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September 13, 2006
Hilda Bernstein, 91, Author and Anti-Apartheid Activist, Dies
Correction from Keith Bernstein (9-27-06)
The blog on my mother Hilda contains two innacuracies;
Hilda Bernstein did not die of heart failure - an artery in her stomach ruptured.
Keith Bernstein did not inform anybody of her death or make any public statement; the infomration, complete with mistakes, was via AP in South Africa who didnt bother to check before they released.
September 13, 2006, NY Times
Hilda Bernstein, 91, Author and Anti-Apartheid Activist, Dies
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 12 — Hilda Bernstein, an anti-apartheid activist and author whose husband was tried for treason in South Africa alongside Nelson Mandela, died Friday at her home in Cape Town. She was 91.
The cause was heart failure, her son Keith said.
Ms. Bernstein’s husband, Rusty, and Mr. Mandela were tried along with other anti-apartheid activists in the Rivonia Trial in 1964. Mr. Mandela received a life sentence, while Mr. Bernstein was the only defendant acquitted and freed.
But police harassment made life so difficult for the Bernsteins, a white couple, that they were forced into exile, leaving their children behind. They crossed the border into Botswana on foot — a journey described in Hilda Bernstein’s book “The World That Was Ours.”
In exile, Ms. Bernstein was an active member of the African National Congress and a regular speaker for the Anti-Apartheid Movement organization in Britain and abroad.
The couple eventually settled in Britain, but returned to South Africa after the 1994 democratic elections, which made Mr. Mandela president.
Ms. Bernstein was a founding member of the Federation of South African Women, the first multiracial women’s organization in South Africa. She was also an artist, and her work has been used as book jackets and illustrations, posters and cards for the Anti-Apartheid Movement.
Ms. Bernstein was born in London in 1915 and emigrated to South Africa in 1932, working in advertising, publishing and journalism.
A fiery orator, she served as a city councilor in Johannesburg from 1943 to 1946 as the only Communist elected to public office in a “whites only” vote.
She and her husband were active in the early days of the South African Communist Party and the African National Congress. Rusty Bernstein died in 2002.
She is survived by four children, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Posted by lois at September 13, 2006 10:02 PM