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Despite her key role in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, details about Lilian Ngoyi‘s life remain sparse. The short paragraphs on her legacy repeat a few well-worn phrases. South Africa’s “mother of the black resistance”, a widow and rumoured lover of Nelson Mandela, and the first woman member of the national executive committee – the core leadership of the African National Congress (ANC), the resistance movement that would later become the government of a democratic South Africa. She was also, of course, one of the leaders of the country’s famous Women’s March.

On 9 August 1956, now commemorated as Women’s Day in South Africa, Ngoyi and other woman leaders led an estimated 20,000 women to the Union Buildings in Pretoria, the seat of power of the white minority government. They were protesting extending the much-hated pass laws to women. These laws required black citizens to carry pass documents to better control their movement.

Beyond this, Ma-Ngoyi, as she was affectionately known, remains an often-mentioned but somewhat two-dimensional figure in history.

Perhaps because she was not the wife of a high-profile ANC leader and lived much of her life as a banned person, dying in penury, there is no Lilian Ngoyi Foundation and no substantive biography. Yet the pioneering role she played, and the sacrifices she made, extended well beyond the Women’s March.

Upbringing

Born Lilian Masediba Matabane in 1911, Ngoyi had a different life from other anti-apartheid struggle stalwarts. Not only was she an independent woman, but she was born into urban poverty. She did not hail from a royal or rural household like the Mandelas, Sisulus and other elite members of the ANC, whose role in the fight against apartheid is well documented.

Ngoyi was the granddaughter of a trailblazing Methodist minister, a historical figure in his own right. But his extraordinary contribution to the missionaries’ endeavours in southern Africa did not translate into any significant upward mobility for the family.

Her mother, though literate, worked as a washerwoman and domestic worker and her father was a miner and labourer, who died of mining-related lung disease. As the only girl in a family of four, she was the last in line when it came to education. Still, Ngoyi’s family rallied to keep her in Kilnerton, a leading black Methodist school, even though she was only able to complete her junior schooling. She moved to Johannesburg to take up a short-lived position as…