Mothers of Soweto: Vesta Smith (left) with fellow activist and community worker Ellen Kuzwayo. Images courtesy the Smith family While many men are remembered as heroes of political struggles, women seldom get enough attention. Vesta Smith is a good example. She fought for South Africa’s liberation from white minority rule, called apartheid.
Historian Maria Suriano has written a biography of this activist. With the 50th anniversary of the momentous 1976 Soweto youth uprising in mind, we asked her to tell us about the woman affectionately known as Ma Vesta.
Vesta Smith was a community activist who dedicated her life to the anti-apartheid struggle, social justice, non-racialism and gender equality.
She participated in key events in South Africa’s history, attending the Congress of the People in 1955, where the Freedom Charter was adopted, and the historic 1956 Women’s March. Two decades later, during the Soweto uprising, Ma Vesta became a trusted mentor to younger militants.
Her political work happened largely outside formal politics. It was grounded in building non-racial and inter-generational networks of care and solidarity. She hid students in her home while they were on the run from the security police and supported the families of political prisoners. She paid the price with four months in prison.
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Ma Vesta’s story contributes to efforts to uncover the radical ideas, practices and key figures behind the students’ protests. These helped pave the way for South Africa’s democratic transition and continue to echo in today’s student struggles for decolonisation.
Ma Vesta’s passionate, community-based activism matters because it reveals the importance of “everyday politics” – the small acts of resistance, often outside official politics, that foster personal and collective emancipation.
This invites us to reconsider the dominant narrative of the liberation struggle, long centred on prominent male leaders and party strategies.
Born in Johannesburg in 1922, she was forcibly relocated in 1941, along with her mother and sisters, to Noordgesig. She lived there until her passing in 2013. Segregation laws governing residential areas reserved this small section of Soweto for poor townspeople classified as “coloured”.
She was born into a stable family. Her father, Stephen Mpama, moved in the circles of Johannesburg’s Black intelligentsia. Her early life was marked by hardships after his premature death in 1927. Inner-city cosmopolitanism shaped her non-racialism, and daily racial discrimination informed her refusal to be subservient to white people.
From the late 1960s to the mid-1990s she worked consecutively for the South African Council of Churches, the South African Committee for Higher Education and the Legal Resources Centre. Although formally an administrator, at these progressive organisations Ma Vesta relentlessly pursued social justice by mobilising her broad political networks.
In the 1980s she connected legal advocacy to Black townships through advice centres, while participating in key anti-apartheid campaigns. After 1994 and the first democratic elections, she advocated for women’s empowerment and poverty alleviation in the townships.
Drawing on personal conversations with those who knew Ma Vesta and on archival sources, private papers and press coverage, the book is structured around four key themes.
First, her activism was grounded in her faith – fighting injustice was a spiritual duty. Her work within the Young Women’s Christian Association from the 1960s onwards pioneered the idea that Christianity and political activism should be intertwined.
Second, Ma Vesta’s politics were non-sectarian. Although aligned with the African National Congress (ANC) resistance movement, she was a “bridge-builder”. She connected the struggles of the 1950s to those of the 1970s and 1980s as well as activists across generations, townships and ideologies.
Third, non-racialism was central to her political work. The formal and informal, secular and religious connections she forged over time reflected this belief. In the 1970s, her rejection of apartheid categories matched the Black Consciousness Movement. The book traces her friendships and shifting relations with white liberals, alongside her understanding of her Blackness.
Fourth, looking beyond prominent leaders reveals the pivotal yet under-recognised contributions of Black women who worked on the ground. What dominant historical accounts leave out about everyday politics deserves closer examination.
During the 1976 uprising Ma Vesta emerged as one of the senior activists who provided practical help, political guidance and emotional support to student activists. This was regardless of their political affiliation.
Many young militants who encountered her in 1976 and afterwards describe her as a formative influence. She helped shape their political thinking and sustained them through difficult times.
