Theresa Mary Solomon (nee Jasson) was born on 5th August 1945 in District Six, the second child of Gregoria and Henry (Boysie) Jasson. She was the product of her family and community, where she acquired the values and the character that guided her throughout her life – love for community, love for family, especially children, love and respect for people.
Theresa’s early years were met by challenges we see in all our communities—racism and discrimination, rising alcoholism, and gangsterism.
She married Marcus Solomon in 1975 and, in September of the same year, gave birth to a daughter, Lee-Anne. This gave her the motivation to give more attention to the place of children in the struggle and the new society we were struggling for, and how to bring up a child in the context of a struggle for a better world. As her community and political activism increased and intensified, and she saw the extremely negative influence of alcohol in the home and the community, she took a conscious decision to stop drinking completely.
Years of the struggle
The late 70s, 80s and early 90s were very interesting times. They were times of rising struggle all over the world. And they were also some of the most exciting and creative times in our lives, and in the lives of many South Africans. People realised that a better world was possible. We saw this in practice in the struggles communities were waging at every level, culturally, educationally, politically, and ideologically. All sectors and age groups rose to the occasion, coming together to create change. All this gave us energy.
Theresa became active in all aspects of the life of Mitchell’s Plain, Cape Town, and South Africa more broadly. During this time, with many fellow activists, she was instrumental in setting up study groups, the United Women’s Organisation, and creches for children, and helping to launch youth groups, the children’s movement and residents’ associations, which went on to become the Cape Areas Housing Action Committee (CAHAC). CAHAC played a leading role in launching the United Democratic Front (UDF).
Struggle for Theresa, first and foremost, was about creating a better quality of life in the communities—peaceful, stable, full of love and material wellbeing, where people could live in harmony with each other. But as her political consciousness grew, she became acutely aware that it could not happen in the divided, apartheid communities, in the narrow confines of racially classified categories of African, Coloured, and Indian.
This is what motivated her to join political movements and organisations. Her initial political ideology was through the Black Consciousness Movement; later, she became a member of the ANC and was recruited into the underground. She believed that the struggle under the leadership of these movements and political organisations, with the vision of the Freedom Charter, would give birth to a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic South Africa.
She was arrested and detained several times, the first time in 1978, and charged twice for public violence.
The democratic era
After 1994, Theresa’s activism continued in government. It was here that she worked towards the realisation of the Freedom Charter. She was the first female Black Mayor of the City of Cape Town, and then a member of the Western Cape Provincial Legislature, before being appointed as High Commissioner to Tanzania and Canada.
In her retirement, she became increasingly vocal, criticising the way the government was failing to carry out its mandate to improve the quality of life of the majority of South Africans, the poor and the marginalised.
There are many Theresas out there in our communities. Like Theresa, they are not in organisations, except the ones they form to fight the issues they see as a threat to the lives of their children and those of the communities they live in. They join political parties in the hope that they will help bring about change to better the living conditions of their communities. The history of the last thirty years has shown this to be not the case.
The role of the conscious agents in our communities is to help build the unity of these self-organised formations and give them a higher level of consciousness. It is to create people’s power, to give meaning and bring to realisation their and our collective vision of a better, qualitatively richer and more meaningful way of life.
Hambe Kahle Theresa.
May your spirit live on.
Marcus Solomon and daughter Lee-Anne Levendal
