I did not notice myself but a friend knowing of my Kenya connections directed me to the obituary in the Guardian newspaper for Eve Hall, dead at 70.
Eve was once women's editor of the Nation. I do not know how many Kenyans would remember her, but they should, for she was one of a number of the newspaper's staffers who suffered in the cause of freedom.
The child of a Jewish father and a German mother, Eve was raised in Nazi-occupied France during the Second World War. Her father happened to be visiting South Africa when the war broke out and his wife and their half-Jewish child were left in Europe to cope as best they could.
Eve's mother refused to pin the yellow star of David on her daughter's clothing - a highly provocative gesture -- but the pair somehow survived the Nazis and left for South Africa when the war ended.
Eve enrolled in Witwatersrand University, where she met her future husband, Tony Hall. The day after the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, Eve joined Mandela's African National Congress and later she was one of four white women sentenced to six months' imprisonment for a clandestine leaflet and poster campaign promoting the banned party.
With her husband, she was banned from writing and the couple were forced to leave the country with their three sons, embarking on a career as "gypsy journalists" and development experts.
They worked in Europe, India and in many African cities, including Mogadishu, Harare, Addis Ababa and Arusha. In Dar es Salaam, Eve launched an ANC women's bulletin. In Nairobi, her Nation duties included writing the Stars Foretell column, which she always checked later to see if her forecasts had come true.
With the end of apartheid, the Halls returned in 1991 to South Africa, where Eve continued her work as an ANC activist. After taking an MA degree at Reading University, she also worked with the International Labour Organisation, managing women's community projects in eastern and southern Africa. Eve planned to write the story of her event-filled life but ran out of time. She died after a six-year battle with breast cancer, with her husband and sons at her bedside.
Writing of this courageous woman reminds me of Bob Hitchcock, Nation training editor 1982-85, who also did time in a South African prison. Bob had written a story highly critical of the apartheid regime and refused to reveal the source to South African intelligence. Upon release, he was expelled from the country.
Then there were Kenya's own journalists who suffered under a Nairobi regime at its most repressive. Notable among these was Wahome Mutahi of Whispers fame, who recounted his torture in a book, "Three Days on the Cross." Countless others were jailed, beaten, whipped, robbed, harassed, threatened, frightened, humiliated, lied about and forced out of the profession. They suffered all this in the cause of freedom.
I take my hat off to them and so, dear reader, should you.
Gerry Loughran, Nairobi, 17 November
Comments
Post a Comment