Historical snippets
HUMANITARIANS FROM THE 1940S ˝TWO PROUD PRODUCTS OF WITS˝ SR AIDAN AND D R JAMES NJONGWE ARE PARALLEL PROTAGONISTS IN A STORY OF A FORGOTTEN SOUTH AFRICAN MASSACRE
Image: Adler Bulletin 2009
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FINAL YEAR MEDICAL CLASS OF 1945: SR AIDAN IS FIRST ON THE L E F T, 2 N D R O W F R O M T H E F R O N T; DR JAMES NGONGWE IS T WO ROWS BEHIND HER, SECOND
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Time magazine article dated 24 November 1952 documents the story of two Wits alumni at a significant historical moment in South Africa: “Sister Aidan, an … Irish Dominican nun, and a physician …. found herself in the midst of a bloody pitched battle between East London’s white cops and a mob of tribesmen,” the article begins. “James Njongwe, the handsome Negro physician who runs the Cape Province chapter of the African National Congress, sat, head in hands, lamenting the murder of Sister Aidan, who had been his classmate at Witwatersrand University,” it continues. Sister Mary Aidan, also known as Dr Elsie Quinlan (MBBCh 1946), who lived and worked in Duncan Village in East London, was killed on 9 November 1952 in the community she served. Meanwhile, at that time, the height of the Defiance Campaign, Dr James “Jimmy” Lowell Zwelinzima Njongwe (MBBCh 1946) was a respected ANC leader and served as president of the provincial ANC in the Cape. A meeting, called by the ANC, had been disrupted by police and the violence that ensued resulted in the church, school and clinic at the Catholic Mission being burned to the ground. Sister Aidan and Dr Njongwe are parallel protagonists in a recently published book Bloody Sunday: The Nun, The Defiance Campaign and South Africa’s Secret Massacre (Tafelberg, 2021) by Mignonne Breier. Breier spent seven years piecing together the story of perhaps the deadliest, and seemingly forgotten, massacre of South Africa’s apartheid era. (The official statistics record 10 people killed and 27 injured, but Breier suggests the death toll was more than 200.) Her book also sheds light on Wits Medical School in the 1940s and draws on historical gems from the Adler Museum about these remarkable “two doctors and humanitarians, proud products of Wits”.
