By Douglas Carew
Controversial cabinet minister's wife and outspoken newspaper columnist Joyce Waring of Bantry Bay has died after a long illness.
Born in the Free State on September 20 1914, she was 88.
Waring was the daughter of industrialist and United Party member of parliament Arthur Barlow.
She married Frank Waring, whom she met at a rugby function at the University of Cape Town, where they were both students.
Frank Waring was a Springbok rugby player in the era of legends that included Bennie Osler and Danie Craven.
He went on to become one of the first English-speaking ministers in the National Party cabinet under Hendrik Verwoerd and famously wrestled the assassin Dimitri Tsafendas to the ground after he stabbed Verwoerd in parliament in 1966.
Waring had political ambitions of her own and unsuccessfully challenged Helen Suzman for the Houghton nomination in 1952.
Waring died on Thursday night, almost exactly three years after her husband with whom she had shared 60 years of marriage.
She is survived by her daughter, Adrienne Koch, a former mayor of Paarl and member of the Presidents Council in the National Party government of the 1980s, daughter Francis, son Michael, seven grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
Martin Koch of Sea Point said his grandmother had been an outspoken and controversial woman who published three books - I'm No Lady, Sticks And Stones and Hot Air.
Hot Air is a collection of articles which appeared in the Cape Times and a selection of her broadcasts on SABC radio.
Koch said Waring had been accurately described as someone who "outraged the staid and terrified the timid".
"She loved to take all the grandchildren on walks on Lion's Head and was also a keen horserider who never let a few broken bones put her off," he said.
Waring was the kind of woman you either loved or hated as she had a quick mind and an even quicker tongue, Koch added.