... what's the matter with her? What's she saying?"

Their mother would respond: "Don't worry about Ma... she's just talking to God."

When he was in his late teens, his mother told him about his Ethiopian origins but Mr Alexander thinks even she may not have known all the details, which he only discovered when he was in his fifties.

He found out that the freed Ethiopians had all been interviewed on their arrival in South Africa.

The story began on 16 September 1888, when Commander Charles E Gissing, aboard the British gunship HMS Osprey, intercepted three dhows carrying Ethiopians to the slave markets in the Arabian port of Jeddah.

Sold for maize

Commander Gissing's mission was part of British attempts to end the slave trade - a trade that London had supported until 1807, when it was abolished across the British Empire.

All the 204 slaves freed by Commander Gissing were from the Oromo ethnic group and most were children.

The Oromo, despite being the most populous of all Ethiopian groups, had long been dominated by the country's Amhara and Tigrayan elites and were regularly used as slaves.

Emperor Menelik II, who has been described as Ethiopia's "greatest slave entrepreneur", taxed the trade to pay for guns and ammunition as he battled for control of the whole country, which he ruled from 1889 to 1913.

Bisho Jarsa was among the 183 children found on the dhows.

She had been orphaned with her two brothers, as a result of the drought and disease that swept through Ethiopia in 1887, and left in the care of one of her father's slaves.

But the continuing threat of starvation resulted in Bisho being sold to slave merchants for a small quantity of maize.

After a journey of six weeks, she reached the Red Sea, where she was put on board one of the Jeddah-bound dhows intercepted by HMS Osprey.

The missionaries recorded detailed histories of the former slaves, educated them and baptised them into the Christian faith

Her first memory of the British was the sound of automatic gunfire blasting into the sails and rigging of the slave dhow while she huddled below deck with the other Oromo children.

They all fully expected to be eaten as this is what the Arab slave traders had told them would happen if they were captured by the British.

But Commander Gissing took the Oromo to Aden, where the British authorities had to decide what to do with the former slaves.

The Muslim children were adopted by local families. The remaining children were placed in the care of a mission of the Free Church of Scotland - but the harsh climate took its toll and by the end of the year 11 had died.

The missionaries sought an alternative home for them, eventually settling on another of the Church's missions, the Lovedale Institution in South Africa's Eastern Cape - on the other side of the continent.

Bisho and the rest of the children reached Lovedale on 21 August 1890.

The missionaries recorded detailed histories of the former slaves, educated them and baptised them into the Christian faith.

Mandela fascinated

Life was tough here too, however, and by 1903, at least another 18 of the children had died.

In that year, the Lovedale authorities asked the survivors whether they would like to return to Ethiopia.

Some opted to do so, but it was only after a protracted process, involving the intervention of German advisers to Emperor Menelik, that 17 former slaves sailed back to Ethiopia in 1909.

The rest had by this time married or found careers and opted to stay in South Africa.

Bisho was trained for domestic service, but she must have shown signs of special talent, because she was one of only two of the Oromo girls who went on to train as a teacher.

In 1902 she left Lovedale and found a position at a school in Cradock, then in 1911 she married Frederick Scheepers, a minister in the church.

Frederick and Bisho Jarsa had a daughter, Dimbiti. Dimbiti married David Alexander, a carpenter, and one of their children, born on 22 October 1936, was Neville Alexander.

By the 1950s and 60s he was a well-known political activist, who helped found the short-lived National Liberation Front.

He was arrested and from 1964 until 1974 was jailed in the bleak prison on Robben Island.

His fellow prisoners, Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, were fascinated by his part-Ethiopian origins but at the time, he was not aware that his grandmother had been captured as a slave and so they could not draw any comparisons with their own fight against oppression.

So what did he feel when he found out how is grandmother had ended up in South Africa?

"It reinforced my sense of being an African in a fundamental way," he told the BBC.

Under apartheid, his family was classified as Coloured, or mixed-race, rather than African.

"We always struggled against this nomenclature," he said.

He also noted that it explained why he had often been mistaken for an Ethiopian during his travels.

The strongest parallel he can draw between his life and that of his grandmother is the role of schooling.

"Her real liberation was not the British warship but the education she later received in South Africa," he said.

"Equally, while on Robben Island, we turned it into a university and ensured that all the prisoners learned to read and write, to prepare them for their future lives."

Ethiopia Returnees

If you know these people - the freed slaves who decided to return home in 1909 - please contribute with any information:

Aguchello Chabani

Agude Bulcha

Amanu Figgo

Baki Malaka

Berille Boko Grant

Dinkitu Boensa

Fayesse Gemo

Fayissa Umbe

Galgal Dikko

Galgalli Shangalla

Gamaches Garba

Gutama Tarafo

Hawe Sukute

Liban Bultum

Nagaro Chali

Nuro Chabse

Rufo Gangilla

Tolassa Wayessa

Robert Shell was born in Cape Town, South Africa on 13 February 1949, the only child of a German father, Heinrich (Heinz) Schelowsky (later changed to Shell) and South African-born mother, Louie Shell née Bosman. Robert, who grew up near Stellenbosch, then Tamboerskloof and later in Kommetjie, attended the South African College High School (SACS). [i]

Robert completed his undergraduate and Honours degrees at the University of Cape Town in 1973 and 1974 respectively, his Honours degree focusing on Islam at the Cape. In 1975, drawn by the scholarship of Professor Stanley Engerman, the leading proponent of the application of quantitative historical methodology (cliometrics); Robert enrolled in a Master’s programme at the University of Rochester, NY. In 1976, Rochester awarded him his Master’s degree, the focus of which was American colonial and revolutionary history and comparative slavery. On his return to South Africa, he worked as a research officer in what was then the South African Cultural History Museum (now the Iziko Slave Lodge Museum) charged with the development of the Bo-Kaap Museum. After the successful opening of this museum in May 1978, he resigned from his position to read for his doctorate at Yale University. He was awarded his PhD in1986 with a thesis entitled “Slavery at the Cape of Good Hope: 1680-1731.” [ii]

While completing the final chapter of his thesis, Robert accepted the post of visiting Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara for a period of two years. In 1988 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Pre-colonial African History at Princeton University, a position he held for eight years. During these years Robert also penned his much-acclaimed Children of Bondage: A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652-1838. [iii]

In 1996, following the liberation of South Africa and the establishment of the new democracy, Robert returned home, taking up a post as Senior Lecturer-in-charge of the History Department at the East London campus of Rhodes University. At the same time, the National Research Foundation (NRF) awarded him one of only three South African Population Research Units (PRU). He directed the PRU throughout his time at Rhodes.

Whilst on sabbatical at Princeton University in 2000, Robert was invited to appear on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC where he addressed the US House Committee on International Relations (now Foreign Relations) and the Sub-Committee on African Affairs on the global AIDS pandemic, specifically the spread and impact of the disease throughout Africa. [iv] While in Washington, he also had an extended and valuable one-on-one interview and discussion with President Bill Clinton’s “AIDS Tsar,” Sandra Thurman.

However, at Rhodes University, Robert Shell, an “ivy league” scholar and internationally published academic, faced the wrath of the university administrators, when he accused the university of “nepotism and cronyism” in a report commissioned by the then Vice-Chancellor. [v] Robert’s stand against injustice was something that was deeply ingrained in his psyche, but this came at huge personal cost, including the loss of his position at the university in 2001.

Kenneth R. Hughes of the University of Cape Town describes this debacle as follows:

The savage and totally disproportionate revenge to which he was subjected by the Rhodes management was a dark day in the history of Academic Freedom in South Africa—his protests about academic harassment themselves led to intensified persecution, and so virulent was the hatred with which he was pursued that he was prevented from landing an alternative appointment at Stellenbosch. [vi]

Within weeks, the University of the Western Cape (UWC) interviewed Robert for the position of Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics for a period of five years. His application was successful and he held this position from September 2001 until the end of December 2006. In 2007, UWC appointed him Extraordinary Professor of African Historical Demography in the same department, a position he held until his death. During this period, he also served as Councillor, and later as Vice-President, of the Demographic Association of South Africa (DEMSA) 1997-2004. [vii]

In July 2003 Robert was awarded the Nelson Mandela Chair of African Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi where he worked on AIDS in India for a period of six months. While in India, Robert gave many presentations at JNU and Delhi University as well as a paper entitled “HIV/AIDS in Southern African and India” during the seminar “Recasting the discourse on AIDS: Lessons for Public Health from Africa, Brazil and India” at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, 16-21 January 2004.

Robert was widely published, including two further books: The Island of Research: A Practical Guide and E-toolkit for the Information Age (two volumes & CD, 2011) and Bibliographies of Bondage: Selected Bibliographies of South African Slavery and Abolition (2007), twelve chapters in books and twenty articles in accredited scholarly journals. In his efforts to disseminate information on the AIDS pandemic to a wider readership, he published an article in the July 2000 edition of the Reader’s Digest under the title “AIDS: we must go to war.”

During his career, Robert also wrote several book reviews and some 55 newspaper editorials. He also featured on many television and radio programmes and in several films including “The Overflowing Graveyards of Port Elizabeth” (Special Assignment, SATV 3, 1998), “Three Worlds Meet—Origins to 1620” and “Slavery and Freedom,” (volumes 1& 3 of United States History, Schlessinger Video Productions, 1997). Robert attended more than 41 international workshops where he delivered papers on a range of topics, most notably on slavery, Islam, HIV/AIDS and research methodology.

