Devikarani Priscilla Sewpal Jana was a South African human rights lawyer, politician and diplomat.
41 Facts About Priscilla Jana
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Priscilla Jana represented many significant figures in the movement, including South African president Nelson Mandela, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Steve Biko, Govan Mbeki, Walter Sisulu, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
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Priscilla Jana's activism made her subject to violent harassment and an eventual banning order.
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Priscilla Jana was an ambassador of the South African government to the Netherlands and Ireland, and a commissioner with the South African Human Rights Commission.
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Priscilla Jana was a member of the justice committee that was responsible for the roll-out of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
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Devikarani Priscilla Jana Sewpal was born 5 December 1943, in Westville, Natal near the port city of Durban.
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Priscilla Jana was the second child amongst three children to Hansrani Sewpal and Hansraj Sewpal.
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Priscilla Jana's parents were middle-class Indian immigrants with her father being a high school teacher.
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Priscilla Jana's father's challenging of social injustices ranging from apartheid to the Indian caste system based discrimination, was an early influence on her.
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Priscilla Jana first joined the Pietermaritzburg Girls' High School, where she organized a walkout as a part of a national potato boycott in 1958 protesting the treatment of Black farmers.
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Priscilla Jana began her high school in Durban in 1960 and went to India on a Government of India scholarship to study medicine at the Sophia College for Women in Bombay.
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Priscilla Jana grew up at a time when neighborhoods, schools, and all public facilities, were segregated by racial profile.
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Priscilla Jana became Mandela's personal attorney and her access allowed her to pass coded messages from the ANC organization to Mandela, while joking and teasing.
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Priscilla Jana was one of the last of Mahlangu's supporters to see him on the night prior to his execution, and came back carrying a message to carry on with the fight for freedom.
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In 1979, Priscilla Jana opened her own law practice, focusing on civil liberties and human rights cases.
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Priscilla Jana started off by representing Nelson Mandela and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela as their lawyer in the mid-1970s.
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Priscilla Jana had gotten to know the couple when Mandela was serving imprisoned at the Robben Island prison.
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Racially motivated laws of the time meant that as a person of Indian origin, Priscilla Jana was not allowed to stay overnight while visiting her client.
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Priscilla Jana continued to remain connected with Madikizela-Mandela as she was released from Brandfort and began to appeal to more radical and younger protesters who took to more radical forms of protest in taking on authorities.
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Priscilla Jana went on to raise this objection with Mandela when he was released from prison.
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Priscilla Jana expressed her own radical side when she faulted Mandela for forgiving his former opponents upon being released from prison.
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Priscilla Jana was targeted by state agents in the mid-1980s, with her home bombed with Molotov cocktail attacks.
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Priscilla Jana's offices were periodically raided, with files and documents often rummaged through in an effort to intimidate her.
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Priscilla Jana took on activist client Popo Molefe and his wife Phinda Molefe's baby girl, Albertina, when the mother left her behind in Jana's office in despair.
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Priscilla Jana represented the poet Benjamin Moloise, who was condemned to death by hanging for the killing of a policeman in 1982.
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Priscilla Jana's efforts had helped mobilize global attention and subsequent calls from global organizations and governments asking the then-South African government to grant clemency.
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Priscilla Jana was with Moloise's elderly mother on a vigil in 1985 when the elder Moloise's house was surrounded by soldiers and tear-gassed.
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Priscilla Jana was a part of the Black Consciousness Movement that opposed movements to ensure multiracialism in the African National Congress.
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Priscilla Jana was an activist member of the Democratic Women's Movement, and issued calls for boycott of the apartheid elections and the creation of a new apartheid constitution, in August 1985.
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At a time when most legal activists saw their role within the bounds of the legal system, Priscilla Jana often crossed over into being a radical activist.
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Priscilla Jana had been a member of the South African Law Commission, and a member of the Presidential Advisory Committee.
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Priscilla Jana was a member of the justice committee that was responsible for the roll-out of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
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Priscilla Jana was a contributor to President Thabo Mbeki's Millennium Africa Recovery Programme, which represented a pan-African initiative to set Africa on a path to sustainable development and growth, and actions to eradicate poverty.
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Priscilla Jana went on to serve as South Africa's ambassador to the Netherlands from 2001 to 2005 and as the ambassador to Ireland from 2006 to 2011, serving as a diplomat for a total of nine years.
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Priscilla Jana took charge as the commissioner and deputy chair person of the South African Human Rights Commission in 2017.
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Priscilla Jana was the recipient of a lifetime achievement award at the Woza Awards in 2017, an award established to identify and recognize women in the legal fraternity.
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Priscilla Jana met her husband Reg Priscilla Jana, who was a South African student studying in India, when she was studying medicine at the Sophia College for Women in Bombay.
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Priscilla Jana writes of the banning order being a cause for great stress and ruining her life and marriage.
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Priscilla Jana then married Reagan Jacobus, a self-made lawyer, with that marriage leading to a divorce in the mid-1990s.
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Priscilla Jana died on 10 October 2020 in a care home in Pretoria at the age of 76.
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Priscilla Jana is survived by a daughter, Alberta Jana Molefe, and a son, Shivesh Sewpal.