Ellen Kuzwayo

South African women's rights activist and politician 1914–2006)

Nnoseng Ellen Kate Kuzwayo (29 June 1914 – 19 April 2006) was a South African women's rights activist and politician, who was a teacher from 1938 to 1952. She was president of the African National Congress Youth League in the 1960s. In 1994, she was elected to the first post apartheid South African Parliament. Her autobiography, Call Me Woman (1985), won the CNA Literary Award.

Born Nnoseng Ellen Serasengwe, Kuzwayo came from an educated, politically active family. Her maternal grandfather, Jeremaiah Makgothi, was taken by his mother from the Orange Free State to the Cape to attend the Lovedale Institute, circa 1875. He qualified as a teacher and also worked as a court interpreter and a Methodist lay preacher. Makgothi was the only layman to work with Robert Moffat on the translation of the Bible into Setswana. Both Makgothi and Kuzwayo's father, Philip S. Mefare, were active in politics. Makgothi was secretary of the Orange Free State branch of the South African Native National Congress, Mefare a member of its successor, the African National Congress.

Kuzwayo began her schooling at the school built by Makgothi on his farm in Thabapatchoa, about 12 miles from Tweespruit, Orange Free State. She attended Adams College, Amanzimtoti, and then undertook a teacher training course at Lovedale College in Fort Hare, graduating at the age of 22 and beginning a teaching career. She worked as a teacher in the Transvaal until 1952, giving up teaching on the introduction of the Bantu Education Act, 1953, which cut back opportunities for black education. In the 1940s, she served as secretary of the ANC Youth League. After the 1976 Soweto uprising, she was the only woman on the committee of 10 set up to organise civic affairs in Soweto, and her activities led to her detention for five months in 1977–78 under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. She would recount her arrest in her 1996 testimony to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. until June 1999, when she was South Africa's longest serving parliamentarian. In 1987, she was awarded an honorary doctorate of Laws from the University of the Witwatersrand, the first black woman to receive an honorary degree from the university. She also awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Natal and the University of Port Elizabeth. She was awarded the Order of Meritorious Service by Nelson Mandela in 1999.

Call Me Woman. London: The Women's Press (1985). , reprinted Aunt Lute Books, 1992
Sit Down and Listen: Stories from South Africa, London: The Women's Press, 1990.