Following his return to Cape Town with his wife, Dr Sandra Rowoldt Shell, Robert continued to make a huge impact on the lives of his students and on descendants of Cape slavery. From his home in Gardens, Cape Town, Robert continued his scholarly research compiling, inter alia, several valuable e-books on CD, about slavery at the Cape, such as From Diaspora to Diorama and Cape Omnibus, with the primary intention of making the history of the Cape accessible to all.

In 2001 Robert wrote:

For too long history has been written by trained historians employed by universities and funded by large granting institutions. Such history is often of such a demanding and esoteric nature that the subjects of the history do not recognise themselves. Consequently, such books are neither read nor sold in the subject communities. Such books are also expensive. The people are therefore cheated of their own past and, ultimately, of their identity. [viii]

Robert understood Cape slavery not only because he was born and raised at the Cape, but because he reached beyond the borders of a “privileged” background in a way that many of his peers did not seem able to do. In her article in the Cape Argus in February 2015, Jackie Loos wrote of how Robert’s interest in Islam was nurtured by his father who took the young Robert on visits to the Sheikh Yusuf Kramat in Faure. [ix] This would set the course of his future studies on the history of Islam at the Cape.

Robert’s major contribution to the historiography of slavery and Islam at the Cape was highly valued by scholars and local communities. The Turkish scholar, Halim Gencoglu, who did groundbreaking research on Abu Bakr Effendi, had high praise for Robert’s “fatherly support, inspiration and advice” during the course of his studies. [x] Robert had a wealth of knowledge which he shared freely, always happy to help scholars and researchers and his oft-stated advice to scholars was to use primary archival sources, saying that “secondary sources are fool’s gold.” [xi]

In September 2014 Robert was diagnosed with lung cancer. He faced his final months with great bravery and dignity. One of the highlights of this traumatic time for Robert was the reunion with his beautiful daughter Elisabeth, who had grown up in America with her mother.

Robert Shell died on 3 February 2015 at his home in Gardens where he was nursed by his soulmate and wife, Sandy Shell.

ENDNOTES

[i] Sandy Shell (née Rowoldt), “Memories of a Soulmate: A Tribute to Robert Shell, 13 February 1949-03 February 2015”New Contree 72 (July 2015): 127-128. ↵

[ii] Kenneth R Hughes, “Robert Carl-Heinz Shell (1949-2015) A tribute” New Contree, 72 (July 2015): 125; Sandy Shell, “Memories of a Soulmate,”128-129. ↵

[iii] See Robert Shell, Children of Bondage:A Social History of the Slave Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652-1838 (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994); Sandy Shell, “Memories of a Soulmate,”128-129. ↵

[iv] Shell, Unpublished private correspondence, 19.08.2005. ↵

[v] Roger Southall and Julian Cobbing, “From Racial Liberalism to Corporate Authoritarianism: The Shell Affair and the Assault on Academic Freedom in South Africa” Social Dynamics 27, 2 (2001): 28 passim. ↵

[vi] Hughes, “Robert Carl-Heinz Shell,”125. ↵

[vii] Robert Shell, Unpublished private correspondence, 19.08.2005. ↵

[viii] Robert C-H Shell, From Diaspora to Diorama:The Old Slave Lodge in Cape Town, (Cape Town: Ancestry24, 2003), 4. ↵

[ix] Jackie Loos, “Tribute to Man who Wrote Thesis on slavery in Cape” Cape Argus (12 February 2015). ↵

[x] Halim Gencoglu, “The Forgotten Effendi: Ottoman Muslim Theologian, Mahmud Fakih Emin Effendi, and the real story of the Bo-Kaap Museum, c.1894-1978”New Contree73(Special edition, November 2015): 163. ↵

[xi] Personal conversation with Robert Shell, 2009. ↵

George Bizos was born in 1928 in Kirani, Greece. In 1941 he arrived in South Africa as a World War II refugee together with his father. He was then thirteen years old. They first place to arrive at was Durban and later moved to Johannesburg where their entry was made simple and smooth by the presence of other Greek community members. While in Johannesburg he enrolled for a law degree with the University of Witwatersrand.

In 1950 he completed his law degree at the University of Witwatersrand. In 1954 he was admitted to the Johannesburg Bar. He served as an Advocate in Johannesburg until 1990 when he worked as a counsel to 40 lawyers at the Legal Resources Centre and the Constitutional Litigation Unit. During the Apartheid years Bizos dedicated his working life to fight for the basic Human Rights. After the collapse of the Apartheid he turned his fight into ensuring that all South Africans equally enjoy those rights enshrined and guaranteed by the constitution.

In his legal career he represented lot of political activists in high profile political trials. He represented Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela in both Treason and Rivonia Trial. Apart from Mandela he appeared in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission representing families of killed heroes of our liberation struggle. He represented the families of Steve Bantu Biko, Chris Hani and the Cradock Four (Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, Sparrow Mkhonto and Sicelo Mhlawuli).

In the TRC he blocked amnesty applications made by the perpetrators of these murders. In 1989 he published a book called No one to blame? In pursuit of Justice in South Africa.

In 2004 Bizos represented Morgan Tsvangirai, president of the main opposition party (Movement for Democratic Change) in Zimbabwe who was charged of high Treason by Zimbabwean government. When Bizos is not in courtroom he would spend his time in vegetable gardens. Bizos received quite number of awards for the splendid job he performed during his legal career. He also occupied high positions in different institutions. On 25 October 2004 he received the International Bar Association's (IBA) prestigious Bernard Simons Memorial Award at Auckland. On 3 November 2004 he received annual Sydney and Felicia Kentridge Award, from the General Council of the Bar.

He is currently living in Johannesburg and married with three sons.

Other Achievements and Positions held by Bizos.

1979 - 1993 - acted as defence counsel in numerous high profile political trials, founding member of the National Council of Lawyers for Human Rights.

1982 - 1994 - Senior Counsel at the Legal Resources Centre in Johannesburg in the Constitutional Unit; member of the Board of Trustees of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at the University of Witwatersrand.

1985 - 1993 - Judge of the Court of Appeal in Botswana

1994 - Honorary Member of the Athens Bar

1990 - 1994 - Member of the ANC's Legal and Constitutional Committee.

In 1999 he received the Order for Meritorious Service Class II medal from then-president Nelson Mandela

A member of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers in 1999

Leader of the team for the Constituent Assembly before the Constitutional Court to certify the country's new Constitution

In 1994 he was appointed to the Judicial Services Commission to recommend candidates for judicial office and reforms to the judicial system

Peter Magubane,  one of South Africa’s most distinguished award winning photo-journalists  was born in Vrededorp, now Pageview, a suburb in Johannesburg in 1932. He grew up and completed his high school in Sophiatown.

His interest in photography began as a schoolboy when he was given a Kodak Brownie camera. After completing his high school the young Magubane worked at a number of odd jobs but he wanted to work as a photojournalist.  In 1954 he managed to get a job at Drum magazine as a driver and messenger. The highly motivated and resourceful Magubane landed a job as Jurgen Schadeberg’s, the magazine’s chief photographer and picture editor, darkroom assistant. A year later he was given his first photographic assignment to cover the 1955  African National Congress annual conference held in Bloemfontein.  Joining Drum allowed Magubane to become part of the legendary Drum generation of black and white writers, artists, musicians and photographers.  

Between 1955 and 1963, when he left Drum magazine, Magubane covered most of the major political events in the country and befriended  the leading political figures  of the liberation movements, in particular he was a close friend of Nelson and Winnie Mandela.

In 1957 Magubane applied to join the all white Photographic Society of South Africa and his application was turned down. On the urging of Tom Hosking the then editor of Drum magazine the drum photographers spearheaded the formation of the Progressive Photographic Society and they organised the first non racial Salon at which Magubane won the first prize. He has over the years went on to won a large number of local and international awards and holds honorary doctorates from a number of South African and international universities.

In 1961 he held a one person exhibition making him one of the first photographer’s to exhibit in South Africa.

In 1963 he went abroad and worked as a freelance photographer.  Magubane held his second exhibition of his work at the London School of Printing in 1964.  In 1966 Magubane came back to South Africa and worked for the Rand Daily Mail until 1980.

 In June 1969 he was arrested while photographing protesters outside the prison where Winnie Mandela and 21 other political activists were being detained.  He was held in solitary confinement for 586 days and when he was released,  he was served with a five year banning order which meant  that he could not work for any publishing company and was forced to resign from the Rand Daily Mail. 

In March 1971, he was arrested again, spent 98 days in solitary confinement  and  then jailed for six months for breaking his banning order. When the banning order expired in 1975 he resumed work for the Rand Daily Mail. From June through to August 1976 he documented the Soweto student uprisings and was assaulted and harassed by the police on a number of occasions. In August Magubane and other black journalists were detained for 123 days and his house was destroyed in a fire.

