May 15: A South African Heroine

Anti-apartheid writer, artist and activist Hilda Bernstein (Schwarz) was born in London on this date in 1915. She emigrated to South Africa at the age of 18 after her father, a Soviet diplomat, was recalled to the USSR. She and her husband Lionel “Rusty” Bernstein were harassed, banned, arrested and ultimately forced to flee South Africa to Botswana with their four children in 1963, following years of intense anti-racist activism and advocacy for women’s rights. They spent three decades supporting the African National Congress in Great Britain, the U.S. and Canada before returning to participate in the 1994 election that brought Nelson Mandela to the presidency. Her books included The World that was Ours; The Terrorism of Torture; For Their Triumphs and for Their Tears; Steve Biko; and Death is Part of the Process, and her paintings, etchings and drawings were exhibited widely and used to illustrate anti-apartheid literature. Bernstein died in Capetown in 2006 at the age of 91, a veteran heroine of one of the most remarkable political transformations of the 20th century.

“The meaning of life is not a fact to be discovered, but a choice that you make about the way you live.” —Hilda Bernstein