Ellen Kuzwayo
Ellen Kuzwayo (1914 – 2006) was a women’s rights activist and writer. In 1937 she graduated from a teacher’s training course at Lovedale College when, she writes ,“I received an invitation from Inanda Seminary near Durban to teach there, which I accepted.” She was president of the African National Congress Youth League in the 1960s, and in 1994 was elected to the first post-apartheid South African Parliament. Her autobiography Call Me Woman (1985) won the CNA Book Prize.
Extract from Call Me Woman
Just outside Inanda Seminary stood a small village of the black community. The majority of the inhabitants were congregants of the American Board Mission Church which had built the girls’ school. The Rev. Gumede, the pastor of the local church, lived with his family in the villages. If my memory serves me well, he had one son and about five or six daughters.
Some of his daughters were with me at Adams College as my class or school-mates. They were very outgoing girls in their outlook, at least those I was at school with. Among these I remember Mattie, Tosh and Geja. They were by all standards as good as any from the cities and towns of South Africa.
Bibliography
1985. Call Me Woman. Johannesburg: Picador Africa.
Just outside Inanda Seminary stood a small village of the black community. The majority of the inhabitants were congregants of the American Board Mission Church which had built the girls’ school. The Rev. Gumede, the pastor of the local church, lived with his family in the villages. If my memory serves me well, he had one son and about five or six daughters.
Some of his daughters were with me at Adams College as my class or school-mates. They were very outgoing girls in their outlook, at least those I was at school with. Among these I remember Mattie, Tosh and Geja. They were by all standards as good as any from the cities and towns of South Africa.
Bibliography
1985. Call Me Woman. Johannesburg: Picador Africa.