Magubane’s coverage of the 1976 June 16 student uprisings earned him worldwide acclaim and led to a number of international photographic and journalistic awards. Magubane became an international icon of the struggle of journalists and photographers working under repressive regimes.  In 1986 he was awarded the American National Professional Photographers Association Humanistic Award in recognition of one of several incidents in which he put his camera aside and intervened to help prevent people from being killed.

From 1978 Magubane worked for Time Magazine and later freelanced for the United High Commission for Refugees and UNICEP. With the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 until he become president, Magubane was his official photographer.  Magubane has published 17 books, two of which were banned by the Apartheid government,” Black As I Am” (with poetry by Zindzi Mandela),1978 and “Black Child” in 1982.

Since the establishment of the new democracy he has stopped covering news, and has concentrated on exhibitions and publishing work from his extensive archive done over a long and distinguished career as South Africa’s foremost  photojournalist.

Nkosi Johnson was born Xolani Nkosi to an HIV positive mother in a township on the east rand. When his mother became too ill to take care of him, she gave him up for adoption. He was adopted by Johannesburg public relations officer Gail Johnson. She changed his name to Nkosi Johnson. Johnson was thrust into the media when a primary school in Johannesburg refused to admit him as a pupil because of his HIV status. The incident also marked the beginning of his HIV/AIDS activism.

He lived an active life and took treatment to slow down the effects of the virus. His mother died the same year he started school. He and his foster mother founded a refuge for HIV mothers and children in Johannesburg, aptly named Nkosi’s Haven. Nkosi gave talks about the disease both locally and abroad. In the 13^th International Aids Conference, Johnson was a key speaker. He succumbed to the virus on 1 June 2001. At the time of his death, he was the longest-surviving child born with HIV in South Africa. He was honoured posthumously with the International Children’s Peace Prize in 2005.

Born in 1975 in Cape Town, Nicholas Hlobo grew up in a Xhosa family and attended university at the former Technikon Witwatersrand. Though originally planning to study art in order to work in the film industry, Hlobo decided to pursue a career as a visual artist as another way of contributing to South African culture. He obtained a bachelor’s degree of technology in fine arts in 2002 and continued living in Johannesburg.

Hlobo completed a printmaking apprenticeship in 1998, and his work featured in his first exhibition the same year. Hlobo’s sculptural and performance work has received more recognition recently. Since 2000, he has shown pieces in at least one and as many as ten exhibitions every year, at venues in South Africa, the United States and several European countries. Curator Tumelo Mosaka included him in his 10 Years, 100 Artists volume in 2004, marking Hlobo’s rise to public attention. After a three-month residency at the Thami Mnyele Foundation in Amsterdam in 2005, Hlobo held his first solo exhibition in 2006.

Hlobo’s works reference many aspects of his Xhosa heritage and incorporate concepts of gender, race, ethnicity, power, sexual identity and societal conflict. He has worked in a wide range of mediums – including wire, carpet, leather, chain and ribbon – and often infuses his physical pieces with performance work.

In 2006 he received the Tollman Award for Visual Art, in 2009 the Standard Bank Young Artist Award, and in 2011 the Rolex Visual Arts Protégé commendation. His work appears in the collections of the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town and the University of South Africa in Pretoria. 

Esther Mahlangu was born in 1935 on a farm outside Middleburg, in what is now the Mpumalanga province. She was the first of nine children: six boys and three girls. Following traditions passed down from her mother and grandmother, she learned traditional Ndebele wall painting and beadwork as a child. She became an expert in executing murals as a teenager, using a widening range of paint colours that emerged in the 1940s. She married and had three sons, but lost her husband and two of her children. Between 1980 and 1991 she lived and worked at the Botshabelo Historical Village, an open-air museum of Ndebele culture.

In 1986, researchers from Paris who were travelling the world to document traditional arts saw the paintings on Mahlangu’s house. They invited her to create murals for an exhibition of international contemporary art, the Magiciens de la Terre (‘Magicians of the World’). She travelled to France in 1989, staying there for two months and painting a house in front of thousands of spectators. She also decorated a wall inside the AngoulÁªme Museum of Fine Arts and showed her work at other locations in France. In 1990 she began to paint murals for public venues in Johannesburg and elsewhere in South Africa, soon followed by locations in Europe and the United States. Her work appeared in exhibitions in more than a dozen countries.

Mahlangu was the first person to transfer the traditional Ndbele style of mural painting to canvas. She painted her geometric patterns on a BMW 525i in 1991, becoming the twelfth artist and first woman to take part in the BMW Art Car Project after figures such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. In the years that followed she exhibited work in countries around the world, from Mexico to Switzerland to Australia.

With the goal of preserving her cultural heritage, Mahlangu started an art school in the backyard of her home in Mabhoko (Weltevreden) in the KwaMhlanga district in Mpumalanga Province. She funded the school herself, and when not travelling for exhibitions she mentors young artists in the traditional style of Ndebele design. Pupils learn how to mix pigments and paint straight lines, freehanded and without sketches, using their fingers or chicken feathers.

Mahlangu’s work is featured in collections in South Africa, the United States, Japan, Germany, France and elsewhere. Her awards include the South African government’s Order of Ikhamanga, silver class, in 2006, as well as the Mpumalanga Arts and Culture Award, an award from the French Ministry of Culture, two awards from Radio Ndebele and others from South Africa and abroad.

Justice Arthur Chaskalson was born in Johannesburg on 24 November 1931. In 1952 he graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand with a B.Com, and in 1954 he obtained his LLB Cum Laude. Two years later he was admitted to the Johannesburg Bar.  A keen soccer player, he was a member of the University’s soccer team and was selected for the Combined  South African Universities soccer team in 1952. 

Chaskalson acted as defence counsel in a number of important political trials during the apartheid era, including the Rivonia trial in 1963-1964 in which former President Nelson Mandela and other African National Congress (ANC) leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment.

As founding member and director of an organisation that sought to pursue justice and human rights in South Africa, the Legal Resources Centre, he challenged the implementation of several apartheid laws.  Justice Chaskalson was director from its inception in 1978 until 1993. 

Recognized as an expert in constitutional law, Justice Chaskalson was a consultant to the Namibian Constituent Assembly, was a member of the Technical Committee on Constitutional Issues in South Africa, and a consultant to the Multiparty Negotiating Forum. He was a consultant to the African National Congress during the constitutional negotiations, and a member of the Multiparty Negotiating Forum's Technical Committee on Constitutional Issues. In that capacity he participated in drafting an interim Constitution. 

Chaskalson’s official role at the negotiations was as chairman of the "technical committee".  

He was a member of the Johannesburg Bar Council from 1967 to 1971 and from 1973 to 1984, the Chairman of the Johannesburg Bar in 1976 and again in 1982, a member and later Convenor of the National Bar Examination Board (1979-1991), and the Vice Chairman of the General Council of the Bar of South Africa (1982-1987).

He has been a member of the Board of the Faculty of Law of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (1979 – 1999), was an Honorary Professor of Law at that University from 1981 to 1995, a member of its board for the Centre for Applied Legal Studies from 1979 to 1994, a member of the National Council of Lawyers for Human Rights (1980-1991),  was Vice Chairman of the International Legal Aid Division of the International Bar Association (1983-1993) and Chairman of the Rhodes Scholarship Selection Committee for South Africa (1988-1993).

In June 1994, he became the first President of South Africa's new Constitutional Court, the highest court in South Africa where constitutional matters are concerned. On 22 November 2001 he became the Chief Justice of South Africa until his retirement in 2005.

He has received several honorary doctorate degrees: in 1986 from the University of Natal, in 1990 from the University of the Witwatersrand, from Rhodes University in 1997 and from the University of Amsterdam in 2002. Awards include the Premier GroupAward for prestigious service by a member of the Faculty of Lawat the University of the Witwatersrand (1983), the Claude Harris Leon Foundation Award for community service (1984) and the Wits Alumni Hour Award for exceptional community service (1984).

According to eminent South African advocate, Jeremy Gauntlett, "Chaskalson's professional life was marked by three stages. First he was the most cerebral of advocates. His manner was formal, even cold - a devastating cross-examiner, clear but soft-spoken in argument. His manner may have dissuaded an easy camaraderie, but he was a natural leader at the Bar. Twice chairman of the Johannesburg Bar, and for five years Vice-Chairman of the General Council of the Bar, he led South Africa's advocates in innumerable confrontations with the Vorster then Botha governments over legislative and executive measures striking at human rights and an independent administration of justice."

In 1990 he received (together with Dr S. Magoba) the Human Rights Award of the Foundation for Freedom and Human Rights in Berne, Switzerland. He has also received awards for his human rights work from the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and the General Council of the Bar of South Africa.

In 2002, the South African Government conferred the Order of the Counsellor of the Baobab in Gold for Exceptional Service in Law, Constitutional, Jurisprudence and Human Rights on him. The Order of the Baobab is one of the highest awards given to citizens in South Africa.

On 31 May 2005, Chaskalson retired from his role as Chief Justice, and was replaced by his former deputy Pius Langa.

Chief Justice Chaskalson passed away in Johannesburg, South Africa on Saturday, 1 December 2012,after a brief illness. He is survived by his wife Dr. Lorraine Chaskalson and two sons, Matthew and Jerome.

