JINHA

NEWS CENTER – Ruth Mompati, a leader of the South African resistance, died in a hospital in Cape Town yesterday after a short illness. She was 89.

Ruth started her political life as a secretary for Nelson Mandela, quickly rising through the ANC ranks to become one of the party's top leaders. She joined the administration of the ANC Women's League in 1952 and participated in the founding of the interracial Federation of South African Women (Fedsaw) shortly thereafter. In 1956, Ruth was one of the organizers of the famous Women's March in Pretoria, in which tens of thousands of women marched against an ID card law for women that would have facilitated the deportation of women from certain townships. Ruth became one of the first ANC women to head to exile in Tanzania in 1962, where she underwent training in armed struggle.

Throughout the 1980s, Ruth worked in the international diplomatic efforts of the party. With the beginning of democracy in South Africa in 1994, she took on a variety of roles: ambassador to Switzerland; first black mayor of her native Vryburg (Naledi); and director in the veterans association of ANC armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe.

A municipality in Vryburg now bears Dr. Ruth Mompati's name.

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