Adelaide Tambo

Adelaide Tambo (1929-2007), South African nurse and activist. Adelaide Frances Tshukudu was born near the town of Vereeniging, the daughter of a minister and a domestic servant. Her desire to fight racial oppression began at the age of ten when she saw her grandfather whipped into unconsciousness in the town square; “His brutal and humiliating treatment at the hands of the police,” she later recalled, “was the trigger and deciding factor. I would fight them till the end.” She attended high school and nursing school in Johannesburg, where she joined the debating society and joined the local branch of the African National Congress (ANC) Youth League, starting as a courier and eventually becoming its chair. In 1956 she and 20,000 other women took part in a march in Pretoria to protest against the pass laws, which required people of color to carry identification stating where they were allowed to work, live, and travel. Several months later, her husband and fellow activist Oliver Tambo was arrested on false charges. The ANC leadership decided that the couple should flee the country “to tell the world about the atrocities of apartheid.” Tambo was reluctant to leave her life and family, particularly elderly relatives for whom she was caring, but she agreed to go after the police shot 69 people during another peaceful protest. In 1960 she moved to London, where she resumed her nursing career and her activism. After an attempted break-in at her home, thought to have been carried out by the South African secret police, she sent her children to boarding school and worked up to twenty hours a day to pay their tuition. When a back injury limited her mobility, she trained as a geriatric nurse and ran a retirement home. “Ma Tambo” also pressured the British government and visiting representatives of other countries to oppose apartheid. One former colleague recalled that “With her commanding personality, sometimes almost intimidating, she had an ability to get results; she knew just about every African and Asian ambassador and was highly regarded by the diplomatic corps.”

Tambo co-founded the Afro-Asian Solidarity Movement and the Pan-African Women’s Organisation and also led London-based ANC women’s groups. When an attendee of one meeting suggested that African women should take classes to learn to express themselves properly, Tambo responded: "African women do not need a speakers' study class. They have enough experiences of oppression under apartheid that they can articulate without difficulty." She also provided aid to South African children who fled to London after the police killed hundreds more people in the 1976 Soweto Riots. When apartheid was finally being dismantled in 1990, she returned home, stating “We've come back to a country where there's been no improvement in our people's lives. The future of the country is in our hands. Let's take up the challenge.” She was elected to Parliament in the first ever democratic elections in 1994 and also served as treasurer of the ANC Women’s League. When her term ended in 1999, Tambo focused her energies on providing healthcare to the elderly and to physically challenged children. She began the Adelaide Tambo Trust for the Elderly and advised the South African president on issues that affected the physically challenged. Her numerous awards include the Order of Simon of Cyrene, the highest order given to lay people by the South African Anglican Church and the South African government’s Order of the Baobab; in addition, the Adelaide Tambo School provides education to nearly 400 physically and mentally challenged children in Soweto. Adelaide Tambo died in Johannesburg in 2007 and was buried at Tamboville Cemetery, which had previously been named in honor of her and her husband. The ANC declared that she was “a true heroine of our nation, a daughter of our soil who dedicated her life to the freedom of our people.”

©David Brodnax, Sr.