Why South African Frene Ginwala will be remembered in Tanzania

Arusha. Memories may have faded but Dr Frene Ginwala, who breathed her last on Thursday, will still be remembered in Tanzania.

She was one of the anti-apartheid activists who set camp in Tanzania in the early 1960s alongside other liberation struggle leaders.

With the coming of majority rule in 1994, she went back home, where she was elected speaker of South Africa’s first democratically elected parliament.

A South African of Indian descent, Dr Ginwala studied law in Britain in the late 1950s, earning her the title of a ‘constitution expert.’

She went back home (South Africa) but her life was to change dramatically, ostensibly due to racial segregation against the majority.

It was precisely the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 that forced her to flee South Africa to Mozambique and later Tanzania to wage the anti-apartheid struggle.

The massacre saw 69 demonstrators killed by the police for protesting against the ‘pass’ laws; a pillar of white minority rule.

In Mozambique, then under the Portuguese colonial rulers, she assisted members of the African National Congress (ANC) to escape as the party had been banned. In the 1970s, she travelled around the globe to muster support for the anti-apartheid movement and draw attention to the abusers.

That was probably during the time when she set camp in Tanzania and other ‘frontline’ states in the fight against racial segregation like Zambia.

She was instrumental in the establishment of an ANC exile office in Dar es Salaam alongside Oliver Tambo, then deputy ANC president.

In the 1970s, she had become a prominent figure in the international media, and that was when she made an impact in Tanzania.

At the request of the founder of the nation, Mwalimu Nyerere, she took the post of managing editor of the nationalised Standard and Sunday News.

The Standard (the precursor of Daily News) was taken over by the state from the Lonrho Group in 1970. It had been on the market since the 1930s. Ms Ginwala ran the paper until August 1971, when she handed it to Sammy Mdee. The latter was succeeded by Benjamin Mkapa in 1972, when it changed its name to Daily News.

In the media, she rubbed shoulders with fellow exiled journalists from South Africa, who practised in Tanzania then, among them Karim Essack and Gora Ibrahim.

Leaving the newsroom business was a blessing to her in that it gave her more room to traverse the world preaching the horrors of apartheid and the fight against it.

She blended her journalism and legal experience to mount a vigorous fight against apartheid, often lecturing at various fora outside South Africa against the vice.

In the first democratic South African elections in 1994, which propelled Nelson Mandela into power, she was elected to the Parliament of South Africa

Within the House, Dr Ginwala was elected Speaker of the National Assembly of South Africa, a position she held between 1994 and 2004. After retirement as speaker, she continued serving in a number of international organisations including UN subsidiaries.

At different times, she was a Trustee of the Nelson Mandela Foundation and Chancellor of the University of KwaZulu Natal.

It was not surprising that she had harsh words for the former South African President Jacob Zuma, who was forced out of office years ago. Ms Ginwala died on January 12, the day ANC marked its 111th anniversary since it was founded in 1912, from complications of a stroke.

“We have lost another giant among a special generation of leaders to whom we owe our freedom”, the South African presidency said in a statement.