Call me woman

The resonance of Call Me Woman is as great in 2018 as when first published in 1985. Like millions of black South Africans made strangers in the land of their birth. Ellen Kuzwayo lost a great deal in her lifetime: the farm in the Orange Free State which had belonged to her family for nearly a hundred years; her hopes for a full and peaceful life for her children; even her freedom, when, at the age of 63, she found herself detained under the so-called Terrorism Act for an offence never specified. But she never lost her courage. This remarkable autobiography refuses to lose focus only on the author, for it draws on the unrecorded history of a whole people. In telling her own personal and political story over 70 years. Ellen Kuzwayo speaks for, and with, the women among whom she worked and lived. Their courage and dignity remain a source of wonder.

Ellen Kuzwayo grew up in the country, but lived most of her life in the city. She spent time as a ‘disgruntled schoolteacher’, social worker, mother, wife, and in her sixties returned to study at the University of Witswatersrand for a higher qualification in social work. She was active in the community life of Soweto for many years and was president of the Black Consumer Union of South Africa, and of the Maggie Magaba Trust. She was chosen Woman of the Year in 1979 by the Johannesburg newspaper, The Star, and was nominated again in 1984. Ellen was the first black writer to be awarded the CNA literary prize for Call Me Woman. In 1996 she published a collection, Sit Down and Listen: Stories from South Africa. After 1994 Ellen was elected as a Member of Parliament and after her retirement was still considered an institution within the community. South Africa lost a remarkable, selfless individual when Ellen passed away on 19 April 2006.

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