Selma Browde's death leaves South Africa a little poorer

Born in 1926 in Cape Town to a middle-class Jewish family with roots in Lithuania and Ukraine, Browde studied medicine in Cape Town and Johannesburg. She interrupted her medical studies to marry and have three children, graduating from Wits in 1959. She received her specialist degree in Radiation Oncology in 1967 and was then appointed as a senior consultant and lecturer in that department.

In 1972, at the urging of Progressive Party MP Helen Suzman, Browde stood for election to the Johannesburg City Council on a Progressive Party (PP) platform. She did so despite not being a member of that party. (Browde had been a member of the Liberal Party. Both the Progressive and Liberal parties had had some black members. After the apartheid government passed legislation forbidding mixed-race membership of political parties, the smaller Liberal party decided to disband in 1968 rather than be all white, whereas the PP chose to continue as an all-white party, believing that some opposition to apartheid was needed in parliament.) Browde was convinced that as a non-member she stood no chance of winning; yet to her surprise, of fourteen PP candidates on the roll, she was the only one to win election to the City Council. She soon came to be seen as the unofficial council representative of the African, Indian and Coloured communities around Johannesburg.

A jubilant Dr Selma Browde is lifted up by a cheering mob of Progressive Party supporters at 1am after her 278-vote victory over Alec Jaffe, UP in Ward 22 was announced on 2 March 1972 in South Africa. Dr Browde was the first Progressive Party candidate to win an election since Helen Suzman gained her Houghton seat. (Photo: Gallo Images / Rand Daily Mail/ Times Media / Dennis Gordon)

Dr Selma Browde of the Progressive Party giving a speech in front of a banner that says "Silence is Consent" on 17 May 1974 in South Africa. (Photo: Gallo Images / Rand Daily Mail / Times Media)

Browde retained her post in the Radiation Oncology department and pursued her council work from a home office, to which as many as 20 people from various “townships” came daily seeking help or advice. In 1973/74 she initiated a process that led to the comprehensive electrification of Soweto by a private company. Among other projects on behalf of the disenfranchised, she secured access for Indian soccer teams to municipal fields, and the removal of the quota system for access to education above standard 6 level in Soweto. (She figured out that such a quota system existed following her investigations into the high failure rates of Soweto pupils in the standard 6 exams that were the gateway to high schools and other education opportunities.)

In 1974, Browde was elected to the Transvaal Provincial Council. She was one of only two Progressives on the Provincial Council. Browde also pursued her activism beyond the confines of the city and provincial councils. Among many other initiatives during this period in politics, she founded the Soweto Basketball Association (1974) with Soweto resident Dan Teketle, to harness the energies of unemployed youth; she joined human rights lawyer Shun Chetty to start Action to Stop Removals (ActStop) in 1976, to fight forced removals conducted under the Group Areas Act; and, with Dr. Nthatho Motlana, she started the Hunger Concern Programme which subsequently became “Operation Hunger.” Other community organisations to which she lent her support, charismatic public voice and fund-raising energies included the Mobile Recreation Scheme for Soweto, the SA Association of Youth Clubs, the Senior Citizens Foundation, the Federated Union of Black Artists, the Johannesburg Art Foundation, and the National Education Union of SA.

In 1978, Browde resigned her position on the Provincial Council after her enquiries into corruption allegations were repeatedly obstructed. Yet for years after her retirement from formal politics she continued to be moved to action by the challenges faced by Soweto residents and other activists. She founded the Soweto Electricity Advice Centre which exposed the faults and corruption in billing and achieved a change in the system to flat-rate billing.

She returned to her post in the Radiation Oncology department. In the early 1980s she was appointed Professor and Head of Department at the Johannesburg General Hospital. Browde retired from her post for health reasons in 1986.

