INLSA

Fynbos teacher Stella Petersen is getting an honorary doctorate at the University of Cape Town.

WHEN Stella Petersen takes her seat in UCT’s Jameson Hall next week, waiting to be capped with an honorary doctorate from her alma mater, she can be quite confident that none of her fellow graduands will move away from her because of her skin colour.

Sadly, that wasn’t the case when she was an undergraduate in the early 1940s, at the start of a long and distinguished career path that began with her becoming the first woman of colour to earn a Master’s degree in botany from UCT and included “Life Time Achiever” and “Outstanding Contribution to Conservation Efforts in the Western Cape” awards in recognition of her teaching prowess over decades, with a particular focus on South Africa’s indigenous vegetation.

Most white students would refuse to sit next to Petersen (then Jacobs) and her close friend Cynthia during lectures in their undergraduate years from 1942-4, the now 88-year-old recalled during an interview in her daughter’s Plumstead home where she now lives – “It was only the late-comers who had to!”

But neither that racism, symptomatic of South African society at the time, nor financial hardship deterred the young student who had got a loan from the African People’s Organisation to pay her university fees.

“It was study, study, all the time, because I was determined to make it, despite all the difficulties,” she said.

“There were times when we thought, ‘Oh, to go down to Rondebosch for a cup of hot chocolate and a flapjack,’ but we had no money and so had to do with sandwiches. But Cynthia and I stuck to each other and we said, ‘We’re going to make it!’”

If her fellow students were unfriendly, her lecturers were not. Petersen’s particular mentor was Edith Stephens, the visionary botanist whose concern for the critically endangered Cape quillwort Isoetes capensis led her to buy the Philippi property where it was found and which is now conserved as the Edith Stephens Wetland Park.

And it was the head of department, Harry Bolus, Professor of Botany Robert Adamson, who persuaded her to embark on her history-making Master’s thesis that involved observing and describing the peculiar structure of an indigenous Oxalis species. “I was asked by my professor to do this research work on how this bulb grew. It’s very strange – it sends out a runner, and then a bulb, and then a runner, and then another bulb…

“I had this trenching tool that I used, and I would take Edward (who later became her husband) with me to Signal Hill where it was growing. And my late father built a contraption for me where I could observe its development.”

Another student of colour at UCT who would also become a distinguished teacher, the late Richard Dudley – he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2009 – was a few years ahead of her, but helped her cope with the academic rigours of university.

“He lent me his notebooks so that I could prepare before going into the practical room,” she remembered.

It was her father, David Jacobs, who had served as a non-combatant soldier in World War I, who engendered her love of plants, although somewhat ironically, given her life-long work with indigenous plants, the first species she fell in love with was an alien poppy.

“He had spent much time in Egypt. When he came back home to Brentwood Road (in Wynberg), there was a recession. He was unemployed for several years and we suffered tremendous hardships,” she recalled. “He grew vegetables, but also Iceland poppies which he sold to a neighbour. We used to run up and down with bunches of Iceland poppies.”

After graduating, she responded to an advertisement for a botanical research position at the then Cape Technical College and was accepted, having filled in “South African” to the question about race. But when she arrived to start work, she saw two white staff look at her and then exchange meaningful glances.

“I thought, ‘Hmmm, a problem!’ The principal took me into a room and explained it was a post for a person classified ‘white’, and I just left.” It was only later that anti-apartheid activist and friend Ben Kiss told her she’d been entitled to claim three months’ pay.

In 1949, she was awarded the first South African International Foundation Research Fellowship to study science education at Syracuse University in the US, and made her way there via Britain.

“We went to New York on an old troop carrier and I got very, very seasick. But fortunately there were these American students going back home on holiday and they said, ‘Honey, come, we’ll walk with you,’ and I felt better.”

After an inauspicious arrival – there was a longshoreman’s strike and their luggage wasn’t unloaded – she made her way to the university in upstate New York where she enjoyed “a very good time”, visiting many American schools.

“It was winter and it was cold! And some of the pupils made snowballs and would aim at me, but the other students were very kind and would say: ‘She’s not an American, let her go through.’”

After a year at Dower College in Uitenhage, she worked at Hewat College where she was the first teacher of colour, until her marriage to Edward in 1956. Then she taught at Livingstone High in Lansdowne Road, Claremont, during the politically fraught years from 1976 until 1990 – the same school where Dudley made such an impact during his 39-year teaching stint.

In January, 1991 Petersen started work as a voluntary guide in Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden at what would later become the environmental centre. Here she introduced thousands of pupils, many from impoverished parts of the Cape Flats, to the wonders of South Africa’s incredibly rich botanical diversity.

“It was such a delight, those children were so lovely. I would teach them about anything, from fynbos to the lawns.

“They would just stand and look at the lawns and I would say, ‘Go on, roll!’ – they couldn’t believe it, that they could roll on the grass. It made them itch, but they didn’t worry about that!”

And the girls would fight for a chance to hold her hand as they walked through the garden – “You’ve been next to Miss for long enough now, it’s my turn!”

After a fall at home in 1999 in which she broke a femur, her Kirstenbosch responsibilities were restricted to just once a week on Mondays, but she continued there until June last year when she finally quit.

She has many wonderful memories, and one of the special ones is of a youngster saying to her: “Granny, you look old, you walk old, but you don’t talk old.”

“That was such a lovely thing to say. And now when I lie in bed on a Monday morning, (in my mind) I go through the whole scene of being at the Kirstenbosch environmental centre,” she said.

She’s looking forward to the moment next Friday when the honorary doctoral hood will be drawn over her head, honouring a lifetime’s dedication to the cause of science education.

“I will admit, I feel pleased about it, because I worked very hard,” she said.

john.yeld@inl.co.za