Mukoni Ratshitanga’s new book on Sally Motlana receives endorsement from heavyweights in society at its launch in Sophiatown

Ratshitanga was praised for penning the book as the audience were told,Faith and Defiance: The Life of Sally Motlana, is a valuable contribution to efforts to keep the struggle against Apartheid alive.

By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor

If you walked into Trevor Huddleston Memorial Centre in Sophiatown this past Saturday, May 16, 2026, in the afternoon and joined the guests gathered there, you would have correctly guessed that it was an important event. Whatever brought together these prominent people, was something with both political and social gravitas.

A former presidential spokesperson, a former presidential advisor, two former ambassadors, a former First Lady, a retired Deputy Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court, a former city manager and an Arch-Bishop of the Anglican Church (who attended the event and addressed the audience through live streaming), a coterie of writers and media professionals. These prominent people would have given you the hint about the importance of this event, if you did not know. Both social and political currency of the occasion could not be mistaken.

The occasion was the launch of the biography of the late Sally Motlana, a formidable women’s organiser, a prominent civic and political activist and community leader, whose genesis of activism, started at the same venue in the Sophiatown of the 1950s and 1960s.

Guided and mentored by Trevor Huddleston, an English missionary who among other mentees, also guided cultural figures, such as the late trumpeter and flugelhorn player, Hugh Masekela and the late trombonist Jonas Gwangwa. Mam Sally Motlana, who was married to the late Soweto doctor Thato Motlana, is the subject of Faith and Defiance: The Life of Sally Motlana. Dr Motlana by the way, was the personal physician of Mandela after he was released from prison in 1990, before he became a prominent businessman, and before Mandela became the first President of a democratic South Africa in 1994.

Authored by former President Thabo Mbeki’s Spokesperson Mukoni Ratshitanga, the audience heard how influential on her own right, Sally was in the struggle for freedom. That activism started in Sophiatown, where she settled when she came to Johannesburg, hailing from the rural areas. In fact, that decision to come to the big city, evaded the prospect of either getting married young or working as a domestic worker, a fate that befell many women hailing from that part of the country. Luckily for her, she arrived into good hands in the belly of the city, as she met Trevor Huddleston, a man who changed her life’s trajectory.

As years went by, she went on to play an important role in the lives of urban blacks in women’s organisations as well as in politics.

Sally held leadership roles in women’s organisations, including Deputy Secretary of the South African Council of Churches and President of the House Wives League that she turned from an organisation concerned only with mundane family matters, into a radical politically engaged organisation.

For that, she was targeted by the Special Branch, a notorious division within the South African Police at the service of Apartheid that gave political activists a hard time. She suffered arrests during the time.

The event that was attended by among others, former Advisor to President Thabo Mbeki, Advocate Mojaki Gumbi, former South African Ambassador to France, poet and author, Barbara Masekela, and retired South African National Defence Force soldier Lieutenant- General Thulile Nkonyane. The two luminaries discussed the book in a panel moderated by children’s books author and bookstore owner Sewela Langeni.

Among the dignitaries were Zanele Mbeki, former First lady of South Africa, children’s literature activist and author, Elinor Sisulu, retired Deputy Chief Justice, Dikgang Moseneke, former City of Johannesburg City Manager Trevor Fowler, Arch-Bishop of the Anglican Church Thabo Makgoba, who addressed the gathering through live-streaming, and the Motlana family members.

Jazz musician, Sipho ‘Hotstix’ Mabuse played two songs that were well received by the guests, in tribute to Mam Sally Motlana.

Ratshitanga was praised for penning the book as the audience were told, Faith and Defiance: The Life of Sally Motlana, is a valuable contribution to efforts to keep the struggle against Apartheid alive.

Some wondered though, how, Sally would have thought about the state where the country is. This is especially given the fact that former Comrades increasingly seem to have abandoned the values that guided the struggle in favour of material accumulation and chasing after government tenders.

Barbra Masekela in her opening remarks, framed the role played by Sally, including starting school feeding schemes and creating a link between urban women and those in the rural areas, in the context of the breakdown of the social fabric in the black society due to apartheid, and the need to find a solution to that social brokenness.

“Personally, my home is supposed to be in Limpopo as that is where my father came from. But, I do not believe that, that is my home for the people who lived there in a dry landscape with no water, did not choose to live there. Ï have never accepted that as my home.

“In fact, I do not have a home that in my retirement, I could go to on holiday. The only home I have is my apartment,” Barbara lamented.

She went on to praise Ratshitanga for writing the book.

“Ratshitanga is a brave man, because these days, women look closely on men who write books about women with regards to their sensitivity. However, this is a ground breaking book because the book situates Sally’s life in history,” she reflected.

Ratshitanga, who spoke to Sally when she was still alive in the process of researching this book, said he found her to be feisty.

“She was positive about the big things that happened in 1994, and about the values that those who fought the struggle held, leading to the 1994 big event. But she was not happy about some things that were happening after that. I found her to have been firm in the fight for social justice. She was not a walkover, even though interviewing someone who is 95, has its own challenges. For example, she was frail and her memory in some instances, was fading.

“What I understood from her, is the fact that the House Wives League, was made up of educated, urban middle class women. When she came in and became its president, she had to transform it from being an organisation that focused on tea parties and family issues, changing its direction into a politically engaged organisation. Of course, at the beginning, there was resistance coming from the other women, who felt it was dangerous to be politically active as that was inevitably going to attract the attention of the Apartheid police,” Ratshitanga said.

General Nkonyane spoke fondly of Sally, and how she assisted him and others during the struggle, especially enabling the then arrested Nkonyane and his comrades, to communicate with senior APLA commanders in exile about their fate, using coded messages.

“Sally Motlana showed me a lot of love, and her deep love has been confirmed by how her children reacted warmly to me when I met them for the first time,” he said.

.Faith and Defiance: The Life of Sally Motlana, published by Seri sa Sechaba, a specialist publishing company focusing on publishing books about the struggle against apartheid, started by Christine Qunta in 2013, is available at bookstores around the country, including at Book Circle Capital in Melville.