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Selma Browde "Dear Colleague, please come to a meeting" BROWDE IS A MEDICAL DOCTOR whose specialty is radiology oncology. Medicine is usually considered a full-time occupation, but the energetic doctor has managed to carryon several careers simultaneously with her practice. For instance, she was the only member of the Progressive Party to serve on the Johannesburg City Council in the early to mid-1970s; and beyond her foray into elected politics, Browde has been a committed social activist throughout her adult life. Selma Browde fell into her cancer specialty because she had a baby and wanted the set hours that radiology offered. This tall, youthful, brown-haired, still-beautiful woman in her early seventies suffered a major stroke in the 1980s. She had the courage to regain control over the paralysis that affected her speech and an arm, and she returned to her practice-not because of personal need but because she knew that some forms ofcancer were curable. Browde was born in South Africa. During our lengthy talks, she did not address the issue ofanti-Semitism, perhaps because her childhood experiences were so dissimilar to those of Ray Alexander and Dorothy Wiener, both ofwhom were products of Eastern Europe.1 The orphaned Dorothy gave a high priority to her religious activities, but otherwise wrapped herselfin the cocoon ofself-effacement. On the other hand, Ray had chosen her course of political activism on the Left before she departed from her native Latvia. Coming to South Africa in her early teens as an outsider, she established her identity in the Communist Party. Her early encounters with anti-Semitism serving as motivation for her lifelong crusade on behalf of the downtrodden in her adopted land. Selma grew up sheltered in the bonds of a middle-class family. Born in Cape Town, at the age offour she went to Scotland, where her father studied medicine. When she was eight, they returned. Although the family moved about the Cape 81 SELMA BROWDE during her youth, she had the security of established ties to the community that both Alexander and Wiener lacked. Religion was, ofcourse, important, but not allencompassing , nor was it a millstone around her neck. Thus her role as activist was more within the mainstream, where her greatest achievement was to plant the seeds of a self-help program that led to the founding of Operation Hunger. "In about 1978, I was a city councilor at the time. I also was a doctor but because of my city council work, I have been involved in a number of organizations . I came back from overseas and opened a newspaper and saw that [in recent weeks) there had been a terrible drought in the Northern Transvaal. There was a double-page spread ... on the terrible, terrible starvation that was going on as a result of basic conditions, added to by the drought. "Later that week I happened to go to about five meetings ... and each one of those organizations had on their agenda the poverty and starvation, and it occurred to me at the end of the week that each one had a tiny little agenda to try and do something. But what could they do? So, I found that here are five organizations , each one trying to put in a little bit to do something but it all added up to nothing. It struck me that if you got all those people interested in hunger together in one organization, maybe they could do something to dissipate it. "So, I sat down and wrote a letter-'Dear Colleague ... I am writing as a doctor . . . I would like you to come to a meeting.' I had decided to take a theater at the university [Witwatersrand) and invite all of these people to come ... to fonn a new body, which I called 'The Hunger Concern Program.' It is almost criminal to be competitive [the different organizations) over something like hunger.... I wrote to twenty-five organizations, asking them to come to a meeting on such-and-such a night. "Then it suddenly struck me that I ought to have a black man with me [and) I asked Dr. [Nthato) Motlana. He was very political and is very well known. At that time he was the chainnan of what was known as the Committee of Ten after the Soweto riots [1976).... I asked him if he would agree to cosponsor this new organization. He said, 'Fine, put my name to it,' so I sent the letter out...

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