Victoria Mxenge

Victoria Nonyamezelo Mxenge was born in 1942 in Tamara, King William's Town. Working as a nurse and midwife, she studied law through the University of South Africa, qualifying as an attorney in 1981.

Following the brutal assassination of her husband, civil rights lawyer Griffiths Mxenge, by apartheid death squads in 1981, Victoria bravely kept their Durban legal practice open, defending student activists and ANC freedom fighters. In 1985, as a member of the defense team in the high-profile Pietermaritzburg Treason Trial of UDF leaders, she delivered a blistering speech at the funeral of the Cradock Four. Days later, on August 1, 1985, she was gunned down in front of her children by four apartheid hitmen.