The African National Congress (ANC) has sent its condolences to the family of the late Thembekile Luthuli-Ngobese – the youngest daughter of Chief Albert Luthuli, the former president of the ANC, and Nokukhanya Bhengu.
She died from a brain tumour at a Durban Hospital on Thursday last week.
“The ANC wishes to send condolences to the family of comrade Thembekile Ngobese. She was an activist of the ANC, but most importantly, she also had a serious interest of development of the communities at heart. We do know that she was active in helping organisations to organise themselves into certain civil movements,” says ANC Provincial Spokesperson Nomagugu Simelane-Zulu.
Luthuli-Ngobese has been described as a warrior, who championed social development in impoverished communities. A doyen of social welfare in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, Ngobese dedicated her life to empowering grassroots communities to reach greater economic heights.
Luthuli-Ngobese spent most of her life at the family home in KwaMashu in Durban which served as the base for her outreach projects in the province.
She has left behind five daughters. One of them Nana Ngobese describes her mother’s final moments. “It’s a brain tumour with aneurisms where the artery burst in the brain. She couldn’t recover from that. It just happened very quickly. She went to bed on Wednesday, the very same night around 11pm she complained of a severe headache.”
Luthuli-Ngobese devoted many years of her life to community upliftment.
Nana Ngobese says this concept of “The people first” was something that her mother had learned from her father Chief Albert Luthuli.
“My mum’s typical struggle was community development, all her life. She worked at the Natal University at her younger years in the anthropology department. She even co-authored a book about women’s strife when their husbands are taken away to work in the mines – which was concentrating on the consequences of the husbands leaving home, with the women looking after the families. From there on she went and worked at the Child Welfare Society with social workers – again concentrating on families that were basically broken.”
Women empowerment was something close to the heart of Luthuli-Ngobese. She spent a great deal of time working for different organisations trying to make a difference in the lives of women who were never given opportunities to progress. Ngobese says her mother defied all the odds after obtaining her degree at the age of 63.
“They felt women were an under-utilised resource that needed support. If you want to support anyone, support women in those communities because they are the backbone of the community so that is basically what she has done all her life. Even her degree that she got at 63 was on community development at Western Cape University. She passed with Cum Laude. Just imagine all her life she has been making sure that the people who are left in the margins of society find it in themselves to use whatever they have to empower themselves.”
Luthuli-Ngobese’s funeral service will be held at the KwaKristo uMsindisi Catholic Church in KwaMashu in Durban on Monday morning. Authors- Zeb Maine and Prabashini Moodley
