Anti-apartheid activist Blanche la Guma marks 95th birthday

BLANCHE la Guma, anti-apartheid Struggle heroine, celebrated her 95th birthday this week.

In the 1940s, while still a teenager, La Guma joined the SACP which was later banned under apartheid and operated underground.

La Guma, being a midwife, played a key role by distributing party literature across Cape Town.

In 1954, she married Alex la Guma, a comrade in the party and leader of the South African Coloured People's Organisation, who was later a defendant in the Treason Trial.

“While Alex was away at the Treason Trial, I had my own fight on my hands with the attempt of the Nationalist government to impose apartheid on the nursing profession,” La Guma recalls in her memoir, In the Dark with my Dress on Fire.

In 1957 when the National Party proposed the Nursing Amendment Act to bring nursing in line with the larger policy of apartheid, La Guma organised a 300-women-strong protest in Cape Town and wrote articles on nursing apartheid for Nursing News, a publication that was later banned.

La Guma was later banned herself for having one of those articles in her possession, and sentenced to imprisonment. Her lawyer, Albie Sachs, successfully argued in the Supreme Court of Appeal for her sentence to be suspended.

“Blanche was the bravest of the brave, the brightest of the bright,” said Justice Sachs, retired Judge of the Constitutional Court.

“She had a little green Morris, or was it an Austin? And she would drive through the potholes and puddles of Windermere and Elsies River to deliver the babies of the poor in their makeshift shanty homes,” he recalled.

“But more than that… she would deliver political news and underground pamphlets, linking her comrades living there to the broader people's Struggle.”

La Guma hid pamphlets in her nursing briefcase, alongside the tools and materials she would use for the delivery of babies.

In 1966, La Guma, her husband and their two young sons left South Africa on exit permits which prevented them returning home. They lived in exile in the UK where La Guma continued to work as a midwife and was later appointed head of a maternity ward in London, all the while carrying out duties for the exiled ANC after hours.

Asked about her secret to her longevity, La Guma attributed it to her continued fight against injustices.

“When I see something that is wrong, I don't just let it go. I say my piece to ensure that something will be done,” said La Guma.

Although still strong and able, she said she tires easily these days, and gave up cooking her own meals a few months ago. She is however, happy to still be surrounded by good friends.

“It was such a pleasure to share the wonderful occasion of Blanche's 95th birthday with her and other friends,” said Dr Bonita Bennet, former director of the District Six Museum.

“Her delight in our company in the uplifting environment of Kirstenbosch Garden was so infectious, and it was great to see a glimmer of the vivacious Blanche again, as of late she has not always been feeling well.”

Bennet and her husband, Reverend Michael Weeder, Dean of St George's Cathedral, have been touched and inspired by the story of the La Gumas.

“Their love survived the years of house arrest, death threats and detention. The personal and public nature of their relationship was underscored by mutual respect and the values instilled in them by the Struggle for freedom.”