The former President of the Constitutional Court and Chief Justice was given a Special Official Funeral, and all national flags were at half-mast at all flag stations in the country from Monday until the 7 December. The South African Government also arranged an official memorial service for the Chief Justice.

Ahmed Mohamed "Kathy" Kathrada was born on 21 August 1929, to Indian immigrant parents in Schweizer Reneke, a small town in Western Transvaal [now North West Province].  While he attended Johannesburg Indian High School, he came under the influence of Dr. Yusuf Dadoo and the Cachalia brothers, who were leaders of the freedom movement in the Transvaal.

Kathrada’s political work began in 1941, at the early age of 12 when he joined the Young Communist League of South Africa, distributing leaflets at street corners for the League.  During World War II, he was involved in the anti-war campaign of the Non-European United Front.

In the 1940s, Kathrada first met African National Congress (ANC) leaders, Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela, I.C. Meer and J.N. Singh.  At the age of 17, he left school to work full-time in the offices of the Transvaal Passive Resistance Council. In 1946, the South African Indian Congress (SAIC) launched the Passive Resistance Movement against the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act, commonly referred to as the "Ghetto Act". The Act sought to give Indians limited political representation and defined the areas where Indians could live, trade and own land. The Act was vehemently opposed. Subsequently, Kathrada participated in the Passive Resistance Campaign of the South African Indian Congress.

Kathrada was one of the 2 000 volunteers imprisoned in that campaign and served a month in a Durban jail along with other ardent resisters such as Dr Monty Naicker, Dr. Yusuf Dadoo, Dr Goonam, George Singh, Mrs Cissie Gool, M.D. Naidoo and others. This was his first jail sentence for civil disobedience.

Ahmed Kathrada, shot taken by the police during the Liliesleaf raid. Source: South African National Archives

Kathrada was a founding member of the Transvaal Indian Volunteer Corps and that of its successor, the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress. In 1951, he enrolled as a student at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) but later abandoned his studies to devote himself full-time to political activism.  As chairperson of the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress, Kathrada attended the World Youth Festival in Berlin in 1951 and was elected leader of the large multi-racial South African delegation. He remained overseas to attend a Congress of the International Union Students in Warsaw, Poland.

It was during this period that he visited the concentration camps at Auschwitz, which impressed upon him the urgent need to eradicate racism in South Africa. Thereafter, he finally travelled to Budapest and worked at the headquarters of the World Federation of Democratic Youth for nine months.

As the alliance between the African and Indian Congresses developed, Kathrada came into closer contact with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, J.B. Marks and other African leaders. The signing of the Dadoo-Naicker-Xuma Pact in 1947 strengthened the Alliance, which comprised the ANC and the SAIC. Kathrada worked tirelessly to promote joint action as a leader of the Youth Action Committee, co-ordinating the youth wings of the African, Indian and other Congresses.

In 1952, he helped organise the 'Campaign of Defiance against Unjust laws', launched jointly by the ANC and the SAIC. The Defiance Campaign targeted six unjust apartheid laws, amongst them being the Pass Laws, Stock Limitation Regulations, the Group Areas Act, the Separate Representation of Voters Act, the Suppression of Communism Act and the Bantu Authorities Act. The Government was called upon to repeal these laws by 29 February 1952. Failing this, the ANC and the SAIC were to launch a joint campaign of Defiance.

In 1953, Kathrada was elected to the executive of the World Federation of Democratic Youth in absentia, a post he was unable to take up due to restrictions placed on him by the authorities.

Kathrada was among a group of twenty officials who were charged with organising the Defiance Campaign jointly organised by the ANC and SAIC. They were given a suspended sentence of nine months with hard labour, which was suspended for two years.

In 1954, he was served with banning orders prohibiting him from attending any gatherings and from taking part in the activities of 39 organisations. These bans curtailed his overall participation in politics, but it did not deter him. He was arrested several times for breaking his “banning orders”.

In 1955, when Indian schools in Johannesburg were moved out of the city to the segregated location of Lenasia, some 22 miles away, he helped organise the Central Indian High School parents’ association. This served as a private school, established to combat the Group Areas Act, and he was duly elected as secretary.

In the same year, he helped organise the multi-racial 'Congress of the People', which proclaimed the 'Freedom Charter', a policy document of the Congress Alliance. Kathrada served on the Alliance's General Purpose Committee.

In 1956, he was among the 156 Congress activists and leaders charged for High Treason. The trial continued for four years from 1957 to March 1961. Eventually, all 156 leaders were found not guilty and acquitted. Kathrada, Mandela and Sisulu were among the last 30 to be acquitted. Despite constant harassment by the police, Kathrada nevertheless continued his political activities.

Kathrada was restricted to the Johannesburg area in 1957, and following the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, he was detained for five months during the State of Emergency, after which the ANC and PAC were banned. In 1961, Kathrada was arrested for serving on a strike committee that opposed Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd's plan to declare South Africa a Republic.

In December 1962, he was subjected to 'house arrest' for 13 hours a day and over weekends and public holidays. He went underground and continued to attend secret meetings in Rivonia - the underground headquarters of the ANC. The following year, Kathrada broke his banning orders, and went “underground”, to continue his political work.

In July 1963, the police swooped on Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, a Johannesburg suburb where Kathrada and other “banned” persons had been meeting. This led to the famous 'Rivonia Trial', in which eight accused were sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour.

This was Kathrada’s 18th arrest on political grounds. Although he was then no longer a member of the Umkhonto we sizwe (MK) Regional Command, he was tried with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Dennis Goldberg, Raymond Mhlaba, Elias Motsoaledi and Andrew Mlangeni.  All the accused were charged with organising and directing Umkhonto we Sizwe ('Spear of the Nation'), the military wing of the ANC, and were found guilty of committing specific acts of sabotage. In 1964, at the age of 34, he was sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island where he spent the next 18 years with his colleagues in the isolation section, known as B Section, of the Maximum Security Prison. His prisoner number was 468/64. This was a section where those considered by the apartheid government as influential leaders or members of banned political organisations were kept. While he was still serving his sentence, the ANC bestowed on him, with its highest possible accolade, the Isitwalandwe Award.

In October 1982, Kathrada was moved to Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison in Cape Town to join Mandela, Sisulu, Mhlaba and Mlangeni who had been moved there a few months before. He was released on 15 October 1989, at the age of 60. On his release, Kathrada had spent 26 years and 3 months in prison, 18 of which were on Robben Island.

On his release, he was given a hero’s welcome in Soweto where he addressed a crowd of 5 000 people. Kathrada remarked, "I never dreamed I would be accorded such status." Walter Sisulu wrote of him: "Kathy was a tower of strength and a source of inspiration to many prisoners, both young and old."

While in prison, Kathrada pursued his academic studies and first obtained a B.A. (History and Criminology). He went on to attain a B. Bibliography (Library Science and African Politics) and two B.A. (Honours) degrees from the University of South Africa (UNISA) in African politics and History. In addition, he was awarded four Honorary Degrees, including one from the University of Missouri.

Following the unbanning of the ANC in February 1990, at its first legal conference in Durban, South Africa, Kathrada was elected onto its National Executive Committee. He also served on the ANC Interim Leadership Committee and Interim Leadership Group of the South African Communist Party (SACP). He gave up the latter position when he was elected to the ANC National Executive Committee at its conference in July 1991. That same year Kathrada became Acting Head of the ANC's Department of Information and Publicity and Head of Public Relations until 1994. Also that year he was appointed a fellow of the University of Western Cape’s Mayibuye Centre. In 1992, he went on Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca). He was elected a Member of Parliament in 1994, after South Africa's first democratic elections, and in 1994-5 he was elected Chairperson of the Robben Island Museum Council. He served in that capacity until his term expired in 2006. He also served as a Parliamentary Counsellor in the Office of the President. At the ANC Conference in 1997, Kathrada declined nomination to the National Executive Committee. Then in June 1999, Kathrada took leave of parliamentary politics.

Awards:

• ANC Merit Award, for long service, The Presidential Order for Meritorious Service; Class 1: Gold
• Honorary Doctorate: University of Massachusetts May 2000
• Honorary Doctorate by the University of Durban-Westville,2002
• “Isitwalandwe”; the highest award bestowed by the ANC
• Doctorate of Humane Letters by the University of Missouri, January 2004
• Doctor of Humanities, Michigan State University, December 2005
• Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award, by President of India, January 2005

References:

• Ahmed Kathrada Biography, from the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, [online], Available at www.kathradafoundation.org [Accessed 16 August 2011]
• Ahmed M Kathrada, from Overcoming Apartheid, [online], Available at http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu  [Accessed 16 August 2011]
• University Press of Kentucky, (2010), No Bread for Mandela: Memoirs of Ahmed Kathrada, Prisoner No. 468/64, from the University Press of Kentucky, 4 October, [online], Available at http://kentuckypress.wordpress.com [Accessed 16 August 2011]
• Kathrada A, (1999), Letters from Robben Island: a selection of Ahmed Kathrada's prison correspondence 1964-1989, (Cape Town)

Professor Sir Bob Hepple was born on 11 August 1934 in Johannesburg, Transvaal (now Gauteng). His father, Alex Hepple, was a trade unionist and Labour Party member, Member of Parliament, the Chairman of the Treason Trial Defence Fund and Chairman of the South African Defence and Aid Fund

The young Hepple attended Jeppe Boys High School in Johannesburg from 1945 to 1952 and then the University of Witwatersrand where he obtained a BA degree in 1954 and a LLB degree, cum laude, in 1957.  He was awarded the Society of Advocates Prize for being the best law graduate in 1957.  He was admitted as an attorney in South Africa in 1958.  From 1959 to 1961, he was a lecturer in Law at the University of Witwatersrand.  He practised as an advocate in South Africa between 1962 and 1963. 

