CHIEF HENNIE VAN WYK

Hendrik "Hennie" Van Wyk born in Vredendal on 14th July 1936. His childhood witnessed some of the final days of the colonial rule and the transition to the apartheid regime in 1948 and  1950. Hennie and his family were forced to register as coloured.

He moved to Cape Town at he age of 14 to continue his education and remained in school till grade 10. By this time, Grade 10 examinations and curriculums in South Africa were segregated by race. In this period Hennie boarded with a Mr and Mrs Lewin, a highly political couple where he was first exposed to a political education. As a teenager, Hennie delivered African National Congress newspapers The New Age and The Torch.

He worked with a travelling salesman journeying between Durban , Johannesburg and Cape Town from 1957-1958. During this period (the introduction of Group Areas Act) he experienced apartheid discrimination at its worst. Because of his racial classification he had no choice but to become politically active.

in 1961 Hennie joined the City of Cape Town Municipality for whom he worked 34 years during these years he became an active member of Cape Town Municipal Workers Association.

His political consciousness and sense of injustice in the apartheid regime was heightened from 1968, when his promotion to the role of a meter reader meant that he regularly began to enter White homes.

 In the wake of the Soweto Uprising in 1976 his political consciousness further heightened which sparked a new wave of anti-apartheid resistance from the Coloured community.

Van Wyks involvement with trade unions and community organisations in the liberation struggle grew in the early 1980's joining the Steenberg Housing Action Committee and was newly established in the Congress of South African Trade Unions.


CELEBRATING HERITAGE MONTH WE URGE EVERYONE TO START RESEARCHING AND DISCOVERING THEIR HISTORY.  To further read on Chief Hennie visit www.sahistory.org.za

Done By

Jasmine Mazwi