Priscilla Jana

Devikarani Priscilla Sewpal Jana (5 December 194310 October 2020) was a South African human rights lawyer, politician and diplomat.

As a member of the African National Congress (ANC) during the anti-apartheid movement, she participated in both legal activism as well as in the underground movement to end apartheid.

She represented many significant figures in the movement, including South African president Nelson Mandela, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Steve Biko, Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Jana was one of the very few South Africans who had access to political prisoners, including Mandela, in the maximum security Robben Island prison, and served as an emissary for coded messages between the political prisoners and the ANC leadership.

Jana's activism made her subject to violent harassment and an eventual banning order.

Devikarani Priscilla Sewpal was born 5 December 1943, in Westville, Natal (now called KwaZulu-Natal) near the port city of Durban.

She was the second child amongst three children to Hansrani Sewpal and Hansraj Sewpal.

Jana's parents were middle-class Indian immigrants with her father being a high school teacher.

Her father's challenging of social injustices ranging from apartheid to the Indian caste system based discrimination, was an early influence on her.

She first joined the Pietermaritzburg Girls' High School, where she organized a walkout as a part of a national potato boycott in 1958 protesting the treatment of Black farmers.

She began her high school in Durban in 1960 and went to India on a Government of India scholarship to study medicine at the Sophia College for Women in Bombay (now Mumbai).

In one of her high-profile cases from this time she defended a 22-year-old activist and UMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) member, Solomon Mahlangu, who was eventually convicted under the Terrorism Act, 1967 for the murder of two white people.

Mahlangu was sentenced to death and subsequently hanged, due to prevailing common purpose laws that judged perceived complicity as harshly as the crime itself.

The case generated global outrage.

Jana was one of the last of Mahlangu's supporters to see him on the night prior to his execution, and came back carrying a message to carry on with the fight for freedom.

His last message conveyed through her went on to be a rallying cry for his supporters, "Tell my people that I love them. They must continue the fight. My blood will nourish the tree that bears the fruits of freedom."

Upon returning to South Africa, she started her Bachelor of Laws Degree at the University of South Africa (UNISA) in 1974, but transferred over to the University College for Indians on Salisbury Island, Durban, where she was the only woman student in the class.

Her pursuit of a law degree was against the initial wishes of her parents who had wanted her to become a physician instead.

She grew up at a time when neighborhoods, schools, and all public facilities, were segregated by racial profile.

Writing in her memoir, Fighting for Mandela, she recollects a meeting with anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko when she was 26 that helped solidify the notion of identity in her mind.

The meeting, she says, helped make clear in her mind that one "didn't have to be African to call yourself a Black."

That notion helped her find solidarity in a group.

She writes, "I had found solidarity. At last, I knew where I belonged."

After her graduation in 1974, she joined the law firm of Ismail Ayob, a lawyer of Indian origin.

The firm's clients included many in the anti-apartheid movement, including Nelson Mandela.

As an articled clerk, she represented the members of Soweto Students' representative council, against state brutality, following the 1976 Soweto Uprising.

In 1977, she went on her first of what would be many trips to Robben Island to meet Mandela.

She would later write, "At one time I represented every political prisoner on Robben Island."

Visiting Mandela at Robben Island in 1977 as a solicitor needing his signatures, Jana became the first woman to hug Mandela in 13 years of imprisonment.

At the time, even Mandela's wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela could only see him through a glass panel.

Jana became Mandela's personal attorney and her access allowed her to pass coded messages from the ANC organization to Mandela, while joking and teasing.

As one of the very few South Africans who had access to Mandela during his imprisonment in the island, she also carried back coded messages from Mandela and the other political prisoners to the ANC leadership, including President Oliver Tambo.

In 1979, Jana opened her own law practice, focusing on civil liberties and human rights cases.

However, very soon in 1980, she was handed a banning order under the Suppression of Communism Act, 1950 for five years, imposing an overnight curfew on her and limiting her to meeting with only one person, as well as limiting her public speeches.

During this time Jana also joined the underground cell of the African National Congress, UMkhonto we Sizwe, which was led by future South African President, Thabo Mbeki, from London, to whom Jana used to report.

The cell had as its members Jackie Selebi, Beyers Naudé, and Cedric Mayson.

Through her career, Jana represented many leaders of the anti-apartheid movement, including South African president Nelson Mandela, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Steve Biko, Ebrahim Ebrahim, Ahmed Kathrada, Solomon Mahlangu, Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Following the advent of full democracy in South Africa, she became a lawmaker and served as a Member of Parliament with the ANC between 1994 and 1999.

She was also an ambassador of the South African government to the Netherlands and Ireland, and a commissioner with the South African Human Rights Commission.

She was a member of the justice committee that was responsible for the roll-out of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.