University of Chichester associate lecturer gains national recognition for locally born anti-apartheid activist.

Associate Lecturer David Rang, a post graduate researcher in gender history at the University of Chichester, has successfully lobbied the prestigious Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) to include an entry for Midhurst born anti-apartheid activist Helen Joseph.

Once the ODNB, a national record of people who have shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond, had agreed to include an entry on Helen they asked David to write the article, which was published in May. David studied the life of Helen (as part of his undergraduate dissertation in 2008 and to be invited to write an entry in the ODNB is in itself a recognition of academic merit.

Helen Joseph (1905–1992) was born in Easebourne, nr Midhurst in Sussex and first travelled to South Africa to convalesce after a riding accident in her 20s. She became increasingly involved in the anti-apartheid struggle in that country, enduring repeated banning orders, house arrests, and harassment by the South African police, and was eventually recognized as ‘the mother of the struggle’. At her funeral Nelson Mandela described her as being both ‘a South African revolutionary’ and ‘a lady of the British empire’; this was, he said, ‘a contradiction in the eyes of many but to Helen her own reality.’

David said; “I think she is one of the bravest and most principled people of the 20th century. The people of South Africa know this. Women's Day commemorates a demonstration in Pretoria on August 9th 1956 at which Helen was one of four leaders; there are many places in modern South Africa named after her and she was given the highest honour of the ANC for her part in the Struggle (one of only 19 such awards). However she is hardly known in the UK and is virtually unknown in her birthplace and I want to change that.”

David will be giving an evening talk on the life of Helen Joseph on September 11th as part of Heritage Open Days in the Methodist Hall, Midhurst. For more information please contact David on 01243 536558 or email davidrang@btopenworld.com.

About the ODNB It is a collection of more than 56,600 specially written biographies, which describe the lives of people who shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond. It is the first point of reference for anyone interested in the people who left their mark on the history of the British Isles.

About Helen Joseph Joseph [née Fennell], Helen Beatrice May (1905–1992), anti-apartheid activist, was born on 8 April 1905 at Easebourne, Sussex, the younger child of Samuel Fennell, a civil servant in the customs and excise, and his wife, Mary.

Helen Joseph was instrumental in organising a protest by 20,000 mainly Black women in front of the government Union Buildings in Pretoria on 9 August 1956, an event today recognised in South Africa as a public holiday, Women’s Day. She suffered the full weight of this evil regime’s oppression during the next 25 years and was awarded the highest medal in South Africa for her part in the Struggle. Nelson Mandela read a tribute to her at her funeral in Johannesburg in 1993.