Ma Vesta Smith: why this unsung activist matters 50 years after the Soweto uprising

- Source:

While many men are remembered as heroes of political struggles, women seldom get enough attention. Vesta Smith is a good example. She fought for South Africa's liberation from white minority rule, called apartheid.

Historian Maria Suriano has written a biography of this activist. With the 50th anniversary of the momentous 1976 Soweto youth uprising in mind, we asked her to tell us about the woman affectionately known as Ma Vesta.

Why is Vesta Smith important?

Vesta Smith was a community activist who dedicated her life to the anti-apartheid struggle, social justice, non-racialism and gender equality.

She participated in key events in South Africa's history, attending the Congress of the People in 1955, where the Freedom Charter was adopted, and the historic 1956 Women's March. Two decades later, during the Soweto uprising, Ma Vesta became a trusted mentor to younger militants.

Her political work happened largely outside formal politics. It was grounded in building non-racial and inter-generational networks of care and solidarity. She hid students in her home while they were on the run from the security police and supported the families of political prisoners. She paid the price with four months in prison.

Ma Vesta's story contributes to efforts to uncover the radical ideas, practices and key figures behind the students' protests. These helped pave the way for South Africa's democratic transition and continue to echo in today's student struggles for decolonisation.

Ma Vesta's passionate, community-based activism matters because it reveals the importance of “everyday politics” – the small acts of resistance, often outside official politics, that foster personal and collective emancipation.

This invites us to reconsider the dominant narrative of the liberation struggle, long centred on prominent male leaders and party strategies.

Who was Vesta Smith?

Born in Johannesburg in 1922, she was forcibly relocated in 1941, along with her mother and sisters, to Noordgesig. She lived there until her passing in 2013. Segregation laws governing residential areas reserved this small section of Soweto for poor townspeople classified as “coloured”.

She was born into a stable family. Her father, Stephen Mpama, moved in the circles of Johannesburg's Black intelligentsia. Her early life was marked by hardships after his premature death in 1927. Inner-city cosmopolitanism shaped her non-racialism, and daily racial discrimination informed her refusal to be subservient to white people.

From the late 1960s to the mid-1990s she worked consecutively for the South African Council of Churches, the South African Committee for Higher Education and the Legal Resources Centre. Although formally an administrator, at these progressive organisations Ma Vesta relentlessly pursued social justice by mobilising her broad political networks.

In the 1980s she connected legal advocacy to Black townships through advice centres, while participating in key anti-apartheid campaigns. After 1994 and the first democratic elections, she advocated for women's empowerment and poverty alleviation in the townships.

What are the key takeaways?

Drawing on personal conversations with those who knew Ma Vesta and on archival sources, private papers and press coverage, the book is structured around four key themes.

First, her activism was grounded in her faith – fighting injustice was a spiritual duty. Her work within the Young Women's Christian Association from the 1960s onwards pioneered the idea that Christianity and political activism should be intertwined.

Second, Ma Vesta's politics were non-sectarian. Although aligned with the African National Congress (ANC) resistance movement, she was a “bridge-builder”. She connected the struggles of the 1950s to those of the 1970s and 1980s as well as activists across generations, townships and ideologies.

Third, non-racialism was central to her political work. The formal and informal, secular and religious connections she forged over time reflected this belief. In the 1970s, her rejection of apartheid categories matched the Black Consciousness Movement. The book traces her friendships and shifting relations with white liberals, alongside her understanding of her Blackness.

Fourth, looking beyond prominent leaders reveals the pivotal yet under-recognised contributions of Black women who worked on the ground. What dominant historical accounts leave out about everyday politics deserves closer examination.

What was her impact on young militants?

During the 1976 uprising Ma Vesta emerged as one of the senior activists who provided practical help, political guidance and emotional support to student activists. This was regardless of their political affiliation.

Many young militants who encountered her in 1976 and afterwards describe her as a formative influence. She helped shape their political thinking and sustained them through difficult times.

She built networks with fellow anti-apartheid activists across generations. This brings into view a political world of friendships and mutual support. What emerges is a collective political biography, but also an intimate portrait. Locating her in Noordgesig extends our understanding of June 1976 beyond its epicentre in Soweto.

Why has she been overlooked?

Ma Vesta's absence from academic and popular accounts of the liberation struggle reflects broader patterns in how this history has been written.

First, scholarship has focused mostly on male leaders, their strategies and political organisations. It has overlooked community activists and organic intellectuals, particularly Black women outside formal leadership structures. Ma Vesta's politics were not defined by rigid allegiances. So, figures like her are harder to categorise and less visible in such accounts.

Her erasure may also be attributed to her refusal to accept racialised politics and apartheid racial classifications (black, white, coloured, Indian). This sits uneasily with recent efforts to celebrate iconic struggle figures from coloured communities as “coloured”, a framing she herself would have rejected.

Lastly, she was disillusioned with the unfilfilled promises of the ANC government that won democratic power in 1994. This may have also contributed to her being marginalised.

It's important to restore Vesta Smith to her rightful place in South African history. Not as a footnote to more famous figures, but as a central example of how grassroots activists can become extraordinary agents of change and liberation.

But recovering this story is not only about correcting the historical record and advancing epistemic justice. It also speaks to pressing contemporary concerns. Her Christian-based activism offers a counterpoint to the recent resurgence of narrow identity politics in the country.

During South Africa's first major xenophobic attacks in 2008, she called a Johannesburg radio station to question assumptions of national superiority over other Africans. She never grew tired of addressing issues of social justice.

Her commitment to community empowerment after 1994 is also a reminder that the democratic transition was only one step in the struggle for equality and dignity. Above all, her life shows that transformation is often driven by those who work in the background.

Maria Suriano previously received funding from the National Research Foundation (2014-2019)

By Maria Suriano, Associate Professor, Department of History, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, University of the Witwatersrand