Joseph, Helen (1905-1992)

British-born South African teacher and anti-racist campaigner. A fearless fighter for racial tolerance and equality, she became a close friend of leading figures in the African National Congress (ANC), including Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. For her work with the ANC, she was awarded its highest honour, Isithwalandwe-Seaparankoe.

Born Helen Fennell in Sussex, she left in the 1920s to teach in India. She settled in South Africa in the early 1930s, returning to the UK during World War II to serve in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). At the end of hostilities she returned to South Africa, mixing with the affluent white and Indian communities but quietly retaining her belief in the equality of humanity, irrespective of race or colour. Living in Durban, she met and married a dentist, Billy Joseph, but the marriage was short-lived. She then moved to Johannesburg and became progressively active in trade-union affairs and politics. Her abhorrence of apartheid and her campaigning for its removal earned her the respect of black African leaders and the contempt of the white minority government as she threw herself into the movement against apartheid and, especially, the promotion of the rights of black women. She was the first South African woman to be placed under house arrest by the government. Despite being diagnosed as having cancer in 1971, and eventually confined to a wheelchair, she continued her fight against oppression.