Helen Joseph
elen Joseph, a formidable organiser with a tremendous capacity for hard work, made an invaluable contribution of behalf of women in the struggle for South Africa’s freedom.
Born Helen Beatrice Fennell in Sussex, England in 1905, she left for India to teach after graduating in 1927. She moved to Durban in 1930, where she married. She volunteered and served as an officer in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force during World War II.
Changed by the war, Joseph divorced and retrained as a social worker. Working in a coloured area of Cape Town, she saw the privations of family life under apartheid first hand. She moved to Johannesburg and started working for the non-racial Garment Workers’ Union, the beginning of her political involvement.
A founder member of the Congress of Democrats, the body of white South Africans allied to the ANC, Joseph was approached to support the launching of the Federation of South African Women (Fedsaw) in 1954, including the adoption of the Women’s Charter. She was elected Fedsaw’s secretary. In 1955, Joseph was one of the leaders chosen to read out the Freedom Charter at the Congress of the People,
held in Kliptown.
Joseph spearheaded numerous anti-apartheid protests by women. In the lead up to the Women’s March, she travelled all around the country appealing to women to join the fight against the pass laws. She stopped at every Fedsaw branch, helping to ensure the preparations were on track for black, Indian, coloured and white women to attend the march in Pretoria.
Of the 156 people subjected to the 1956 Treason Trial, 19 of them were women. Anyone suspected in having actively participated in the campaign to draw up the Freedom Charter was targeted, and Joseph was banned by the government in 1957.
The ANC asked Joseph to work on their welfare committee, formed to aid the increasing number of ANC members in exile. She wrote an account of her visits to exiles entitled Tomorrow’s Sun.
When the apartheid government enacted new suppression under the Sabotage Act in 1962, Joseph was the first person to be put under house arrest. She was confined to her home every evening and over all weekends, not permitted to leave Johannesburg, and her voice was silenced — her writing was banned. She lived alone, and endured this confinement and isolation for 10 years.
She was victim to continuous police
intimidation, threats and several assassination attempts, with bullets fired through her window and a bomb wired to her front gate. She was jailed four times, and her banning order was only lifted when she was 80 years old.
After Joseph underwent surgery for cancer, her house arrest was not renewed by the apartheid government. However, they had not counted on her spirit being undaunted by years of persecution and her illness. She continued to speak out against apartheid, addressing student meetings.
Despite her advancing age and government restrictions, her support of those on Robben Island and in the struggle remained true to the end. A close friend to many in the struggle, she cared for the children of those imprisoned or forced into exile, including Winnie MadikizelaMandela and Bram Fischer.
Joseph passed away on Christmas Day in 1992, before seeing South Africa’s first democratic election. She was placed to rest at Avalon Cemetery in Soweto.
Helen Joseph’s steadfast poise, integrity, commitment and organising powers made her famous internationally. Shortly before her death, she was awarded the highest honour of the ANC, the Isitwalandwe Medal, for her courage and devotion to South Africa’s liberation struggle. — Romi Reinecke