STORIES THAT WILL MOTIVATE YOU

This African Queen was known as Albertina Sisulu. She was born on  the 21st of October, 1918   and she was laid to rest  on the 2nd of June, 2011 in her home in Linden, Johannesburg, South Africa. She was at the ripe age of 92.                                                                                                                                                                                                        She was a political activist and nurse and one of the most important leaders of anti-Apartheid resistance in South Africa. She is often referred to as the `Mother of the Nation’. She acted on her ideal of human rights throughout her life, assisted by her husband and fellow activist, the late Walter Sisulu (1912-2003).
It was with Walter that she attended the first conference of the ANC Youth League where Albertina Sisulu was the only women present. In 1948 she joined the ANC Women’s League and in the 1950s she began to assume a leadership role – both in the ANC and in the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW). She was one of the organizers of the historic anti-pass Women’s March in 1956 and opposed inferior `Bantu’ education. Her home in Orlando West in Soweto was used as a classroom for alternative education until a law was passed against it.

Both Albertina and her husband were jailed several times for their political activities and she was constantly harassed by the Security Police.

Sources: http://www.sahistory.org.za/south-african-and-world-leaders                                                                           http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertina_Sisulu

Another great women who fought apartheid in South Africa and deserves to be an African Queen is Lillian Masediba Ngoyi. She was born on the 25th of September, 1911 and was laid to rest on the 13th of March, 1980 when she was just 68 years old.  She was a South African anti-apartheid activist. She was the first woman elected to the executive committee of the African National Congress, and helped launch the Federation of South African Women.

Lilian Ngoyi was also a transnational figure who recognized the potential influence that international support could have on the struggle against apartheid and the emancipation of black women. With this in mind she embarked on an audacious (and highly illegal) journey to Lausanne, Switzerland in 1955 to participate in the World Congress of Mothers held by the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF). Accompanied by her fellow activist Dora Tamana, and as an official delegate of FEDSAW, she embarked on a journey that would see an attempt to stow away on a boat leaving Cape Town under “white names”, defy (with the help of a sympathetic pilot) segregated seating on a plane bound for London and gain entry to Britain under the pretext of completing her course in bible studies. With Tamana, she would visit England, Germany, Switzerland, Romania, China and Russia, meeting women leaders often engaged in left wing politics, before arriving back in South Africa a wanted woman
Ngoyi was not an intellectual, rather she was known as a strong orator and a fiery inspiration to many of her colleagues in the ANC. She was arrested in 1956, spent 71 days in solitary confinement, and was for a period of 11 years placed under severe bans and restrictions that often confined to her home in Orlando, Soweto. A community health center in Soweto is named in her honor.
On 16 November 2004, the South African Ministry of the Environment launched the first vessel in a class of environmental patrol vessel named the Lillian Ngoyi in her honor.
On 9 August 2006, the 50th anniversary of the march on Pretoria, Strijdom Square from which the women marched, was renamed Lilian Ngoyi Square.  The 9th of August is commemorated in South Africa as Women’s Day.
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Ngoyi