XPost: alt.obituaries, soc.history, soc.culture.south-africa   
   XPost: za.politics, za.misc   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   Black Sash celebrates the life of Phoebe Brown:   
      
   Phoebe Brown (nee Barlow), who died on Saturday 25th July, will be   
   remembered as a quiet, shy, and unassuming person with a strong social   
   conscience, and a deep concern for people whose situations were very   
   different from her own.   
      
   She grew up in Somerset West, and went to school at Herschel, an   
   independent Anglican school for girls in Claremont, Cape Town. While   
   still living in Cape Town she   
   volunteered to work for the Cape Flats Distress Association, which was   
   founded to help alleviate the problems of poverty, disease and   
   malnutrition on the Cape Flats.   
      
   Her contact with the Black Sash started in 1955 when the then   
   Nationalist government decided to remove ‘coloured’ voters from the   
   voters’ role. Phoebe believed that every piece of legislation that was   
   passed by the apartheid regime was moving away from her values so she   
   needed to stand against it. She took part in many protest stands   
   opposite the Pietermaritzburg City Hall, and spoke about one   
   frightening march organised by the University of Natal. It was night   
   time and many carried banners, and torches; young men ran alongside   
   the marchers taunting them, and the police joined the unruly mob. At   
   least one of the marchers was set alight when a torch behind him fell,   
   although no one was seriously hurt.   
      
   Phoebe met Peter Brown at the Durban July Handicap in 1948, and they   
   were married in Somerset West on 15 April 1950, holding their   
   reception at the historic wine estate Vergelegen, owned by the Barlow   
   family.   
      
   Peter soon became very involved in anti-apartheid activities, with   
   many friends from a wide range of social and racial backgrounds. Among   
   his many activities, he was Natal Chairperson of the Liberal Party,   
   formed on 9 May 1953, and banned by the regime in 1968. He was also   
   instrumental in the 1979 founding of The Association for Rural   
   Advancement to support rural communities in their resistance to forced   
   removals imposed by the Black Spots legislation designed to move black   
   people from freehold land in areas that the Nationalist regime   
   declared white. He was imprisoned during the 1960 State of Emergency,   
   and later ‘banned’ from public life for a decade from 1974 to 1984,   
   confined to their house in the Pietermaritzburg district, and required   
   to report weekly to the local police station. When he needed to visit   
   their farm at Mooi River he had to have permission and was told on   
   which day he could go, and which day to return.   
      
   Throughout this turmoil Phoebe was always an enormous support to   
   Peter, she simply did not make an issue of their difficulties, nor try   
   to divert Peter from his political activities. She knew their house   
   was continually watched by security police, but tried not to be   
   intimidated by this. She was allowed to visit the schools of their   
   children, Christopher, Vanessa and Anton, and to move around   
   relatively freely, but she chose to stay at home in order to give   
   Peter as much support as possible.   
      
   When asked how she felt about the closure of the membership of the   
   Black Sash in 1995 Phoebe said that by this time she had began to feel   
   a bit alienated by the young, feminist, seemingly radical women who   
   had joined the organisation. She remembered a meeting she went to with   
   Joy Roberts, when they initially felt they had come to the wrong   
   venue, waited a while, and then discovered that it was, in fact, the   
   Black Sash meeting.   
      
   However, she remained committed to the work of the Black Sash,   
   regularly attending gatherings. One of the last things she said to me   
   was, “I was proud of having belonged to the Black Sash, and I still   
   am. I have always kept my Sash.”   
      
   - Mary Kleinenberg (1 August 2020)   
      
   http://www.blacksash.org.za/…/tributes-to-black-sash-stalwa…   
      
      
   --   
   Steve Hayes   
   http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm   
   http://khanya.wordpress.com   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)