Thoko Didiza may have been born and bred in KwaZulu-Natal, but her struggle credentials know no borders. KwaZulu-Natal is where she began her political career.
I learnt that Didiza's political awareness was awakened when she met Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka - who was to become the first woman deputy president - during her matric year at Ohlange High School in Inanda, near Durban, in 1981.
Friends of Didiza recall the impact Mlambo-Ngcuka had, with one saying: “She was her closest mentor, ideologically and politically.”
The pair remain close.
Didiza moved to Joburg in the late 1980s and took a job as a national co-ordinator of the Young Women's Christian Association responsible for women and youth affairs. She was living in Vosloorus, on the East Rand.
She occupied a small office in Marshall Street in the Joburg central business district and at the offices of the South African Council of Churches, where her political leadership and qualities soon became evident.
She was using her maiden name, Msane - and it is this name that is in the police archives. Her name did not change until she was serving as Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs under Nelson Mandela.
She was participating in politics at a time that being a member of a banned political organisation risked a jail sentence of between two and five years.
Despite this, Didiza used her position as co-ordinator for youth affairs in the SACC’s offices to canvass support for the “banned ANC”.
She and others in the SACC, including abafundisi, men of the cloth, exposed the atrocities of apartheid to the world.
Didiza later began working full-time for the SACC, with responsibility for its humanitarian work
It is through the efforts of the SACC that international donors heeded a call to support black university students who were financially excluded in the 1990s, mostly from what were then “historically disadvantaged universities”, such as Western Cape, Fort Hare and Turfloop.
In South Africa, Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, who had been general secretary of the SACC from 1978 to 1985, was instrumental in setting up the Educational Opportunities Council bursary fund for needy and deserving black students. Tutu was the patron of the fund. It provided a full bursary for tuition, books and living expenses.
Some of the bursary recipients were sent to study at American universities.
They returned as doctors and managers.
Money came from funders in the US when the communist Soviet Union was disintegrating.
Little has been said throughout the years that the efforts of Tutu to set up such a bursary fund owed much to the diligent work of Didiza and other women linked to SACC.
At the time, Didiza was a member of the National Co-ordinating Committee for the Repatriation of South African Exiles.
Didiza was given the task of ensuring each of the exiles, and their families, had legal status in the country.
She also had to find families they had long lost contact with and who had been dispersed under apartheid laws.
A number of children who were born in exile and orphaned were, through Didiza's efforts, reunited with surviving relatives.
Didiza was doing this work from a Joburg office.
When I first met her in 1991 I could not understand why someone with a journalism qualification would opt to work for the SACC instead of for a mainstream newspaper.
But the explanation I was given made it clear why she had made this choice.
I was told one of her responsibilities was to produce, for an international audience, pamphlets and newsletters highlighting the plight of South Africans.
Some of this information was couriered to the ANC in exile at its headquarters in Lusaka to bring it up to date with the latest political developments in the country.
When the ANC Women’s League held its first national conference in South Africa after the unbanning of political parties, Didiza was among the delegates.
It was for this reason that when Mandela became president, he included her in his cabinet.
Do you remember Kraai van Niekerk, the Minister of Agriculture under Mandela?
Didiza was his deputy and they worked together like a bomb.
Van Niekerk was a former apartheid minister, but under the government of national unity he and Didiza worked like twins. It was no coincidence. Didiza had fought for the liberation of this country.
It was because of her ministerial post that she moved in 1994 to Tshwane, which has been her home since.
Sunday Independent