Beata Lipman – fighter against injustice

OWN CORRESPONDENT

Retired ANC minister Ronnie Kasrils, writer and activist Elinor Sisulu, as well as Minister of Women in the presidency Susan Sahbangu, were just a few of the recognisable faces to bid their farewells to the woman who hand-wrote the original Freedom Charter in Kliptown in 1955.

There was nothing average about Lipman. Journalist Pippa Green recalls from the memorial on Facebook this week: “Elinor Sisulu recounted how she (Beata) had demonstrated to Ma Albertina Sisulu one day how she could stand on her head. Elinor said she would never forget the look on Ma Sisulu’s face that day.”

Beata, an indefatigable Struggle activist and noted journalist and TV producer, lived a full and fruitful life, devoted to point out and root out injustice – a tough, bright, warm woman, interested in the world and committed to social justice, her daughter Jane Thandi and son Peter remembered.

Beata was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1928.The family lived in Berlin. With Hitler’s ascent to power and the rise of fascism in Germany, the family fled to South Africa in 1932 and became part of the German Jewish community in Johannesburg.

In 1952 Beata ran a nursery school in Lamontville in Durban. As repression started to increase in South Africa, she and her architect husband Professor Alan Robert Lipman, became active in the struggle against apartheid. They joined the Communist Party, only to leave when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956. 

In 1956 women from all over South Africa marched against the repressive pass laws and converged on the Union Buildings in Pretoria. Beata was among them.

Beata was active in the townships of South Africa, working with the ANC and for the liberation Struggle newspaper New Age. As an active member of the Congress of Democrats, she worked closely with leaders of the movement including Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela.

In 1963, Beata became a refugee again when she and Alan left South Africa to escape detention due to their underground activities. In the UK she worked as a journalist and TV producer. She wrote the book “We Make Freedom – Women in South Africa” and “Israel, the Embattled Land – Palestinian and Jewish Women Talk About Their Lives”.

She and Alan returned to South Africa in 1990 on the eve of democracy and she made documentaries about Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, William Kentridge, Chris Hani and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, among others.

Gemma Cronin, wife of Communist Party deputy secretary-general Jeremy Cronin, said in a note of condolences to the family: “For our generation of ‘whities’, people from the older generation, like Beata, who had taken a stand against apartheid and lived with the consequence, were hugely influential. I will never forget meeting her and the vivid sense of her strength, purposeful and critical engagement with the world I felt at the time.”

Green on her Facebook page said the tributes at the memorial were spot-on. “Not sentimental, but grasped the generosity and humour and courage of this amazing woman…”

 Former trade unionist, Rita Ndzanga, recalled how when she (Rita) and her husband were both banned, they were unable to get work and how Beata brought their children Christmas presents one year and supported them throughout.

Kasrils recalled how Beata had told a security guard in Durban in the 60s when they were distributing illegal pamphlets that they were for “A Just World Order – Praise the Lord” and he had assumed they were Jehovah’s Witnesses and left them alone!”

Beata’s husband Alan died in January 2013.She is survived by her children Peter and Jane Thandi and her grandchildren Martha, Caitlin and Joshua.