At the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, he was arrested in 1952 while chairman of the Student Liberal Association and went on trial under the Illegal Squatting Act for organising a political meeting in Orlando Township (Johannesburg) under the pretext of a concert.  Although it was illegal for whites to spend the night in "black" areas, all the students, including Hepple, were acquitted of the flimsy charge.  Later he and his fellow African National Congress (ANC) sympathisers had a narrow escape from rustication by the then University Principal for organising protests over the exclusion of black students from the Wits Great Hall.

From its formation in 1955, Hepple devoted himself to building up the newly formed multi-racial South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU).  He was joint editor of the SACTU newspaper, Workers’ Unity, and helped the black Metal Workers’ Union and other small unions survive the near-illegal conditions with legal advice, practical aid and education.  At the same time, Hepple was working with a few friends  to work out a new ideological position and strategy for democratic socialism.

Following the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, outside Johannesburg, the police shot dead 69 Pan Africanist Congress demonstrators.  A state of emergency was declared after this event.  The South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) executive had appointed Hepple with “absolute powers” to keep SACTU alive if the executive wereever arrested.  When the expected arrests took place, he immediately set about the task, establishing contact with the few management committee members still in the country.  He took personal responsibility for maintaining the Laundry Workers and Metal Workers’ unions.  They formed a provisional National Executive Committee and gradually re-established links with shop floor workers and international organisations.  He did all of this under cover while still holding his job as a university lecturer.

He moved out of his home and was constantly on the move in order to avoid arrest. He worked through the offices of a detained lawyer, Shulamith Muller, with the help of her personal assistant, Shirley Goldsmith, whom Hepple married in July 1960.  He resigned from his Wits lectureship at the end of 1961 to have more freedom for these activities and took up practice at the bar.  He was also a member of the Congress of Democrats.

On 5 August 1962, Nelson Mandela was arrested near Howick in Natal (now kwaZulu-Natal) and brought to court.  When Mandela’s attorney, Joe Slovo, was prevented from representing him by the Government, Mandela turned for legal guidance to Hepple as someone he knew and trusted, and who had helped him evade capture by organising safe houses and holding secret meetings in his home.

On 11 July 1963, Bob Hepple was one of seven people arrested at Lilliesleaf Farm, Rivonia, near Johannesburg.  After three months’ detention in solitary confinement, they, together with four others, were brought before the Supreme Court and charged with sabotage (which carried the death penalty).  Nelson Mandela was the first accused, while he was still serving a five-year sentence following his trial in 1962 when Hepple had acted as his legal representative.

Bob Hepple was the eleventh accused.  Whilst in detention, the notorious Security Police subjected him to severe physical and psychological torture.

The defence lawyers launched an attack on the indictment.  Shortly before it was quashed by the Judge-President, the State Prosecutor, Dr Percy Yutar, announced that all charges against Hepple were being withdrawn, and that he (Hepple) would be called as the first witness for the State.  Following this, Hepple was released from custody.

Hepple did not intend to testify against the accused that he admired and respected.  With the assistance of Bram Fischer, the lead counsel for the defence, and others, Hepple escaped with his wife Shirley via Bechuanaland Protectorate (Botswana) and Tanzania to England.

Hepple wrote his memoirs, Rivonia: The Story of Accused No.11, in May and June 1964 as the Rivonia Trial ended and while the events were still fresh in his mind.  They were intended to provide a factual account of the events leading up to the trial by one of the participants who “got away.”  At the time, he decided  that it was too dangerous for those still on trial or active in South Africa for him to allow its distribution even on a limited scale.  Nothing Hepple wrote could be published until his banning orders were lifted in February 1990, the day after Mandela’s release.

On Saturday 25 November 1963, Hepple and his wife Shirley left their children and parents, home and friends, and the country they loved.  With the assistance of two colleagues, they climbed over a fence into Bechuanaland Protectorate en route to the ANC in Dar es Salaam, and eventually to London, where they started a new life.  Their children joined them shortly after.

Although legally trained, Hepple realised he needed to acquire further, English, legal qualifications.  He went to Clare College, at Cambridge University and he was admitted into the 1964-65 academic year to read for his LLB.  He rose to become a Queens Counsel and a distinguished internationally renowned legal academic.

Hepple became a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003.  He retired from his Cambridge chair in 2001 and the Mastership of Clare in 2003.

In 2004, Hepple was Knighted.

On 27 May 2016, surrounded by his beloved family, Kunene died peacefully at his home in Madison, America.  He was 93 years old.[i]

Daniel Kunene was born in Edenvale, South Africa on 13 April 1923 to Ephraim and Martha Kunene.[ii] Notwithstanding the ravages of Apartheid, he completed a BA through at UNISA in 1949 and an M.A. at UCT in 1951.

After his marriage to Selina Sekhuthe in 1953, he went on to do a PhD at the University of Cape Town, completed in 1961. Two years later, after a stint in London, he sought political asylum for himself and his family in the United States where he remained in exile for 30 years.

Ten years after the death of his first wife Selina, Kunene married his second wife Marci Ellis who recently described him as her ‘soulmate’ and a ‘humble genius’.[iii] A family man who travelled extensively with his family, in his obituary compiled by Cress Funeral Service he is hailed as ‘a beloved husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, teacher, and community leader in Madison.’[iv]

A much acclaimed linguist, scholar and award winning writer of short stories and poetry, Kunene also transcribed South African oral works and translated the work of South African writers.[v] In addition to teaching at the UW Madison in the Department of African Languages and Literature for 33 years, Kunene also taught at the University of Cape Town, the University of London, the University of California, Los Angeles and ‘the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany’.

During his lifetime he wrote sixteen books and monographs in English and Sesotho in addition to hundreds of other publications. Kunene is particularly noted for his poem Soweto, which the Dutch composer Barnard van Buerden formulated into a musical piece.[vi] Notable too is that three of his books were published when he was 90 years of age.[vii]

On 13 December 2013, when Kunene was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Literature at UCT, he was lauded for ‘exposing African culture to the rest of the world’.[viii] Kunene’s legacy will live on both in his birth country, South Africa and in his adopted home in Madison, America where he was a valued community leader.

Endnotes

[i] Prof Emeritus Daniel P, Kunene, Cress Funeral and Cremation Service (undated)  http://www.cressfuneralservice.com/obituary/153502/Professor-Emeritus--D... Undated. (Date accessed 31.05.2016).↵

[ii] Prof Emeritus Daniel P, Kunene, Cress Funeral and Cremation Service (undated)  http://www.cressfuneralservice.com/obituary/153502/Professor-Emeritus--D... Undated. (Date accessed 31.05.2016).↵

[iii] Samary Kalk Derby, Winconsin State Journal, ‘UW African prof Daniel Kunene remembered as 'loving,' 'humble' and 'regal' 30 May 2016. Url number  http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/african-prof-daniel-kunene-rememb... (Date accessed) 02.06.2016).↵

[iv] Prof Emeritus Daniel P, Kunene, Cress Funeral and Cremation Service (undated)  http://www.cressfuneralservice.com/obituary/153502/Professor-Emeritus--D... Undated. (Date accessed 31.05.2016).↵

[v] Ibid. (Date accessed 31.05.2016).↵

[vi]Prof Emeritus Daniel P, Kunene, Cress Funeral and Cremation Service (undated)  http://www.cressfuneralservice.com/obituary/153502/Professor-Emeritus--D... Undated. (Date accessed 31.05.2016).↵

[vii] Catherine Reiland, At 90 Kunene publishes books and will receive an honorary degree, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Url number http://africa.wisc.edu/?p=5555, 2 July, 2013. (Date accessed 31.05.2016).↵

[[viii] Helen Swingler, Honorary doctorate for African literary icon Daniel Kunene, UCT Today’s News, url number http://www.uct.ac.za/dailynews/?id=8598, 17 December 2013 (Date accessed 31.05.2016).↵

Wilfrid Edward Cooper was born on 22 May 1926 in Observatory, a suburb of Cape Town, Cape Province (now Western Cape Province) and lived in Mowbray until he finished his schooling. His mother, Rose Emma, was born in Cornwall, England and his father, Victor, in Woodstock, Cape Town. They were married in 1923.  His father was an engine driver with the railways as was his grandfather, Henry, who had been one of the drivers who had driven the train which took the body of Cecil John Rhodes to be buried in the Matopos in the then Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

His father became an engine driver in October 1926 and in 1933 was promoted to first class engine driver and was transferred to the small town of Klawer on the banks of the Oliphant’s River in Namaqualand.  While in Klawer his sister, Nancy, was born in November 1930.

