Stella Petersen Honoray Doctorate from UCT

WHEN Stella Petersen
takes her seat in UCT’s Jameson Hall next week, waiting to be capped
with an honorary doctorate from her alma mater, she can be quite
confident that none of her fellow graduands will move away from her
because of her skin colour.

Sadly, that wasn’t the case when
she was an undergraduate in the early 1940s, at the start of a long and
distinguished career path that began with her becoming the first woman
of colour to earn a Master’s degree in botany from UCT and included
“Life Time Achiever” and “Outstanding Contribution to Conservation
Efforts in the Western Cape” awards in recognition of her teaching
prowess over decades, with a particular focus on South Africa’s
indigenous vegetation.

Most white students would refuse
to sit next to Petersen (then Jacobs) and her close friend Cynthia
during lectures in their undergraduate years from 1942-4, the now
88-year-old recalled during an interview in her daughter’s Plumstead
home where she now lives – “It was only the late-comers who had to!”

But neither that racism,
symptomatic of South African society at the time, nor financial hardship
deterred the young student who had got a loan from the African People’s
Organisation to pay her university fees.

“It was study, study, all the time, because I was determined to make it, despite all the difficulties,” she said.

“There were times when we thought,
‘Oh, to go down to Rondebosch for a cup of hot chocolate and a
flapjack,’ but we had no money and so had to do with sandwiches. But
Cynthia and I stuck to each other and we said, ‘We’re going to make
it!’”

If her
fellow students were unfriendly, her lecturers were not. Petersen’s
particular mentor was Edith Stephens, the visionary botanist whose
concern for the critically endangered Cape quillwort Isoetes capensis led her to buy the Philippi property where it was found and which is now conserved as the Edith Stephens Wetland Park.

And it was the head of department,
Harry Bolus, Professor of Botany Robert Adamson, who persuaded her to
embark on her history-making Master’s thesis that involved observing and
describing the peculiar structure of an indigenous Oxalis species. “I
was asked by my professor to do this research work on how this bulb
grew. It’s very strange – it sends out a runner, and then a bulb, and
then a runner, and then another bulb…

“I had this trenching tool that I
used, and I would take Edward (who later became her husband) with me to
Signal Hill where it was growing. And my late father built a contraption
for me where I could observe its development.”

Another student of colour at UCT
who would also become a distinguished teacher, the late Richard Dudley –
he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2009 – was a few years ahead of
her, but helped her cope with the academic rigours of university.

“He lent me his notebooks so that I could prepare before going into the practical room,” she remembered.

It was her father, David Jacobs,
who had served as a non-combatant soldier in World War I, who engendered
her love of plants, although somewhat ironically, given her life-long
work with indigenous plants, the first species she fell in love with was
an alien poppy.

“He had
spent much time in Egypt. When he came back home to Brentwood Road (in
Wynberg), there was a recession. He was unemployed for several years and
we suffered tremendous hardships,” she recalled. “He grew vegetables,
but also Iceland poppies which he sold to a neighbour. We used to run up
and down with bunches of Iceland poppies.”

After graduating, she responded to
an advertisement for a botanical research position at the then Cape
Technical College and was accepted, having filled in “South African” to
the question about race. But when she arrived to start work, she saw two
white staff look at her and then exchange meaningful glances.

“I thought, ‘Hmmm, a problem!’ The
principal took me into a room and explained it was a post for a person
classified ‘white’, and I just left.” It was only later that
anti-apartheid activist and friend Ben Kiss told her she’d been entitled
to claim three months’ pay.

In 1949, she was awarded the first
South African International Foundation Research Fellowship to study
science education at Syracuse University in the US, and made her way
there via Britain.

“We went to New York on an old
troop carrier and I got very, very seasick. But fortunately there were
these American students going back home on holiday and they said,
‘Honey, come, we’ll walk with you,’ and I felt better.”

After an inauspicious arrival –
there was a longshoreman’s strike and their luggage wasn’t unloaded –
she made her way to the university in upstate New York where she enjoyed
“a very good time”, visiting many American schools.

“It was
winter and it was cold! And some of the pupils made snowballs and would
aim at me, but the other students were very kind and would say: ‘She’s
not an American, let her go through.’”

After a year at Dower College in
Uitenhage, she worked at Hewat College where she was the first teacher
of colour, until her marriage to Edward in 1956. Then she taught at
Livingstone High in Lansdowne Road, Claremont, during the politically
fraught years from 1976 until 1990 – the same school where Dudley made
such an impact during his 39-year teaching stint.

In January, 1991 Petersen started
work as a voluntary guide in Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden at
what would later become the environmental centre. Here she introduced
thousands of pupils, many from impoverished parts of the Cape Flats, to
the wonders of South Africa’s incredibly rich botanical diversity.

“It was such a delight, those children were so lovely. I would teach them about anything, from fynbos to the lawns.

“They would just stand and look at
the lawns and I would say, ‘Go on, roll!’ – they couldn’t believe it,
that they could roll on the grass. It made them itch, but they didn’t
worry about that!”

And the girls would fight for a
chance to hold her hand as they walked through the garden – “You’ve been
next to Miss for long enough now, it’s my turn!”

After a
fall at home in 1999 in which she broke a femur, her Kirstenbosch
responsibilities were restricted to just once a week on Mondays, but she
continued there until June last year when she finally quit.

She has many wonderful memories,
and one of the special ones is of a youngster saying to her: “Granny,
you look old, you walk old, but you don’t talk old.”

“That was such a lovely thing to
say. And now when I lie in bed on a Monday morning, (in my mind) I go
through the whole scene of being at the Kirstenbosch environmental
centre,” she said.

She’s looking forward to the
moment next Friday when the honorary doctoral hood will be drawn over
her head, honouring a lifetime’s dedication to the cause of science
education.

“I will admit, I feel pleased about it, because I worked very hard,” she said.

john.yeld@inl.co.za