Elizabeth Mafekeng

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Elizabeth Mafekeng (born September 18, 1918 in Tarkastad , Cape Province , South Africa , † May 28, 2009 ) was a South African anti- apartheid activist and union leader.

Life

youth

Elizabeth Mafekeng was born on September 18th in the small town of Tarkastad near Queenstown in the eastern part of the Cape Province of South Africa. Mafekeng's family lived in very simple circumstances, so that in 1927, when Mafekeng was 14 years old, the family moved to Paarl in the western part of the Cape Province. So that she could support her family, Mafekeng left school in 1932 to work on the assembly line under difficult conditions at the H. Jones Canning Factory , a canning factory.

Political commitment

The social and economic conditions in South Africa changed with the beginning of the Second World War , in particular the urbanization of the industrial centers increased sharply, numerous new factories and industries were created. In 1941 Mafekeng joined both the emerging Food and Canning Workers Union (FCWU) and the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA). She stayed in the FCWU until 1947, when the apartheid government forced the unions to subdivide them into groups. In addition to the FCWU, an African Food and Canning Workers Union (AFCWU) was created for black people. With the tightening of the apartheid laws in the early 1950s, which also banned the CPSA, Mafekeng went into resistance and in 1952 joined the Defiance Campaign of the African National Congress (ANC). In the early 1950s she was vice chairman of the ANC women's organization .

In 1954 the members of the AFCWU elected Mafekeng as their chairman. In the same year she co-founded the Federation of South African Women . Mafekeng was also a delegate of the South African Food Workers at a conference in Sofia ( Bulgaria ). She left her home country disguised as a “servant” without a passport. In Bulgaria, according to one statement, she experienced “humane treatment without discrimination” for the first time. Upon her return, Mafekeng suffered harassment and questioning due to her trip abroad.

Exile in Lesotho and late return

South African authorities announced on October 31, 1959 that Mafekeng would be deported to the north of the Cape Province after a large demonstration in Paarl, where she would live on a remote farm near Vryburg . She herself fled to Basutoland (later Lesotho) on November 8th . The day after, a demonstration of 3,000 people took place on the street in front of their abandoned house. There were stones thrown at passing cars and there are said to have been some shots against the police. Police units used firearms to break up the gathering, injuring 12 demonstrators and killing one civilian from a knife attack. Mafekeng only returned to her home country South Africa after 1990, after the end of apartheid. The FCWU built Mafekeng a house in the Mbewekni township in Paarl.

Mafekeng died on May 28, 2009.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Mafekeng, Elizabeth . In: Emmanuel K. Akyeampong and Henry Louis Gates, Jr (Eds.): Dictionary of African Biography . Oxford Press, Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-538207-5 , pp. 23 .
  2. ^ SAIRR : A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa 1958-1959 . Johannesburg 1960, p. 225
  3. ↑ Biography at sahistory.org.za, accessed on December 11, 2016
  4. ^ SAIRR: A Survey of Race Relations in South Africa 1959-1960 . Johannesburg 1961, p. 51
personal data
SURNAME Mafekeng, Elizabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African anti-apartheid activist and union leader
DATE OF BIRTH September 18, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Tarkastad , Cape Province , South Africa
DATE OF DEATH May 28, 2009