From 1933 at age six and a half he attended the local Afrikaans medium school in Klawer. At the end of October 1935 his father was transferred to Malmesbury, Cape Province. Here he attended Die Hoer Jongenskool [1] from standards 1 (now grade 3) to 6 (now grade 8) until 1940.  In 1941 he moved to Cape Town where he then attended Wynberg Boys High. Here he passed his Junior Certificate in 1943 and a first class Senior Certificate in 1944.  A badly broken arm in a rugby match early in his playing career ended his playing the sport but he continued to participate in cricket, representing the school in athletics in 1943 and 1944.  In 1944, he won the open mile in the school’s annual athletics competition at Newlands cricket ground. 

In 1945 he enrolled at Stellenbosch University for his BA (Law) degree. Whilst living in Klawer and Malmesbury he learned to speak Afrikaans but as all lectures at that time were in Afrikaans, and by studying Hollands 1, he became fluent in the language and developed a great love for it.  As many trials at the time were conducted in Afrikaans his fluency in the language was a great advantage to him in later years when appearing in court. In October 1945 with the assistance of the University of Cape Town National Union of South Africa Students (NUSAS) executive members and in the face of opposition from the Stellenbosch SRC he embarked upon establishing a branch of NUSAS with 26 students, mainly English speaking. He played an active role in NUSAS until the end of his student career and was Vice-President, National Secretary for Economics and Politics in 1945 and 46, and National Director of Research and Studies, from 1946 until 1947.

On 22 October 1949, Wilfrid Cooper married Gertrude Hope Posthumus who was not only to be his wife but his confidante, mentor and critic for the next fifty-five years.  They set up home in the late 1950s in Palmboom Road, Newlands, Cape Town and lived there for over forty years.    Their home was at the end of a small, unnamed lane next to that of the parents of Richard (Dick) Dudley who they got to know. In 1961 in terms of the Group Areas Act the Dudley’s were forced to move and in later years Gertrude would lock horns with the Cape Town City Council to have, after a long struggle, the lane named Dudley Lane in honour of the Dudley family.

He graduated from Stellenbosch in December 1947 and enrolled as a part-time LLB student with the University of South Africa (Unisa) and was appointed as a temporary messenger in the senate for a few months. Thereafter he took a position as a registrar at the Supreme Court in Cape Town and was registrar for two years for the legendary Judge Joseph Herbstein. He also worked under Judge G G Sutton when Judge Herbstein was on sabbatical.

From January 1951 he was a Clerical Assistant Grade II at Wynberg Magistrates Court until he attained his LLB degree in August 1952 and was called to the Cape Bar on 3 October of that year.

Given his fluency in Afrikaans, and in order to have an additional income, in 1954 he took a position as a part-time translator in the Senate where the proceedings were recorded in Hansard in the official languages of the day, English and Afrikaans.  His position resulted in him translating many of the Afrikaans speeches of Dr Hendrick Verwoerd, then a senator, but who would later be Prime Minister of South Africa in September 1958. 

He took silk (was appointed Senior Council) at the Cape Bar in April 1965.

In 1964 when appearing as Advocate Cooper’s junior in the trial of Stephanie Kemp, Albie Sacks wrote the following in his book “Stephanie on Trial” :

“The leader of the team responsible for Alan and Stephanie’s defence was Wilfred (sic), a lithe, ambitious advocate regarded as one of the leading trial lawyers at the Cape Bar. Before starting to practice he had been a public prosecutor and had developed a fierce cross-examining style which had led many of his colleagues to call him by the nickname “Tiger”. His court manner had lost none of its attack, and his lively temperament, which he always harnessed fully to his client’s cause, drew many people to watch him in action. Yet the main bases of his successes was less spectacular: the fanatical thoroughness with which he always prepared his cases and his flair for adjusting rapidly and sensibly to the shifting fortunes of trial. His appearance was strikingly youthful, but he had a penetrating caustic voice and verbal facility of a much older man. The wide interests of his earlier years- he was now approaching forty-had given way to a passion to be a respected advocate, and one day possibly, a judge. The pending sabotage trial threatened to raise many tricky issues for the defence, but if well handled could materially enhance counsel’s reputation. Many of our colleagues would have found a way out of accepting such a brief, but Himie ( sic Bernardt)  was confident that even if he disagreed profoundly with their views, Wilfred would do wholehearted and intelligent battle for his clients.”

Wilf, as he was known to his friends and colleagues, was also an academic of note, having lectured on evidence in the mid 1950s at the University of Cape Town and in the 1960s and 1970s in Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure, Criminal Procedure and Civil Procedure and Roman-Dutch Law.  In the 1970s and 1980s he also acted as an external examiner for various subjects. He obtained two doctorates; first, a PhD in 1972 from the University of Cape Town for the thesis entitled “The Letting and Hiring of Immovable Property in South Africa”. Then a LLD in 1987 from the University of Cape Town for his work Motor Law which was a complete revision of his original work, South African Motor Law, published in 1965. Over a period of forty years he published a number of books. 

1955       Handbook on the Criminal Procedure Act (co-author B R Bamford)

1965       South African Motor Law (co-author B R Bamford)

1967       South Africa Road Traffic Legislation

1973       The South African Law of Land Lord and Tenant

1975       South African Motor Law 2nd Edition (co-author B R Bamford)

1977       The Rent Control Act (supplement to Land Lord and Tenant)

1979       Alcohol, Drugs and Road Traffic (co-authors Schwarr and Smith)

1982       Motor Law Volume 1 – Criminal Liability

1985       Road Transport – commentary on and text of the Road Transport Act

                And Regulations

1987       Motor Law Volume 2 – Principles of Liability

1990       Road Traffic Legislation = Padverkeerwetgewing

1994       Landlord and Tenant 2nd Edition

1996       Delictual Liability in Motor Law

He was considered an authority on South African road traffic legislation.

In continuing the legacy which Cooper established in his writing, in 2008 leading academic and chair in law at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg since 2002, Prof Shannon Hoctor published “Cooper’s Motor Law: criminal liability, administrative adjudication & medico-legal aspects”.

In his 37 years as an advocate he handled cases not only in Cape Town but in all the major centres, neighbouring states as well as in many of the smaller towns across the length and breadth of South Africa.  Some of the more notable trials which he acted in were:

1961       Marthinus Rossouw for the murder of Baron Dieter Von Schauroth

1964       Stephanie Kemp, Alan Brookes and Anthony Trew for Sabotage

1966       Demetrio Tsafendas for the assassination of Dr H F Verwoerd

1972       Robert Kemp for delivering a public address near St Georges Cathedral

1973       Frederik van Niekerk for Culpable Homicide for the Malmesbury Rail Disaster

1973       The Faros Coal Enquiry to investigate government contracts for the transport of coal

1975       The Appeal of ‘Scissors’ Murderess Marlene Lehnberg

1975       Six members of SWAPO for the assassination of Chief Philemon Elifas

1976       Steve Biko for defeating or obstructing justice

1976       David and Susan Rabkin for inciting and committing acts to promote banned organisations

1979       The Bethal Treason Trial of Zephania Mothopeng and 17 other Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) members

1980       Abdullah Naker for dealing in prohibited dependence producing drugs

 1983      Johannes Theron for the murder of ex-Senator Dr Andries Visser

1984       SASOL Ltd, Strategic Fuel Fund and Helge Storch Nielsen for unpaid commissions

1987       Dimitrios Skoularikus for the murder of Alphons Tampa and Mr & Mrs Costas Phakos

He also represented the families of a number of people who died inexplicably whilst in police detention. These inquests allowed the families and the public to learn some of the bizarre circumstances surrounding the deaths of their loved ones at the hands of the Security Police.

1970       Imam Abdullah Haron, a 45 years old respected Muslim cleric and leader, was detained under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act on 28 May, 1969 and held incommunicado for 123 days until his death from on 27 September 1969 in the Maitland police station cells in Cape Town. The police claimed that it was from falling down a flight of stairs but the autopsy recorded 27 bruises one of which was 20x8cm. He also had a broken rib. The magistrate found to have died of a myocardial ischemia as the result of a dislodged blood clot and that “A substantial part of the said trauma was caused by an accidental fall down a flight of stone stairs. On the available evidence I am unable to determine how the balance (of injuries) was caused.”[2]

1976       Mapetla Mohapi  a leader of the Black Consciousness Movement was arrested under the Terrorism Act on 15 July 1976 and was found dead in his cell at the Kei Road police station on 5 August hanging by a pair of jeans in a cell at Brighton Beach police station. The police claimed he had committed suicide.

1976       George Botha, a 30-year old teacher at Paterson High School, Port Elizabeth, was detained on 10 December under Section 22 of the General Laws Amendment Act.   Five days later, he was dead at the infamous Sanlam Building which housed the Head Quarters of the Security Police in Port Elizabeth. The police claimed he had jumped down a stairwell from the 6th floor of the building.

1978       Dr. Hoosen Haffajee, a young dentist 26 years old, was arrested under the Terrorism Act on 3 August 1977 for being in possession of “subversive documents”. He was found in his cell less than 24 hours later hanging from his trousers. Again the Security Police claimed suicide and the pathologists report found that his death was consistent with hanging but it also noted that he had some 60 wounds on his body including his back, knees, arms and head.

