On April 8, 1905, anti-apartheid activist Helen Joseph was born in Sussex, England. After moving to South Africa in the early 1930s, Joseph became one of the fiercest white anti-apartheid activists in her adopted homeland. A longtime confidante and ally to Nelson and Winnie Mandela, Joseph’s bravery and sacrifice were integral to ending apartheid in South Africa in 1991. Winnie, who just passed away, said of Joseph, “She taught us that we all belong to the family of man, and that we are all one beneath the color of our skin. She educated us, politically.”
Born as Helen Beatrice May Fennell, Joseph seemed to be on the path to a typical British middle-class life. However, after graduating from the University of London in 1927, she left England to teach in India for three years. In 1931, Joseph moved to South Africa, where she met and married a dentist, Billie Joseph. During World War II, she went back to England to join the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. After the war, she returned to South Africa and became a social worker in Cape Town and Johannesburg. This occupation, and serving on the Industrial Council of the Garment Workers’ Union, exposed her to the brutal oppression of non-whites in South Africa.
Photo: Gallo Images/Avusa/Rand Daily Mail
Following her divorce in 1948, she became a founder of the Congress of Democrats, the white wing of the African National Congress. Then, in 1955, she was one of the leaders who read out the clauses of the Congress’s Freedom Charter. This historic document was the blueprint for an apartheid-free South Africa. In 1956, she helped spearhead the march of 20,000 women on the Union Buildings in the capital city of Pretoria to protest against the extension of pass laws to black women. The pass laws restricted the movement of blacks around the country. Joseph was subsequently arrested and charged with treason.
After an exhausting trial that went on for five years, she was acquitted in 1961. However, in 1962, she became the first person in South Africa to be put under house arrest under the Sabotage Act. Additionally, for 26 years, she was a “listed person,” meaning she could not be quoted in South African newspapers. Due to the restrictions, Joseph had to give up her job as the executive director of the Garment Workers Union. In 1986, the South African government refused to give her a passport she needed to travel to Houston, TX to receive a civil rights award. Despite all these restrictions on her freedom, it never stopped Joseph from speaking out against injustice. She once told the Los Angeles Times, “Being restricted just makes you work harder.”
Joseph died on Christmas Day in 1992. One year before she died, the South African government began to repeal the laws that had been the basis for apartheid. Of her death, Nelson Mandela said, “Death has robbed the people of South Africa of one of their finest daughters, a committed and fearless freedom fighter.”