1908 - 1997

Trade Unionist, Founding member of the Federation of South African Women (FedSAW), Secretary and Treasurer of the African National Congress (ANC) Women’s League in Port Elizabeth, 1956 Treason Trialist, Patron and National Executive member of the United Democratic Front (UDF)

Frances Baard was an activist whose political involvement intensified in the late 1940s, when African women were becoming more militant.

Baard originally trained as a teacher and obtained a post at a mission school, a position she held for only a year until a male teacher was available. She was replaced and had to go back to being a domestic servant, an injustice which influenced her passion for equality and freedom throughout her lifetime.

She joined the ANC in 1948 and helped establish the African Food and Canning Workers Union with union stalwart Ray Alexander while working in a Port Elizabeth canning factory. She was an active organiser during the 1952 Defiance Campaign and played a leading role in the 1956 anti-pass Womens March. She was detained in solitary confinement for a year and banned between 1960 and 1969. When she was finally banished to Mabopane near Pretoria, the white police abandoned her in an open field in the middle of winter with only the clothes she was wearing.

In June 2001, a district municipality and a street in Pretoria were named after her.

Did You Know?

Baard was denied any reading material in solitary confinement and a light was kept on at all times, day and night. After her release and a day in court, she was promptly returned to prison for another five years for denying the lengthy list of charges against her. Her children were taken care of by relatives in Port Elizabeth and Kimberley.