Happy Joyce Mashamba (25 September 1950 – 20 June 2018) was a South African politician and veteran of the African National Congress (ANC). At the time of her death, she was Member of the Executive Council (MEC) for Agriculture and Rural Development in the provincial government of Limpopo. She was also a member of the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party and a former member of the ANC National Executive Committee and the ANC Women's League National Executive Committee.
During apartheid, Mashamba was an anti-apartheid activist with her husband, George; she was imprisoned from 1977 to 1982 for running an underground ANC cell in Turfloop, Transvaal. In 1994 she was elected to the National Assembly and in 1999 she was elected to the Limpopo Provincial Legislature, where she spent the rest of her career. She served as MEC in six different portfolios under each of the first five Premiers of Limpopo and became the province's longest-serving MEC. She was also briefly Deputy Speaker of the Limpopo Provincial Legislature from 2012 to 2013.
Early life and activism
Mashamba was born on 25 September 1950 in Mulamula, a small village in Malamulele in what was then the Northern Transvaal (now Limpopo province). She matriculated in 1975 and the following year became Assistant Librarian at the University of the North, where her husband, George, was a philosophy lecturer and Master's student. The university campus was at Mankweng, Transvaal (Turfloop), and during that period it was a central arena for student anti-apartheid politics, particularly in the Black Consciousness Movement. Mashamba was a founding member of the Mankweng Civic Association and served on its first executive committee.
In addition, according to Daphne Mashile-Nkosi, who knew Mashamba during apartheid, Mashamba was recruited into the African National Congress (ANC) underground in 1974. She was recruited during a meeting in Swaziland with the leaders of the ANC's Swaziland unit, including Jacob Zuma and Thabo Mbeki, who persuaded Mashamba and her husband to set up an underground ANC cell on the other side of the border in South Africa.
Detention: 1976–1982
In 1976 the Mashambas were arrested, along with S'bu Ndebele (then an ANC operative in Swaziland) and Percy Tshabalala, and were charged with "furthering the aims and objectives" of the ANC, which at the time was banned inside South Africa. Mashamba and the others pled not guilty in the Rand Supreme Court. During the trial, which lasted from October 1976 to February 1977, several state's witnesses testified that the Mashambas had attempted to recruit them into the ANC for political education and military training and had attempted to distribute ANC propaganda publications. Mashamba was also implicated in reconnaissance for the ANC: prosecutors alleged that she had gathered strategic information for the ANC about police stations and military camps in the Transvaal. Her husband later recalled that the state had presented evidence that, without his knowledge, Mashamba had occasionally driven ANC recruits into Swaziland; he said that when he asked her about it during the trial, she simply replied, "don't you know the [secrecy] rules of our organisation?".
In February 1977, Mashamba was convicted and sentenced to five years' imprisonment; her husband and Ndebele were sentenced to ten years on Robben Island. The Mashambas' three young children, all under the age of six, were raised by family while Mashamba served her sentence at Kroonstad Prison in the Free State. While in prison, Mashamba studied through the University of South Africa (Unisa), obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1982.
Release: 1982–1994
Upon her release in 1982, Mashamba lived in Newclare, Johannesburg in a house that became a de facto safe house for activists fleeing the Transvaal security police. From 1982 to 1985, she was a development officer at the South African Council of Churches (SACC), working especially at the Dependants' Conference, an organisation formed by the SACC to support political prisoners and their families. She was also the national organiser for the Federation of Transvaal Women from 1985. Having continued her underground political work, she was rearrested during the state of emergency of 1986, a year before her husband was released from prison.