Another activist who played an outstanding role in Durban in the Congress of the People campaign was Dorothy Nyembe, “MaNyembe”, as she is known. She was born in northern Natal in 1932. In her childhood, her family were small-scale peasants forced to become labour tenants on a white farm. MaNyembe has done 18 long years in prison. Her second term, a 15 year stretch, she has only just completed.

Q: MaNyembe, what brought you into the struggle?

MaNyembe: I came to Durban. I was 17 years old. I was working in a surgery by the beach, Marine Parade. I was cleaning and taking the names of those who were sick, to write on the cards. At that time I heard there was a meeting at the place which was called Red Square.

Q: Where is Red Square today?

MaNyembe: Today it is a big building, a parking garage. So I went there. Then I listen. What these people talking about? They are telling about our oppression, and those words spoke also about my own life.

In my childhood my father was a small farmer at a Lutheran missionary station. After that we had to move to the white farms. My father was an attendant, a worker for this white farmer. One day that farmer, he came to my father. He said my father must come cut off all his oxen. He must sell our cattles. He must sell to reduce his stock. I remember my father. He was looking like he was sick. The whole month. He couldn't talk. Just looking. Looking. And after that the stock was reduced.

I was wondering inside, what man is this my father is afraid of? Why he couldn't take a sjambok and hit that man who comes here to say he must reduce his stock? Everybody, they lower their heads when this farmer passed. But I looked at that farmer. He's got two feet, no? Two hands only. Why they are afraid of him? Now I’m growing this hatred against these people. So that first political meeting I attended in Red Square reminded me of my own life. Soon after that I became a volunteer in the Defiance Campaign.