Ray Alexander Simons
From a tender age, Ray Alexander Simons was a fearless activist, trade unionist, writer and an ardent socialist. Simons, née Rachel Alexandrowich, was born i nto a working class family in Latvia in 1913. A conscientised activist from a young age, she was only 13 years old when she became a member of the underground Latvian Communist Party. This was a dangerous time to be involved in politics in the turbulent Baltic state, and facing imminent arrest, her worried mother sent her to South Africa to live with family.
She arrived in Cape Town on 6 November 1929, and it took 16-yearold Simons only five days to join the South African Communist Party (SACP). The SACP at that time was the only political party with an open, non-racial membership.
As a young worker and active SACP member, she was soon fired from her job for participating alongside blacks in an anti-pass campaign. Undeterred, she found a new job and started organising workers. She was arrested and sentenced to one month’s hard labour for her role in organising the Tram and Bus Workers’ strike in 1930.
Nothing could suppress her beliefs, however, and she became a member of the political bureau and general secretary of CPSA in 1934 and 1935.
She spent the rest of her twenties travelling through the Cape winelands. Her mission was to organise seasonal workers from these poor, rural areas into unions for the first time, and membership was open to black, coloured and white workers.
By 1941, these workers joined together into the Food and Canning Workers’ Union (FCWU), and Simons is credited as its founder. The non-racial FCWU (today called the Food and Allied Workers’ Union) gained a reputation as an organised and effective union movement, and was to prove instrumental in the Women’s March. Simons was also a regular newspaper columnist on trade union matters.
When the nationalists came to power in 1948, they passed far-reaching legislation to suppress opposition or dissent. Simons was systematically persecuted by the apartheid state and banned in 1953. This restricted her movement and her personal freedoms, and the state forced her by order to step down from the FCWU.
One of her most notable achievements was the founding of the Federation of South African Women (Fedsaw) in 1954. South African History Online credits Fedsaw as Simon’s “brainchild”, which she founded alongside fellow SACP member Hilda Bernstein.
It was Simons who explained the decision to create Fedsaw, not as an individual member organisation as originally planned, but a federation of affiliated organisations. This was to unite members within the anti-apartheid movement, such as those already within the ANC Women’s League, rather than risk dividing them.
The apartheid regime barred her from being general secretary within days of Fedsaw’s founding. Although Simons was under banning at the time of the march, and unable to attend it, she was an organiser and recruited about 175 women from Cape Town.
She found her life partner in Professor Jack Simons in 1941, a fellow SACP leader who shared her passion for speaking out against the oppression by class, race and gender in South African legislation. Together, they worked through persecution, detention and banning by the South African government, until forced into exile in 1965.
The couple made a principled decision to live out their exile in Africa rather than Europe or America, where Jack taught in Angolan bush camps and Ray continued with underground work in Lusaka, creating a safe house which harboured many struggle members. Together, the Simons were the first white members to be accepted into the ANC in 1969. They returned to South Africa in 1990, and continued to advise trade unions, the SACP and the ANC. Simons passed away in Cape Town in 2004. — Romi Reinecke
Mary Goitsemang Ranta
Born in 1922, Mary Goitsemang Ranta grew up near Pretoria. After leaving school, she worked as a “tea girl” at the Pretoria Mint, and later was employed as a typist for the African Iron and Steel Workers’ Union. By the early 1950s Mary was an active trade unionist and shop steward for the Garment Workers’ Union. She joined the ANC in 1948, was elected to the Transvaal executive of the ANC Women’s League in 1954, and was made national secretary in 1955. Ranta was also on the executive committee of Fedsaw, playing a key role in protesting against the extension of passes to women.
In December 1956 she was one of 19 women charged with treason, but the charges against her were dropped the following year.
— Linda Doke
Mary Thipe
Mary Thipe was born in 1917 in Ramhlakoane village, near the Eastern Cape border of KwaZulu-Natal. As a young woman she moved to Umkhumbane and joined the liberation struggle in 1952, actively resisting the pass laws. She also championed the 1950s potato boycotts in support of the farm workers of Bethal, now in Mpumalanga, who were forced to work the fields under terrible conditions as punishment for pass offences. For her efforts the apartheid government detained, arrested and banned her for five years. Mary was vice-chairperson of the ANC Women’s League in Cato Manor. In April 2015 she was awarded the Order of Luthuli for her contributions to the struggle for freedom. — Linda Doke