Susan Dangarembga (nee Ngonyama) the first black female graduate has died. She was 91. Dangarembga is one of he country’s pioneer black educationist and mother to renowned literary author-film maker, Tsitsi Dangarembga. She is reported to have died on Monday due to natural causes. She was buried on Friday at Harare’s Warren Hills cemetery.
In 1951, Dangarembga enrolled at South Africa’s Fort Hare University and in 1953, she became the first black woman in Southern Rhodesia to obtain a university degree – a Bachelor of Arts in English and Latin.She also obtained a Master of Arts degree in English and a post-graduate Teaching and Education Administration diploma with a United Kingdom university.
Delivering the eulogy at her funeral, former deputy prime minister Professor Arthur Mutambara said:
Without firing a single shot, going to detention or organising political resistance, as a high school student in 1950 Susan Ngonyama scored a major victory for the freedom and liberation of Zimbabwe.
She started the necessary process of transforming the minds of the oppressive whites, while mentally and intellectually empowering the oppressed majority, by giving them self-confidence and self-belief.
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