Veronica Sobukwe

Zondeni Veronica Sobukwe (1927 to 2018) was a South African nurse and anti-apartheid figure, known as the Mother of Azania. Born in Hlobane in what is now KwaZulu-Natal, she trained as a nurse at Victoria Hospital in Lovedale, the first hospital in South Africa to train black nurses. She became one of the leaders of a labour dispute and strike by the trainee nurses and was expelled from Lovedale College in 1949, after which the Fort Hare ANC Youth League sent her to Johannesburg to carry a letter about the nurses to Walter Sisulu. She married Robert Sobukwe, founder of the Pan Africanist Congress, in 1954 and later worked at the Jabavu Clinic in Soweto. While he was imprisoned she petitioned the government for his release so that he could receive medical treatment, and in 1997 she testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission about the cause of his death. She received the Order of Luthuli in 2018.