HEROINES LIVE ON: Charlotte Maxeke’s tomb is unveiled as a national heritage site. Picture by Sibusiso Msibi |
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Former ANC Women’s League president Winnie Madikizela-Mandela says it’s a shame that struggle fighters of the calibre of Lillian Ngoyi are only now being recognised. Madikizela-Mandela was speaking at an event held to honour struggle icons Charlotte Maxeke, Lillian Ngoyi and Helen Joseph in Kliptown’s Freedom Square, Soweto, on Friday. At the event the graves of the three were finally declared heritage sites – 54 years after they led a march of thousands of women to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest against the pass system in 1956. Also at the event, South African Heritage Resource Agency CEO Sibongile van Damme said: “This not only seeks to advance the role of women in politics as that of the anti-pass campaigns, but to align them into mainstream politics and highlight their contributions.” In 1901 Charlotte Maxeke became the first black South African woman to obtain a university degree (at Wilberforce University, Ohio, US). Lillian Ngoyi and Helen Joseph’s lives were intertwined and they are both buried in the same grave at the Avalon Cemetery. While Joseph and Maxeke have had hospitals named after them, Ngoyi has remained largely unrecognised until now. | 
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