Frances Connell, May 1934 – December 2023 RIP
Obituary by Paul Goller – Catholic activist Frances Marie Connell died just before Christmas at the age 89, bringing to an end a life filled with family, professional and activist community service.
Born of an Afrikaner family, circumstances required her to assume early responsibilities in the upbringing of her two sisters . Her Afrikaner culture never left her in the English-language, Catholic, liberal (not to say radical) environment which she lived out her life. Her commitment to her husband Tony — who fought in the SA army during World War II — and her family of five sons and one daughter (Lucy) was a fundamental aspect of her life. Her defence of all of them under attack from individuals or the state was remarkable.
In 1952 Frankie, as she was widely known, started her studies at Wits University to become a social worker. Much later in life she returned to Wits to lecture newcomers to her profession, bringing to bear her wide experience of our endemic social problems, properly grounded in personal care she gave to individual people suffering directly from the consequences of political violence and torture.
The people she met at Wits’ Catholic Students Society opened her up to the social justice and general intellectual aspects of Catholicism which was to form a fundamental aspect of her adult life. Her concern about the full development and participation of lay women in the life of the Church led her to become active in the Grail Movement which had arisen in Holland after World War 2 to do precisely this. In both of these movements she made a host of lifelong friends, of which she and the writer of this obituary were now almost the sole Gauteng survivors.
One of her university passions was drama. Others will be able to provide examples but I recall how I had the idea for us to go the theatre which I thought was not one of her husband’s interests. And so we did in her later decades. I also gave her NP van Wyk Louw and Breyten Breytenbach poetry books over the years.
The Connell family home on Jan Smuts Avenue was the original Saxonwold farmhouse, with beautiful features, but this did mean that it could not be altered without Heritage approval. This did not inhibit its use for many family and community and activist occasions, including providing shelter for individuals in hiding from the Security Police from time to time.
Veteran journalist Sydney Duval recalls the Connell home near Zoo Lake as “a longstanding host for so many meetings that helped shape the Catholic response to the damaging presence of apartheid in a profoundly distressed society”.
He lauds Frances’ generosity, compassion and spirit of her life and presence, with husband Tony, as faithful supporters for social justice through CARE (Catholic Action for Racial Equality).
By parental choice her children attended government schools, which meant that they were often subjected to opprobrium at school because of their parents’ high struggle profile. Tony himself lost his job at least once because of this. (I hope their children and their wives will record their own lives during the apartheid years). I also remember Tony standing guard at the door of a Liberal Party meeting in Orange Grove, probably in the early 1960s; they were members until it was banned.
The values of social justice which Frankie and other Catholic activists of of her generation strove to live by and pass on to their children are as necessary as ever.
Rest in peace, Frankie.
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