Historical snippets

HUMANITARIANS FROM THE 1940S

˝TWO PROUD PRODUCTS OF WITS˝ SR AIDAN AND DR JAMES NJONGWE ARE PARALLEL PROTAGONISTS IN A STORY OF A FORGOTTEN SOUTH AFRICAN MASSACRE

A "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”.

ORIGINS

Sister Aidan was born on 3 December 1914 in Ballydesmond, Ireland. She went to school in Blarney and Cork and after completing her BSc at the University College Cork, she surprised her family with the decision to become a nun in South Africa. In 1938 she travelled to King William’s Town in the Eastern Cape, as a postulant to join the Congregation of Dominican Sisters of St Catherine of Siena, commonly known as the “King Dominicans”. The congregation originated in Germany and was founded in 1877 to serve German settlers in the Eastern Cape. In 1940, she was sent to Wits to study medicine, along with a German Sister Amanda Fröhlich (MBBCh 1946).

Dr Njongwe, meanwhile, was born in Kalankomo in the Qumbu district of Transkei on 12 January 1919. He attended Chulunca Primary School where both his parents taught. He was sent to Healdtown College secondary school in Fort Beaufort whereafter he graduated in 1941 from the University of Fort Hare with a BSc in Hygiene. During the summer following his graduation he was awarded a scholarship to study medicine at Wits. His brother Mncedisi relayed that “two white men rode into the homestead on horseback bearing a letter which instructed him to present himself at Wits within two days.”

WITS YEARS

Sister Aidan lived at St Vincent’s Convent for the Deaf in Melrose. In letters home she described “Joburg is more modern that New York you know” and compared the façade of Wits Central Block with St Mary’s Cathedral in Cork. “She said the queue of students going in and out to lectures was ‘rather like going to the pictures’ and the lecture theatres were ‘rather like cinemas too’. ” She excelled in her studies. The archives show that in her fourth year, she received a prize for a first-class pass in pathology, and in her fifth year she obtained two first class passes and received a prize for top student in forensic medicine. Towards the end of her degree she took her final vows and was ordained “Sister Aidan”.

Dr Njongwe’s experience of Johannesburg was markedly different. Prior to World War II, Wits Medical School was closed to black students and those wishing to study medicine had to obtain a degree overseas. The war made this option impractical and the growing demand for medical services for black people in Johannesburg saw Wits adopt a policy in 1939 of “academic non-segregation and social segregation”.

Black medical trainees were offered access to academic facilities at the university, but beyond that formal social contact with white students was largely curtailed. Black students attending the Wits Medical School stayed at the Wolhuter Native Hostel in Sophiatown, west of Johannesburg.

Dr Njongwe’s living conditions were such that he “starved and suffered”. But he befriended other young activists such as Nelson Mandela (LLD honoris causa 1991 – with whom he maintained a life-long friendship). He was a founder member of the ANC Youth League in 1944, and five years later he became a member of the ANC national executive committee. His experience at Wits opened up a “world of ideas and political beliefs and debates”.

WORK AS DOCTORS

After graduating, Sister Aidan worked at Glen Grey Clinic in Lady Frere near Queenstown and the Far East Rand Hospital in Springs before being sent to St Peter Claver mission in Duncan Village in 1949 to open a clinic. At the time East London had the second-highest rate of tuberculosis infection in the world and every second child born died within the first year of life. There was only one municipal clinic to serve the entire location and the “Non-European” wing of Frere Hospital was notoriously overcrowded. Sister Aidan had one nursing assistant, Sister Gratia Khumalo, and according to King Dominican records in 1949, the two nuns attended to 5 299 patients; in 1950 the total was 20 006; and in 1951 it was 17 240. On the Friday before she died, 170 patients visited the clinic. She used her own ambulance and always did her own driving. She had a keen interest in motor cars and apparently often discussed the latest models.

Dr Njongwe qualified in 1946 and went to McCord Hospital in Durban for his internship.In 1948 he established a practice in New Brighton in Port Elizabeth where he became more politically active in the passive resistance campaign and was appointed acting Cape president of the ANC between 1951 and 1952. Such was his charisma that former President Thabo Mbeki’s biographer, Mark Gevisser, recalls that in 1952, at the age of 10, Mbeki was initiated into political activism when “Dr Njongwe, Cape ANC leader, came riding down Scanlan Street, Queenstown, with loudspeakers in the car, advertising the Defiance Campaign”.

Dr Njongwe was a strong contender to succeed James Moroka as president general in December 1952, but lost out to Albert Luthuli. He was elected president of the ANC in the Cape in 1954, but resigned after he was banned and unable to attend meetings for two years.

Dr Njongwe moved to the Matatiele district in the former Transkei and he established a successful medical practice. He managed to purchase a piece of land in the town just before the Group Areas Act was passed and became more interested in farming, growing maize and establishing a dairy herd and a piggery. He died in 1976 at the age of 57 after he fell asleep behind the wheel on the way home after seeing a patient shortly after midnight.

Sources: "Adler Museum Bulletin" 35, 2009, "Bloody Sunday: The Nun, The Defiance Campaign and South Africa’s Secret Massacre" by Mignonne Breier (Tafelberg, 2021)

Sister Aidan's marble memorial in Duncan Village

Photo: David Goldblatt