1978       Lungile Tabalaza was 19 years old and was arrested for incidents of arson, robbery and the burning of a delivery vehicle. He was detained on 10 July and died the same day at the Head Quarters of the Security Police, in Port Elizabeth.  The police claimed he had jumped from an unbarred window on the 5th floor of the building.

1978       Michael Heshu was beaten and then shot dead by police on 28 December 1977 in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth. He had been at a party with his girlfriend and on their way home they were stopped by the police and he was ordered to have sex in the street with his girlfriend. He refused.  The police told his family that he had been killed by riot police during at attack on police.  He had been shot three times and had a broken femur.

Sadly in all instances the magistrates chose to overlook the numerous bruises and injuries of the victims and found no one responsible for the deaths contributing to a “…culture of impunity in the SAP” [3] at the time.

He also acted on other matters on behalf of political prisoners and members of the African National Congress (ANC) such as Dullah Omar[4] , who he had lectured on Evidence in 1956 and 1957 and had known through his great friend and colleague at the Cape bar Advocate [5] , Albie Sachs and Jeremy Cronin.

After two acting appointments as a judge, the first in July 1988, Wilfrid Cooper was appointed to the Eastern Cape Bench in 1 March 1989 and then transferred to the Western Cape in 1991 where he remained until his retirement due to poor health in January 1998. 

Judge Cooper’s health severely deteriorated, and after his wife’s death in June 2001, he moved into frail care at a retirement village Clé Du Cap in Kirstenhof, Cape Town where he died of a heart attack on the morning of 4 March 2004.

Judge Cooper had a great number of friends with diverse interests which included the acclaimed writer and academic, Prof. Etienne van Heerden. They were both interested in literature and law as Prof van Heerden had studied an LLB and qualified as a lawyer before turning to literature and writing. They would talk endlessly on Judge Cooper’s favourite writer James Joyce, and other writers, and historians. Prof van Heerden had the following to say of him:

“He loved life, had abundant energy and we had great times. When I moved to UCT from Rhodes, we saw less of each other; his health wasn't good and I also had setbacks and surgery, which meant that our party lives were over. I often had tea with him in his chambers in Queen Vic Street after I paid a visit to my publishers in the Waalburg Building close by and he liked to tell me of the inner workings of the system, and his worries about slipping standards and ignored conventions.

We spoke on the phone at least once a week, as he was a truly loyal friend who always kept regular contact.

It was clear that he worked hard, as the son of an engine driver on the platteland, to become a judge, a respected academic, and a great conversationalist. In many ways he would break the bonds of formality and snobbery, of language barriers and distance – and that was what I greatly liked about him. His world had little boundaries in that sense.”

Judge Cooper loved to socialise and intellectualise on any level; from the Owl Club which he joined in November 1955 and regularly attended their meetings for over forty five years, accompanying Gertrude, as social editor of the Cape Times, to attend socials events around Cape Town or a braai at home or with the farmers he befriended over the years in the Western Cape.

He enjoyed the outdoors and was a golfer at one stage but he had a love for the Karoo, Kalahari and Namibia where he would hunt from time to time with friends, farmers and colleagues and enjoy the open expanses and the harsh beauty. He was however not a particularly good shot so his favourite saying of his hunting was “Ek skiet swak maar jag lekker” as it was the company and talk around the camp fire that he particularly enjoyed.  He also tried his hand at game fishing in False Bay from the boat of Simonstown attorney Vic Cohen when tuna still entered the bay from the deep sea in great numbers.  His regular escape from his work, however, was to walk for many hours with the family dogs from Constantia Nek to Newlands Forest.

Judge Cooper and Gertrude have three children: two daughters, Susan-Ann and Megan, who were educated at Rustenberg Girls High School, and a son, Gavin, who attended the Diocesan College (Bishops).  The eldest, Susan-Ann, graduated from the University of Cape Town and completed her studies in Canada where she is a lecturer in English literature in Ottawa; Megan after schooling studied the restoration of documents and manuscripts at the Camberwell College of Art in London and works at Windsor Castle as a member of the Queen’s Household staff where her expertise is used to conserve documents for the Royal Family. Gavin, after his schooling and two years national service, went into the world of commerce, and, having accumulated over thirty years experience, has owned and operated two businesses in international freight forwarding and customs clearing.

Judge Cooper also had three grand children; Matthew, Petra and Edward.

Endnotes

[1] The school opened in 1745 for girls and boys, in 1894 two separate schools were established, namely “Girls School” and “Jongens Publieke School” and in 1912 it became “Die Hoer Jongenskool”. In 1944 the girls and boys amalgamated again with the name “Hoerskool Swartland”.↵

[2] Cape Times, Wednesday, 11 March 1970↵

[3] The O’Malley Archives, Chapter 2, Regional Profile Eastern Cape↵

[4] http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/dullah-mohamed-omar↵

[5] http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/benjamin-magson-kies-political-a...↵

Gertrude Hope Posthumus, the second-youngest of eight children was born in King Williamstown but grew up Worcester where her father, an engineer for the South African Railways, was stationed. She attended Girls High School, Worcester where she attained her Senior Certificate in 1941 and then went to the University of Cape Town from 1942 to 1944 where she graduated with a BA degree with her main subjects being English and Nederlands and Afrikaans

 After graduating she joined the Cape Times in 1945 and as a cub reporter, one of her first coups whilst covering fringe social events was during the Royal Visit in February 1947 to interview HRH Princess Elizabeth. In 1949, at the age of 25, she was appointed to the position of Woman’s Editor, expanding its functions, and becoming an influential social arbiter, much in demand on the diplomatic social network during parliamentary sessions.  Many of the diplomats became good friends as did the politicians, hoteliers, restaurateurs, businessmen and a range of other celebrities who she interviewed in her over forty years career with the newspaper.

On 22 October 1949 she married Wilfrid Edward Cooper who was then busy studying for his LLB degree at the University of South Africa (UNISA). He would later become an eminent Senior Counsel at the Cape Bar and in his latter years Judge at the Cape Supreme Court. They set up home in the late 1950s in Newlands, Cape Town and lived there for over forty years before moving to a townhouse in Constantia.  Their home in Newlands was at the end of a small, unnamed lane next to that of the parents of Richard (Dick) Dudley who they got to know. In 1961 in terms of the Group Areas Act the Dudley’s were forced to move and in later years Gertrude would lock horns with the Cape Town City Council to have, after a long struggle, the lane was officially named Dudley Lane in honour of the Dudley family who were wonderful neighbours but who had to bear the brunt of unjust Apartheid legislation.

Her career was temporarily put on hold with the birth of her first daughter, Susan-Ann, in January 1954 but being a workaholic she immediately started freelancing with a column “What’s your worry” as well as doing fashion supplements.  After her next two children, Megan and Gavin were born in 1956 and 1959, she returned to the Cape Times to continue her career with the newspaper until her retirement.

She went on to become Social Editor, and creator of “Gertrude Cooper’s People’s Page,” published weekly on Saturday: it was a “must” read of social events in Cape Town. She covered annual events such the Metropolitan Handicap at Kenilworth, the opening of Parliament and the Nederberg Wine Auction, diplomatic events such as national days, book launches and many other events. She supported as many charities as she could including; Hospice, The Red Cross Children’s Hospital, Community Chest, Round Table and any other which required publicity on her page to raise funds for their causes

She was a truly professional journalist, winning respect from her colleagues for the vast amount of time and energy she poured into her duties and the perfection of her work.  She had a reputation for speaking her mind and did not suffer fools easily. She was remembered years after her death by Tony Weaver, then Assistant Editor of the Cape Times, when he wrote in his Man Friday column, on 13 December 2013:

I started on the Cape Times in 1981 as a raw cub reporter over at 77 Burg Street. Tony Heard was the editor. We even had a Society Editor back then, the wonderful, incredibly glamorous Gertrude Cooper. It was Gertie the subversive who rallied the secretaries, the high speed dictate typists and the men from the presses to threaten downing tools when a hostile takeover loomed. The night Madiba died, I walked into the Cape Times just before midnight and into controlled chaos. Gertie would have loved it.

She held the position of Social Editor until her retirement in 1989 with the last “Gertrude Peoples Page” appearing on the 29th of April.  Retirement from the Cape Times did not mean that she stopped working; she continued freelancing for the Top of the Times as well as working part time for the public relations company, Lange PR. She continued “part time” with Lange PR until mid-1998 when it became necessary for her to be at home full time as her husband Wilfrid’s health was failing and he needed attention so ending a career of 51 years in journalism.

Gertrude was an excellent cook and very knowledgeable on food and wine matters and became well known by many local and international restaurateurs and wine makers.  One of her great friends was the flamboyant English chef John Tovey.  While visiting her daughter Megan in England she would visit him from time to time at his hotel, Miller Howe, in the English Lake District. They met in January 1974 and their friendship endured until her death.

Having been fit and healthy all her life, having played golf in her youth, swum every day in summer, walked on Table Mountain regularly and tirelessly worked in her garden; in June 2001 she was startlingly diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. Gertrude Hope Cooper died at home in Constantia on 17 April 2002 in bed next to Wilfrid. 

