Annie Silinga is a hidden stalwart of South Africa’s struggle for freedom from the yoke of apartheid oppression.
To those who knew her, she was simply “Mama Silinga”, a brave anti-pass laws and anti-apartheid political activist.
Mama Silinga is remembered as the president of the Cape Town African National Congress Women’s League.
She also had a prominent role during the 1956 Anti-Pass Women’s March to the Union Buildings in Pretoria.
Mama Silinga was the only African woman who faced the 1956 treason trial along with 155 other activists, including Nelson Mandela.
Mama Silinga was born in 1910 at Nqqamakwe, Butterworth district, Transkei (now the Eastern Cape).
Historical records show she only completed a few years of primary school.
She grew up in Transkei during a time of prosperity, when the land allowed farming and cattle could graze freely.
However, as legend has it, overpopulation led to soil erosion and overgrazing, causing poverty.
By 1937, conditions had deteriorated to the point where Mama Silinga was desperate to move.
That year, aged 27, Mama Silinga moved to Cape Town, where her husband Matthew had just gained employment, hoping for better medical facilities.
Her “babies,” she said, “had been dying in the Transkei.”
In Cape Town, for the first time, Mama Silinga, her husband, and their five children could live together as a family.
At his previous job in the mines of Johannesburg, accommodation was not provided for the families of the mineworkers and regulations forbade women from staying there for extended periods.
After World War II, Mama Silinga and her husband moved to Langa township.
Although Mama Silinga was arrested numerous times, she and her family remained in Langa, where she died in 1984.
After moving to Langa, after the end of World War II in 1945, Mama Silinga began attending meetings at which measures to improve conditions for the community were discussed.
In 1948, aged 38, she joined the Langa Vigilance Association (LVA).
The LVA sought to fight for the improvement of living conditions in Langa and protect the residents from apartheid laws.
In 1952, Mama Silinga joined the African National Congress (ANC).
Soon after joining the ANC, she, along with the other members, organised for over six months a campaign of civil disobedience against the governing National Party Government.
Mama Silinga took part in the anti-pass laws in the movement’s 1952 Defiance Campaign, where she was arrested and served a brief jail term for civil disobedience.
Mama Silinga served the jail sentence with her six-month-old baby.
In 1953, Mama Silinga, then a member of the ANC Women’s League (ANCWL), was part of the core group that organised the first meeting of the Federation of South African Women (FSAW), to harness the outrage of women against the pass law issue.
The group was led by Ray Alexander, a communist and trade unionist, and included Gladys Smith of the Cape Housewives’ League, Katie White of the Women’s Food Committee, and Dora Tamanda of the ANCWL and the Communist Party of South Africa.
At the first conference, held in Johannesburg in April 1954, Mama Silinga was elected as part of the FEDSAW National Executive Committee.
It was also at this meeting that the Women’s Charter was written by women from different races.
In 1954, during a FEDSAW meeting at the Cape Town Parade, Mama Silinga declared: “I will never carry a pass; I will only carry one similar to Mrs (Susan) Strijdom’s.
“She is a woman, and I am too.
“There is no difference.”
Susan Strijdom was the second wife of apartheid and Afrikaner nationalism proponent, Johannes Gerhardus Strijdom, the fifth prime minister of South Africa from 1954 until he died in 1958.
After breaking the pass law and a few unsuccessful appeals, Mama Silinga was banished, under police escort, to Transkei in 1956.
However, she returned illegally to be with her children and husband in Langa.
In 1957, Mama Silinga successfully appealed her case on the grounds that more than 15 years’ residence in Cape Town entitled her to remain there.
On 9 August 1956, Silinga led 20 000 women organised by FEDSAW who marched to the prime minister’s office in Pretoria to protest the issuing of passes.
Mama Silinga was arrested alongside other FEDSAW leaders Lilian Ngoyi and Helen Joseph, as well as ANC leaders Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela.
The apartheid government charged Mama Silinga, as well as 156 of the other leaders and activists, with high treason.
Among those arrested, Mama Silinga was the only African Woman from the Western Cape to be arrested.
The initial phase of the Treason Trial lasted until December 1957, when the state dropped charges against 61 of the defendants.
Mama Silinga was one of those released.
In 1958, Silinga was elected as the president of the Cape Town ANCWL.
Two years later, in 1960, anti-pass law riots broke out in Langa, Sharpeville, and other areas in South Africa.
The apartheid government declared a state of emergency, and Mama Silinga was one of the people arrested.
During the same year, the ANC was banned as a political organisation.
Upon her return from prison, she was involved in the formation of the Women’s Front and was made a patron of the United Democratic Front in 1983.
Mama Silinga lived in Langa for the rest of her life, where she died in 1984, without having carried a pass.
Although she was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave, artist Sue Williamson, at the request of Mama Silinga’s family, created a piece to place at her grave in Langa cemetery.
It bears Silinga’s battle cry: “I will never carry a pass!”
Mama Silinga is remembered as one of the leaders in the anti-pass campaign during apartheid in South Africa.
Besides her political work, Mama Silinga is remembered for her selfless character, having started a creche along with Winnie Seqwana in Langa.
Artist Tina Ramos Ekongo included a portrait of Mama Silinga in her collection celebrating the legacy of anti-apartheid leaders.
Recalling Mama Silinga’s resoluteness, Ekongo says: “She was one of the leaders in the anti-pass campaign in apartheid South Africa who fought for better living conditions for her family and her country.
“Her kindness and caring nature stood out as important characteristics, often overlooked as political qualities.
“That she achieved this with only a few years of primary education is all the more remarkable.”
Mama Silinga’s brave fight against apartheid, an oppressive system of governance that was declared a crime against humanity by the UN in 1966, must never be allowed to be forgotten.
Sadly, she did not live to see democracy materialise.
Annie Silinga Street in Phillipi, Cape Town, is so named in honour of Mama Silinga.
*The writer of this article is media veteran Thandisizwe Mgudlwa, who has more than 25 years of experience as a reporter, editor, blogger, entrepreneur, and consultant.
