Obituary in Sechaba, November 1985
With the death of Comrade Florence Mophosho in Lusaka, on Women's Day, August 9, 1985, the ANC lost one of its most stout-hearted and able fighters. Comrade Florence was born in Alexandra Township, Johannesburg, the first of three children, in 1921. Her father was ill, and her mother - who had trained as a teacher - worked as a domestic worker. Because of the need to help her mother bring up the younger children, Florence left school at Standard Six and went to work, first as a domestic worker and later in a factory.
"Domestic work" in South Africa is akin to imprisonment: long working hours, no free time (except Sunday afternoon), no access to anybody (even your children are not supposed to be with you), nobody knows how you live, the "madam" knows you as "Jane" or "Jemima."
But life is not static. It changes. Small incidents or historical events can have such an impact that communities or individuals change. The Defiance Campaign in 1952 was such an event. Inspired by the Defiance Campaign, she joined the ANC. She was inspired first by the leaders of Alexandra Township, and this included Alfred Nzo and T.T. Nkobi. As she became more involved in the ANC she met other leaders - Moses Kotane, Moretsele, J.B. Marks, O.R. Tambo, Nelson Mandela and others.
She helped to organise the Congress of the People, which adopted the
Freedom Charter. She took part in a house-to-house campaign in Alexandra,
talking to people and listening to them. She contributed in eliciting the
demands of the people, which were later incorporated in the Freedom Charter.
Later, she became a full-time organiser for the ANC, and took part in many
of the campaigns of that time. they are so many we cannot list them all.
She was active in the women's movement. She organised in Alexandra for
the Transvaal demonstrations against passes for African women, and was
involved in the mobilisation for the great nation-wide anti-pass women's
demonstration on August 9, 1956. She organised domestic workers, and later
she organised in the rural areas, including Lichtenburg.
In 1957, she was a member of the Alexandra Bus Boycott Committee. The repercussions of this boycott were felt far beyond the boundaries of the Transvaal province. This was before the 1960 State of Emergency, and before the ANC was banned. During the State of Emergency in 1960, Florence Mophosho went underground and continued to work as an organiser for the ANC. In the course of her work as an ANC stalwart - or as a hard-liner, as Comrade Nkobi, during the funeral orations, described her - she was arrested a number of times. In 1964, she was banned.
She was instructed by the ANC to leave South Africa, and she went to Lusaka and later to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It was at this time that the ANC and its Women's Section decided to send her to Berlin, German Democratic Republic, to represent the Women's Section at the Women's International Democratic Federation, and she remained at that post for four and a half years.
She met many women from all over the world. She compared their lives with those of her black sisters right back home. She developed to be an internationalist - and of course she travelled to many countries on behalf of the Women's International Democratic Federation. She spoke at numerous public meetings in the German Democratic Republic, held radio and TV interviews, and helped to strengthen the relations between the GDR - especially the women's organisation - and the ANC.
At the time when Florence was in the GDR there were many problems - the Vietnam War, the students' uprisings in Western Europe and America and the developments in Latin America, not to speak about our military operations in Wankie and other areas in Zimbabwe, and the emergence of Black Consciousness in South Africa.
She helped to give guidance to the ANC students in the GDR, and by so doing exercised her leadership role. She had developed these qualities in South Africa, when she was a member of the Executive of the Federation of South African Women.
She was delegate to the famous Morogoro Conference [of ANC] in 1969, where she discussed problems of our revolution and our strategy with both leaders and rank and file of the ANC. At the conference she met people she knew already, and those she did not know. The angry mood at the conference reinforced her conviction that "we must be on a war path" - as she used to say. It was partly because of her experiences at the conference that she came to the conclusion that her role was in Africa. She returned in the early seventies.
On her return she headed the Women's Section and, in appreciation of her commitment, sacrifice and fiery spirit, she was elected in 1975 to the National Executive Committee of the ANC. As a member of the NEC she did her best to upgrade the women cadres in our movement, and helped to put the Women's Section on a higher pedestal.
She combined in an excellent way the struggle for women's rights with the national liberation struggle, without losing the immediate perspective that the main content of our struggle at the present moment is the national liberation of the Africans and all blacks, and the social emancipation of all South Africans - black and white - and all other problems fall into place in that context. Not that women's liberation has to wait for that; the struggle for women's liberation, today and now, is part of the overall struggle. There is no contradiction in this. The two reinforce each other, and are part and parcel of our anti-imperialist drive.
These were the ideas of Florence Mophosho, which she learned from the ANC, while at the same time developing herself in her practical experience in the course of the mobilisation of domestic workers, and in her international work at the Women's International Democratic Federation.
In recognition of her contribution to our struggle, the ANC Conference in June 1985 elected her to the National Executive Committee of the ANC. Sadly, the illness she was suffering from at the time of the conference was one from which she did not recover. She died on August 9th - an important date in her life, and in that of our struggle.
At the funeral hundreds of mourners converged and numerous messages of condolence from all over the world were read. The family came from home. And the ANC leaders - President O.R. Tambo, T.T. Nkobi, S. Dlamini, D. Tloome, Chris Hani, Ray Simons - paid tribute to this Iqhawe lama Qhawe - the hero of heroes.
The ANC dips its flag for this fallen heroine. We shall take up the fallen spear and continue where she has left off.