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Exile and Homecoming: The Group of Twenty Nurses and the Pan African Struggle for Liberation

Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, South African Democracy Education Trust, Pretoria, South Africa

Existing studies about man and women who went into exile in pursuit of the struggle for liberation are apt to ignore the human side of their stories, particularly those of women. Almost all without exception, the decision to leave their native land required personal sacrifice to a greater or lesser degree of all the exiles. Just before uMkhonto we Sizwe was launched by the African National Congress in December 1961, 21 nurses left South Africa because of the 1957 Nurses Act, which provided for separate training of nurses according to racial group. One of the nurses, because of health complications, did not proceed to Tanganyika but returned to South Africa.
When Tanganyika (Tanzania) became independent on 9 December 1961, it decided to show solidarity with the South African liberation struggle by asking the African National Congress to send a contingent of qualified African nurses to replace white British and South African expatriate nurses who had opted to resigned rather than work for an African government. These African nurses included Kholeka and Edith Thunyiswa, Edna Miya, and Mary Jane Socenywa amongst others. The oral testimonies of these four nurses would be used as a case study. Albertinah Sisulu, a qualified nurse working in Soweto, Johnny Makhathini in Natal and Zululand and Govan Mbeki in the Eastern Cape, recruited the nurses. The nurses journey into exile underscore the important role played by African women during the long years of resistance and struggle for liberation.
Also, their journey illustrated the underground network's capability to operate throughout South Africa, the commitment of these medical professionals to a free Africa and the loopholes in the state security system at the time. While essentially an amateur effort, marked by improvisation, the process of moving the nurses first to Botswana and then to Tanganyika was a total success.1 In order to highlight the limits of liberation and the nurses experiences related to homecoming, the paper will discuss some of the nurses’ perceptions when they returned back to South Africa after April 1994.

1. See S.M. Ndlovu, ‘‘The ANC in Exile:1960-1970’ in the South African Democracy Education Trust, The Road to Democracy in South Africa: Volume 1, 1960-1970, Zebra Press, Cape Town, 2004.