NGOYI, LILIAN MASEDIBA
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Lilian Masediba Ngoyi (1911-March 12, 1980) was president of the Federation of South African Women and, in 1956, the first woman to be elected to the National Executive Board of the African National Congress. Although silenced and physically restricted by many years of banishment by the South African government, she remained a symbol of resistance.
PHOTO CAPTION: Lilian Masediba Ngoyi. SOURCE: EA Library.
Born in Pretoria, Ngoyi was one of the Pedi people. She had to leave school four years before matriculation to support her ailing father, her mother and brother. She first became active in the struggle against apartheid when as a machinist in a clothing factory, she joined the militant Garment Workers’ Union, then led by Solly Sachs.
She was living in Orlando Township when she joined the Defiance Campaign of 1952, courting arrest by entering the “Europeans only” section of a Post Office in Johannesburg. A widow and mother of three, she nevertheless was a tireless organiser, at the forefront of protests against the colour bar laws; within a year of joining the ANC Women’s League she was elected president.
An eloquent speaker, Ngoyi was invited to tour the German Democratic Republic, the Soviet Union and China following her attendance at a Women’s International Democratic Federation Conference in Europe. Returning to Johannesburg in 1955, she was a prominent organiser of countrywide protests against the government’s proposed extension of the Pass Laws to black women.
These culminated in her leading 20,000 women, Indians, and whites included to the Prime Minister’s office in Pretoria in 1956. Later that year she was among the 156 men and women of all races put on trial for treason and was among those still on trial four years later. All were found not guilty. In 1960, she was among the hundreds detained for five months in the wake of the Sharpeville Massacre.
From 1961 until 1972 she was restricted by increasingly harsh banning orders and for 71 days was imprisoned in solitary confinement. Then, during 2 years of comparative freedom, she addressed meetings until she was again silenced by bans. Her significance, as an outstanding leader whose singular energy and devotion had inspired people of all ages, was confirmed by the thousands who attended her funeral in Soweto, on March 22, 1980.
MARY BENSON