At a reception in honour of Queen Elizabeth's birthday were (from Left) H P Marede, representative of the Lebowa Government, Dr Selma Browde, Johannesburg City Councillor, Chief Mokgama Matlala, Chief Minister of Lebowa, and Chief A S Molepo, Minister of the Interior in the Lebowa Government on 25 April 1973. (Photo: Gallo Images / Rand Daily Mail / Times Media)

The Progressive Party brought some "big guns" into Randburg to help Dave Wells (second from left) in his campaign for election to the Randburg Town Council on 12 June. Left, Rupert Lorimer MP, Dr Selma Browde MPC, Peter Nixon MPC, and Prof Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert MP on 31 May 1974 in South Africa. (Photo: Gallo Images / Rand Daily Mail/ Times Media / Les Bush)

In the health arena, she was on the committees or boards of the National Cancer Association (Southern Transvaal), Hospice, the Family Life and Marriage Society of SA, the Medical Association of SA, the Colleges of Medicine of SA Faculty of Radiology, and in the 1980’s, she was involved in the anti-apartheid, UDF-aligned National Medical and Dental Association (NAMDA). Through NAMDA, she became involved in examining and treating people after their release from security detention and participated in research that publicised the extent of physical and psychological torture and duress that detainees were subjected to. And in support of student activists, she became the chair of Friends of NUSAS (the National Union of SA Students).

After her retirement, Browde became involved in Palliative Medicine with a focus on pain management at all stages of diseases. Her advocacy resulted in the formation of a committee to formulate a Palliative Medicine policy within the Gauteng Health Department, although she remained frustrated by the lack of active implementation after the committee gave its report. In 1998 she founded the Palliative Medicine Institute (PMI) at Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital (CHB). Although she had retired ten years before I became dean at Wits, she felt driven by her conviction that doctors were ignorant of how to manage patients’ pain to demand regular meetings with me and the heads of medical departments to insist on curricular changes. She also persuaded the heads at Johannesburg and CHB hospitals to set up palliative care teams and personally trained numerous nurses in this area.

Here is one of Browde’s anecdotes that exemplifies how the various strands of her political and medical life were intertwined:

“While I was working as a medical officer in the Radiation Therapy Department, we had a patient who lived in Soweto, and spoke very little English. He had a very painful form of cancer. I gave him everything I could think of, including morphine, but I could not control his pain. After a few days, the patient told the nurse that while he was in hospital he was unable to work, his family had no food, he had been unable to pay the rent and his family was about to be evicted from their house. I immediately phoned the office of the Apartheid government administration of his area of Soweto and, fortunately, the [official] … agreed not to evict the family. I then contacted the National Cancer Association, which in those days gave food parcels to needy families of cancer patients, and we also applied for a disability grant for him. After I told him that he did not need to worry any more, he required only a really small dose of medication to control his pain. … I could not explain why! Only later was it shown how the emotional state of a person influences their perception of pain.”

On discovering that her son was living with HIV, Browde focused her attention increasingly on the epidemics of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (TB) in South Africa. In 2000 she founded the NGO Parents for Aids Action, to impact both of these epidemics. Starting in Alexandra Township, the goal was to educate families about HIV/AIDS and so break the stigma that was attached to the virus. The organisation developed the ‘Community Action Street-based Primary Health Model’ engaging residents in their homes on how to prevent the spread of these epidemics, to residents in their own homes. Browde was also a committee member of numerous other AIDS-related organisations.

In recent years, Browde had also become active in organizations such as Save Israel, Stop the Occupation (SISO) and the Jewish Democratic Initiative (JDI), animated by social justice concerns and the need to find a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In 2004, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science by Wits University. The citation by the award committee is an apt summary of Selma Browde’s public life:

“Dr Browde has dedicated her life to the promotion of health. She has done this as a cancer therapist and researcher, striving to improve the cures, care and palliation available to patients. She has done it as a politician, working to improve the living conditions that determine the health of the poor. She has done it as a caring human being, spreading the word that suffering can be alleviated, teaching health professionals and supporting … those who face death. She has done it as an activist who has succeeded in changing policies and attitudes.”

For me, personally, one of greatest inspirations I draw from Selma’s life was the way in which she refused to give up on the causes she believed in. Yes, she was frequently furious and frustrated with the bureaucracies she butted heads with; she continued to hammer away at those who would not agree with her vision – whether this was a particular definition of palliative medicine or a model of primary community care; but she did not give up. She insisted on doing her bit to improve the world. She was an active participant and contributor to a progressive health WhatsApp group even in her 98^th year – voicing outrage, demanding answers, urging action, attending events. She will remain an example to struggle veterans not to become jaded or give up the fight, because the marginalised and sick need our support more than ever.

Selma Browde was buried on Wednesday 27th December at the Westpark Cemetery in Johannesburg, besides her late husband, Jules Browde. She is survived by three sons, seven grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. DM

• I would like to acknowledge this article [https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/browde-selma] from which I drew in the writing of this obituary.