Hundreds of mourners have paid tribute to
“Theo’s priceless gem” at a memorial service for Helen Kotze, who was honoured
for her behind-the-scenes fight against apartheid.
The wife of the late struggle theologian Reverend
Theo Kotze, Helen passed away in Cape Town aged 92 last month.
Addressing a packed Rosebank Methodist Church on
Thursday afternoon, the family’s close friend and fellow theologian activist Charles
Villa-Vicencio described Theo as the “committed opstoker” and Helen as the
“rock” who was the “mother of the Christian Institute” in Cape Town, a stalwart
of the Black Sash and a “champion of the poor”.
Together, the
couple, who had five children, were a “formidable pair who paid “an enormous
price” in the fight against apartheid.
As activists at the Christian Institute in Mowbray, their
home was searched and shot at by security police. In 1977 the Institute and Theo were banned, leaving
him with no choice but to cross the border into Botswana. Helen and her family followed,
embarking on a new journey into exile “beginning to pay the price in a new way
– the loneliness of exile”.
After 15 years of being uprooted, the couple
returned to South Africa in 1993 – at the dawn of the new SA.
The couple’s son Derek told the friends at the service
that his mother’s life “could not be described as a happy one, but it was a
rich one”.
Another close
family friend and activist, Horst Kleinschmidt said that in the liberated SA,
Helen’s values remained what they were before 1994, a life in search of
‘justice and honesty”.
“The struggle left them with no house of their own
and every cent had to be turned twice before it was spent. They never
complained nor had regrets,” said Kleinschmidt.
The story of the Kotzes and of the Christian Institute
had not yet found its place in South African history, and it “deserves
remembering”, he said.
The Institute and the Mowbray office was a place of
education, where a “small and beleaguered community of apartheid opponents” of
all races gathered, where they set an example in living an alternative life to
apartheid.
Kleinschmidt said that like so many others after liberation in 1994, Helen's role as a freeom fighter had been forgotten.
This was why in her Diep River retirement home,
Helen was very proud of the National Orders award, the order of Luthuli, that
Theo was given posthumously by the president in 2009 for his contribution to
democracy*In a note at his computer, Theo referred to his wife as his "priceless gem".
* This article first appeared on the Cape Times web. www.capetimes.co.za
