Dora Tamana
Synopsis
Member of SACP, National Secretary of FSAW, member of the ANC Women’s League
First name
Dora
Last name
Tamana
Date of birth
11-November-1901
Location of birth
Hlobo, Eastern Cape (formerly Transkei), South Africa
Date of death
23-July-1983
Gender
Female
Dora Tamana (nee Ntloko) was born in 1901 in Hlobo, Transkei, the eldest of seven children. Her childhood centred mainly on the many tasks demanded of a young girl growing up in rural South Africa. Tamana and her four sisters had to help work on their father’s plot, before and after school, where they cultivated potatoes, pumpkins, peas, cabbages, and chillies, as well as keeping some livestock. Every Saturday the girls would go to Idutywa, the nearest town, to sell their produce to make “money so that we could buy cookies and tea and so on”¦” (Tamana in Scanlon, 2007: 169).