15th April 1915 to 8th September 2006
Hilda Bernstein was born in London, one of three daughters of Simeon and Dora Schwarz. Her father was a Bolshevik, who left the family for good when Hilda was 10 to return to the Soviet Union. Hilda left school to work, before emigrating to South Africa in 1933 aged 18.
She soon became caught up in the intense political turmoil caused by the rise of fascism in Europe, and joined the youth branch of the Labour Party. By 1940, becoming increasingly aware of apartheid, she left for the Communist Party, the only organisation with no racial segregation. She served on both the district committee and national executive, and in 1943 her effective public speaking got her elected for 3 years to Johannesburg city council by an all-white electorate. As the only communist to achieve this, she was able to use her position to publicise the injustices of apartheid.
She met Lionel (Rusty) Bernstein through shared political involvement, and they were married in 1941.
During the 1950s she started to organise with women. In 1956 she was one of the founders of the first multi-racial women’s organisation, the Federation of South African Women, which was to be a stepping stone for some of its members to later become outstanding leaders of the ANC. She played a key role in organising the historic Women’s March to Pretoria in 1956.
She also helped to found the South African Peace Council and was its national secretary until being banned.
As with so many others, Hilda met with a succession of government attempts to stop her political activity, starting in 1946 with a conviction for assisting an illegal strike of black mineworkers. In 1953 she was banned from 26 organisations and from attending any meetings; in 1958 her renewed banning orders included a ban on writing or publishing (she was a regular writer for periodicals in South Africa, other African countries, and Europe). In 1960 she was detained during the State of Emergency following the Sharpeville shootings. She continued political work clandestinely.
In 1963 her husband Rusty was arrested at Rivonia and charged together with Nelson Mandela and others. He was acquitted, rearrested, recharged, then released on bail. Soon after his release, Hilda fled from home as the police came to arrest her. She and Rusty crossed the frontier on foot to Botswana, ultimately arriving in London. The story of the Rivonia arrests, trial and their escape was dramatically told in her book “The World That was Ours”.
In exile, Hilda continued to be active in the ANC, including the Women's section, and also the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the British peace movement. Her public speaking and writing skills were used extensively for all these causes throughout Europe, the USA and Canada.
Although now in middle age, and with four children to see to, Hilda also forged a new life as an artist and writer (see below for publications).
She had many one-person shows of her etchings, drawings and paintings in London and elsewhere, and exhibited extensively in group shows of print-makers and women artists in the UK, USA, Europe and African countries.
Her work has been hung several times in the Royal Academy and is in both public and private collections throughout the world. It has also been used on book jackets and illustrations, on posters as greetings cards for the Anti-Apartheid Movement.
Both Hilda and Rusty felt they were part of the luckiest generation, to have lived to see the end of apartheid and victory for the ANC, a cause they had both dedicated their lives to. They both came back to South Africa to take part in the election of a new government in 1994.
In 2004, aged 89, Hilda was very proud to receive the Luthuli Silver Award for "contribution to the attainment of a free and democratic society" in South Africa.
At the time of her death at 91 she was living in Cape Town.
Hilda brought unbounded energy, creativity, intellect and tenacity to whatever she undertook. More specially, she combined these with a fierce integrity and commitment to humanity.
Along with her legacy as an artist, writer and political activist, she leaves four children (Toni, Patrick, Frances and Keith), seven grand-children and four great-grand-children.
PUBLICATIONS include:
Books
The World that Was Ours – see above – translated into German, Hungarian, Japanese and Russian, republished in 1989
Death is Part of the Process – a novel about the beginning of the sabotage movement in SA, won a £5,000 award, was made into a BBC TV film, translated into French, German, Danish, Swedish and Russian
The Rift – a record of the exile experience of South Africans, from interviews collected in Western and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Africa, America and Canada.
Pamphlets for the International Defence and Aid Fund:
The Terrorism of Torture – analysis of political trials and the use of torture in South Africa
For Their Triumphs and Their Tears – women under apartheid, published in English, French, Swedish, Dutch and Italian
Steve Biko: No. 46 – an account of his life and death by torture
More information from Pat Bernstein: +27 828 58 10 39 or Toni Strasburg +27 802 48 47 59