On Sunday, August 7, Ma Rita Alita Ndzanga visited the graves of fellow struggle stalwarts Helen Joseph and Lilian Ngoyi to honour the women of the 1956 resistance campaign and march that Women’s Day in SA commemorates.
Frail and diminutive, her 88-year-old voice may have been wavering and strained, but the message was strong as ever. “Women must come together, through our different forms of struggles, and continue to fight night and day for our freedom.” Ten days later Ndzanga died.
Arranged by the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation (AKF), the Women's Day event was as much a tribute to her and others in attendance who were a part of the resistance movement, such as Sophia Williams-de Bruyn, as it was for the 1956 leaders.
Ndzanga told the foundation's representatives that she continued to pray for a better country, one with freedom and dignity for all. We can only hope that this “better country” recognises her as a key figure of the resistance movement, her commitment to which meant that she, her husband and children often suffered.
In an interview in 2018, close friend and fellow activist Joyce Sikakane-Rankin said: “Rita Ndzanga, she really suffered, that woman. She lost her husband, he was tortured to death in detention, and then she lost two of her sons.”
SHE TOUCHED MANY LIVES
For six decades, Ndzanga had an impact on many, many lives. She worked as an organiser for trade unions in her 20s, and for years helped to smuggle young people into exile and to ANC training camps in Tanzania and Angola. For her pains she was detained in solitary confinement, tortured and otherwise punished by the apartheid government.
When I left home, I left only with my skirt and the coat I had on, and a beret
She was responsible for the collection and administration of workers’ subscriptions for the Brick & Tile Workers’ Union and later the Railway & Harbours Workers’ Union. She was incensed by the treatment of workers whose injuries on duty and working condition complaints she recorded.
In May 1969, with her husband Lawrence, also a stalwart trade unionist, she was taken from their home in Senoane, Soweto, in the middle of the night and detained with Winnie Mandela, Sikakane-Rankin, photographer Peter Magubane and others for close to two years. “When I left home, I left only with my skirt and the coat I had on, and a beret. I had nothing else. I stayed in prison for six months without any change of clothes.”
Her young children were left alone until the next day.
The women were held in solitary confinement at Pretoria Central in unlivable conditions, frequently interrogated and tortured. On one occasion she was lifted by her hair by a security branch interrogator, falling on a gas pipe and injuring her arm. She said recently: “I was in my 30s then, but I can feel it. I’ve got pains. I am ill from that.”
Those arrested were among 22 people who went on trial on charges under the Suppression of Comunism Act in December 1969. The trial collapsed the following year, after the women refused to testify against their comrades.
Ndzanga was born on October 17 1933, the third child of Isaac and Alina More, farmers who established Mogopa village near Ventersdorp in the then Transvaal. Her community, the Bakwena ba Mogopa, were evicted from their ancestral lands in 1912.
She recalled in an interview with the AKF: “According to my father, my grandfather and others came together when they were being ill-treated and chased away by the Afrikaners, and bought two farms which they called Mogopa.”
So, the first wounds of apartheid were inflicted on her as a young girl and they sparked her political awareness.
Forced removals followed again, she said in a recent interview. “I was about 23, living in Sophiatown, when the removals happened. We didn’t want to go. They took my father and my two brothers from our house in Sophiatown. They put my father in Meadowlands Hostel, where he stayed with my younger brother. My eldest brother, Matthews, went to Botswana to teach. My other brother, Peter, got his own house ... with a mkhukhu [shack] in Naledi. The destruction of Sophiatown split my family up. It was painful.”
'WHEN WE GOT HERE IT WAS VELD'
She also moved to her home in Soweto with Lawrence. Today it is renovated and comfortable, but she said: “When we got here it was veld, there was nothing. Then he got a truck and brought me corrugated iron. We made a little shack and we slept there. Then the next day there was a bigger shack. There was not even a toilet, let me tell you.