At her memorial John Tovey had the following to say of her:

“Well, in her inimitable way she outlived that initial prognosis (of her cancer) by many months. This was the Gertie we knew always facing the opposition with determination and complete courage. Honesty in all things was paramount with her and this she kept up to the last moments of her life. She was one for the few people I knew and loved who stuck at all times to her ideals on life in general – idiosyncratic as they sometimes were. Right up to the end, everything, but everything had to be done her way. She had a powerful intellect which was widely acknowledged.”

Gertrude and Wilfrid had three children: two daughters, Susan-Ann and Megan, who were educated at Rustenberg Girls High School, and a son, Gavin, who attended the Diocesan College (Bishops) and Abbotts Colleg. The eldest, Susan-Ann, graduated from the University of Cape Town and completed her studies in Canada where she is a lecturer in English literature in Ottawa; Megan after schooling studied the restoration of documents and manuscripts at the Camberwell College of Art in London and works at Windsor Castle as a member of the Queen’s Household staff where her expertise is used to conserve documents for the Royal Family. Gavin, after his schooling and two years national service, went into the world of commerce, and, having accumulated over thirty years experience, has owned and operated two businesses in international freight forwarding and customs clearing.

Gertrude also had three grand children; Matthew, Petra and Edward.

Diana Mitchell was born in Harare, Zimbabwe, or what was then known as Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, on 16 November 1932[i]. She was famous for many things, but was most noted for being a liberal politician opposing the White minority regime of Ian Smith's Rhodesia. Her birth name was Diana Mary Coates[ii]. Her father, Elliott Coates, was a naval officer serving in the British merchant marines and her mother, Mary Peck, was originally from Australia[iii]. Mary and Elliott married after Mary fell pregnant with Diana, and the marriage caused a scandal for both the families[iv]. The scandal cost Elliott his job and he was also disinherited by his family. The marriage ended after five years and Mary and Elliot obtained a divorce in 1937[v]. This impacted on Diana as during the early 1940’s she was fostered by another family while her mother worked in a factory[vi].

In 1953, after graduating from Eveline High School in Bulawayo, Diana travelled to Cape Town to attend the University of Cape Town,[vii] where she studied History and Shona, graduating with a BA in History[viii]. When she returned to what was then called Rhodesia she became a teacher, and in 1956 she married an engineer named Brian Mitchell[ix]. In her early years back in Rhodesia she also taught at several different high schools in Gwelo, Fort Victoria and Salisbury.[x]

In 1965, Ian Smith's party, the Rhodesian Front (RF) began to close down various informal schools, known as back yard schools[xi].In 1966, upon seeing a nursery school for the children of Black domestic workers being demolished, she began a campaign to save the school. This campaign later expanded into a national drive to improve education for black children[xii]. During this time she also ran a “backyard school” or an informal school for Black children[xiii]. Diana Mitchell later stated that this was a key moment in her formation as a political activist[xiv]. In later interviews she stated that she could afford to be an activist because her husband took care of them financially[xv]. Her political involvement and activism led her to be one of the founding members of the liberal Centre Party (CP).[xvi]

Voting poster for 1974 elections Image source

Despite being a founding member of the party she was often relegated to speech writing, taking minutes and other administrative tasks[xvii]. She was an outspoken and energetic member, but was relegated to such tasks because of the patriarchal nature of Rhodesian politics[xviii]. In 1975 and 1977 she ran for parliament, but was unsuccessful on both occasions.[xix], but because of the rampant sexism in the party she elected to run as an independent[xx]. In the late 1970’s she was tasked with facilitating peace talks between the RF and the various political movements struggling for national liberation.[xxi]

During the 1970’s Diana continued to work on her educational career and in 1973 she obtained a certificate in Adult Education from what was then called the University of Rhodesia (now the University of Zimbabwe)[xxii]. She also lectured at the University of Rhodesia on the topic of Science Education during 1976[xxiii]. Later she received a MA degree in African History from that same university[xxiv].

With a background in History and Education, and with access to many central political players, Diana Mitchell was perfectly positioned for collecting information on what was happening at the time. Through collecting news reports, minutes from meetings and talking to political leaders she collected an impressive archive of the various African nationalist leaders in Rhodesia[xxv][xxvi]. In 1980, during the negotiations for National Liberation, the book based on the archives, titled “African Nationalist Leaders in Rhodesia: Who's Who”, was used by both sides to inform themselves about Rhodesian oppositional politics at the time[xxvii]. This archive continues to give researchers a great insight into oppositional politics in Rhodesia from the 1960’s – 1980[xxviii]. In 1990, the University of Cape Town acquired, and continues to store, the archive that Diana compiled[xxix]. This archive has been pivotal in showing the active role that women played in the Liberation Struggle, in what is now known as Zimbabwe[xxx].

The role of women in history is often neglected and marginalised, not just in Zimbabwe, but globally. The archives Diana compiled powerfully illustrates that women were at least as politically active as men. By blocking the access of women to taking more public roles and by preventing women from standing for parliamentary elections, the opposition parties in Rhodesia created an idea that the public sphere of opposition politics was a masculine space[xxxi]. This reduced the image of women to being colonial wives and middle class philanthropists[xxxii]. This image was then used to further oppress women's political agency by using their absence in politics as proof for ineptitude.

Diana Mitchell and her brother David in 1979 Image source

After liberation Diana Mitchell continued to write as a journalist[xxxiii]. She was very critical of the new government of President Robert Mugabe when news of the killings in Matabeleland emerged[xxxiv]. In 1991 she was one of the founding members of the new opposition party, namely the Forum for Democratic Reform , which was a strong proponent of a multi-party democracy[xxxv]. In 2003 Mitchell and her husband emigrated to the United Kingdom, according to some because she was tired of life under the regime of Robert Mugabe[xxxvi]. Diana Mitchell died on the 8 January 2016[xxxvii]. Diana Mitchell had three children, three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren[xxxviii].

Endnotes

[i] Gallagher, Julia . 2016. “Diana Mitchell obituary” in The Guardian. Accessed 15.03.2015.↵

[ii] Ibid.↵

[iii] Law, Kate. 2010. “LIBERAL WOMEN IN RHODESIA: A REPORT ON THE MITCHELL PAPERS, UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN” in History in Africa Vol. 37 (2010), pp. 389-398. Page 390. ↵

[iv] Gallagher, Julia . 2016. “Diana Mitchell obituary” in The Guardian. Accessed 15.03.2015.↵

[v] Ibid.↵

[vi] Ibid.↵

[vii] Law, Kate. 2010. “LIBERAL WOMEN IN RHODESIA: A REPORT ON THE MITCHELL PAPERS, UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN” in History in Africa Vol. 37 (2010), pp. 389-398. Page 390. ↵

[viii] Ibid.↵

[ix] Colonial Relic. http://www.colonialrelic.com/about/. Accessed 15.03.2015. ↵

[x] Ibid.↵

[xi] Law, Kate. 2010. “LIBERAL WOMEN IN RHODESIA: A REPORT ON THE MITCHELL PAPERS, UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN” in History in Africa Vol. 37 (2010), pp. 389-398. Page 390. ↵

[xii] Gallagher, Julia . 2016. “Diana Mitchell obituary” in The Guardian. Accessed 15.03.2015.↵

[xiii] Law, Kate. 2010. “LIBERAL WOMEN IN RHODESIA: A REPORT ON THE MITCHELL PAPERS, UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN” in History in Africa Vol. 37 (2010), pp. 389-398. Page 390. ↵

[xiv] Ibid.↵

[xv] Ibid.↵

[xvi] Ibid.↵

[xvii] Ibid. Delete spaces↵

[xviii] Ibid. Delete spaces↵

[xix] Ibid.↵

[xx ]Gallagher, Julia . 2016. “Diana Mitchell obituary” in The Guardian. Accessed 15.03.2015.↵

[xxi] Ibid.↵

[xxii] Colonial Relic. http://www.colonialrelic.com/about/. Accessed 15.03.2015. ↵

[xxiii] Ibid.↵

[xxiv] Ibid.↵

[xxv] Gallagher, Julia . 2016. “Diana Mitchell obituary” in The Guardian. URl number Accessed 15.03.2015.↵

[xxvi] Mitchell, Diana M., and Robert Cary. 1977. “African Nationalist Leaders in Rhodesia: Who's Who” (Salisbury, Name of Publisher?1977).↵

[xxvii] Gallagher, Julia . 2016. “Diana Mitchell obituary” in The Guardian. Accessed 15.03.2015.↵

[xxviii] Law, Kate. 2010. “LIBERAL WOMEN IN RHODESIA: A REPORT ON THE MITCHELL PAPERS, UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN” in History in Africa Vol. 37 (2010), pp. 389-398. Page 390. ↵

[xxix] Ibid.↵

[xxx] Ibid. Page 391. ↵

[xxxi] Ibid. Page 392.↵

[xxxii] Ibid.↵

[xxxiii] Gallagher, Julia . 2016. “Diana Mitchell obituary” in The Guardian. Accessed 15.03.2015.↵

[xxxiv] Ibid.↵

[xxxv] Mitchell Diana. 2004. “Colonial Relic”. http://colonialrelic.blogspot.co.za/2007_03_01_archive.html. Accessed 12.04.2015↵

[xxxvi] Ibid.↵

[xxxvii] Ibid.↵

[xxxviii] Ibid.↵