Eve Hall, who died aged 70 at her home near Nelspruit on October 23, was one of the first women activists to be imprisoned for defying apartheid. Through nearly 50 years, Eve’s life exemplified what it was to be an anti-apartheid activist and to live, as she did with her husband, Tony, and three sons, in energetic exile.
Eve was born in 1937 in France and lived in Paris with her mother during the German occupation. They came to South Africa after the war to join her father, who was Jewish and whose mother and sister died in concentration camps. She matriculated at Kingsmead and, while still a student at Wits, joined the Congress Movement the day after the shootings at Sharpeville. She had her own first taste of apartheid’s nastiness soon afterwards, when she was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for launching a leaflet and poster campaign promoting the banned ANC.
By 1964 she and Tony were ‘listed†for being members of a banned organisation, which made impossible their existence as journalists in Johannesburg. The family left on what became a 26-year trek in exile, mainly through Africa and Asia, as ‘gypsy journalists and development workersâ€.
As an activist in Dar es Salaam, she launched the ANC women’s section’s Voice of Women and shared reporting on India with Tony as Oxfam information officer in Delhi. The family moved to the United Kingdom in 1976, driving overland from India, and Eve took an MA in rural sociology at Reading.
Tony became the ‘trailing spouse†as Eve blazed her trail, particularly in East and Southern Africa, working for the International Labour Organisation. What she described as her happiest project came in 1991 when Eve and Tony could return to South Africa after 26 years of exile, living firstly in Yeoville, then in their Matumi bush retreat. Eve fought her final challenge with courage and candour: a six-and-a-half-year battle with stage-four breast cancer. — Hugh Lewin
Eve Hall: born Paris, March 20 1937; died Nelspruit, October 23 2007