How much was I, as a black person, earning at that time? Nothing, next to nothing
“Ma Tshababala was down the road, I ran to that place to relieve myself. She said, 'Here, if you want a toilet, take your receipt and go to the municipal office and go get a bucket.’
“The lives we led! Really, man, we suffered. I had to work. How much was I, as a black person, earning at that time? Nothing, next to nothing. But we survived, and we built the house.”
In 1976, Lawrence and Rita were again detained after a police raid, this time at the Old Fort. During an interrogation session, they were taken, separately, to John Vorster Square, which was known by then for the many “suicides” committed there by detainees.
'ARE YOU NOT LAWRENCE'S WIFE?'
In a 2018 interview, she remembered being made to walk barefoot up and down Nugget Street in central Johannesburg, being questioned for hours while sleep deprived. At some point, an officer approached her to ask, “Are you not Lawrence’s wife?” Rita confirmed that she was and the officer walked away. About an hour later, she was told that her husband was dead.
She was not given the dignity of attending his funeral, only visiting his grave the next day.
In the same year, her older sons Andile John and Jongisizwe Ezekial went into exile. Her daughter Nomathamsanqa and her youngest son Cecil escaped to study in Berlin. Jongi died, probably from malaria, in Tanzania, and his remains were returned to SA in 2003.
Her son Andile returned to the country after 1994 to work with the SANDF, but died of meningitis shortly afterwards.
Despite the tragedies, Ndzanga tirelessly continued her activism and political work. She served as a patron of the Federation of Transvaal Women which preceded the ANC Women's League.
In 1999 she became an MP and served on various committees in parliament, including rural development and labour, before retiring in 2004.
Ndzanga was the awarded the Order of Luthuli (Silver) along with the rest of the activists charged in “The trial of the 22" in 1969.
Until well into her 80s, she was still attending veterans’ meetings and getting involved in community projects, never abandoning the home she and Lawrence built.
'WHY WRITE ABOUT ME NOW?'
I discovered for myself how spirited and fiery Ndzanga was. She was already in her 80s, and I can't imagine how brazen she must have been as a young activist. She scolded me when we first met. Why was the newspaper writing about her now? “I think on three or four occasions, myself and my husband had to leave small children here in the house, and did anyone think of my children, these children at that time? They did not.”
She loved her children dearly, but she was committed heart and soul to the movement, too.
The image of the children being left behind in the early hours of the morning haunted Ndzanga throughout detention, in nightmares and visions during interrogation.
I discovered for myself how spirited and fiery Ndzanga was. She was already in her 80s, and I can't imagine how brazen she must have been as a young activist
Sitting at her dining room table, she used her hands to show me how young her children were when the couple were arrested.
“Our kids, three boys and one girl. They were small children,” she says. “Those apartheid police had no fear, no shame to take the father and mother, and leave small children like that. My sister had to come and stay with them but I didn’t know.”
She wasn’t told who was with her children, and for months lived with guilt about leaving them alone at home that morning.
The AKF prepared a booklet on her life for her 80th birthday, which was marked without great fanfare. She told me she might not have very many more birthdays.
IT’S THE STORY OF ALL THOSE WOMEN
Ndzanga was among those who spoke at Madikizela-Mandela’s funeral in 2018. “They who speak ill of those who are late, they are mad,” she told me. “I worked with Winnie for many years. She was in trouble, just like any other woman, like any other young girl. With her husband away, she had her children and she was struggling, just like me. I don’t know why people can say such things about people who are late. Winnie was not a bad person. To remember where we come from and where we are now, that is important.”
She did not see her life story as unique. “It’s the story of all the people who did not accept apartheid, who were fighting apartheid. They are still there. It’s the story of all the people who know how it feels to be kicked from the back while you are digging the wealth of the country.
“It’s the story of all those women, the mothers, who worked in the suburbs, in the kitchens, kneeling down, scrubbing the floors, doing washing, ironing for nothing. For no salary at all.”
Ndzanga is survived by two children and six grandchildren.
• Naidoo is the author of 'Women in Solitary: Inside the Female Resistance to Apartheid'
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