Now in her 80s, Dr Lillian Cingo remains the heart and soul of the One to One Mentor Mothers programme in South Africa
Dr Lillian's incredible story includes meeting Queen Elizabeth in 1975, while exiled in the UK. She was presented as the UK’s Best Neurological Nurse Specialist, and then invited to establish a regional neurosurgical unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London, which she managed for the next 15 years.
Dr Lillian has dedicated her life to service, in the face of injustices including the murder of one brother under the apartheid regime, and the imprisonment of another brother.
Today, 40 village women, trained and employed by a programme supported by her, deliver healthcare in the remote Eastern Cape where Dr Lillian is originally from. Here, 70% of people live in poverty and 90% of these One to One Mentor Mothers are themselves HIV positive.
· Journalist Hazel Friedman has created this short film together with Dr Lillian; narrated by One to One Africa’s Executive Director Gqibelo Dandala.
· Hazel Friedman also wrote the following essay, published this month in the book Tell Your Mother's Story, Volume 6.
· Dr Lillian Cingo has been acknowledged as one of South Africa's 21 icons, placed, rightly, alongside the greats of Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
· And she won a Power of Women award in August from the South African Mail & Guardian newspaper.
Celebrate Dr Lillian and support the One to One programme at this significant event in London’s art calendar: Dualities: Women’s Empowerment in Africa, running from Saturday morning November 18 through to Saturday afternoon November 25. Book your tickets (at no cost) via this link.
Motherhood, Mentorship, Healing & Hope: The Story of Dr Lillian Cingo
By Hazel Friedman
From rural roots to diasporic routes
Growing up in the traditional village of Ndakeni in the mountains of Flagstaff, Eastern Cape, Lillian Nomathemba Cingo felt blessed. This was not only because she was the progeny of royalty – her great-Grandfather, King Faku kaNgqunqushe, was the last ruling monarch of the AmaMpondo Kingdom from 1818-1867. She felt privileged because, although she had to daily trudge 25 kilometres to and from the village school she attended as a young girl, unlike many of her childhood peers, she could afford to wear shoes. “I would remove my shoes as soon as I left home so I could play and walk barefoot with my friends who didn’t have the same opportunities as me,” she recalls. Altruism, empathy and walking side by side with those in need have become recurring signposts along the personal and professional path of this extraordinary woman.
We are strolling through fields of green and gold, sheltered from the early summer sun by sweet thorn trees that embrace us in a maze of soft thorns and yellow pom poms. Dr Lillian Cingo gazes across the panoramic vistas of her birthplace.
This internationally acclaimed neurological nurse and psychologist has returned home to her rural roots. Although an octogenarian - she turned 85 on 30th June 2023 - she exudes the energy and enthusiasm of an adolescent, joyously immersed in the landscape and among the communities she loves. Her trajectory of tragedy and triumph from South Africa into the diaspora of exile, and back again, has been fuelled by an unwavering commitment to service. She has received over 30 awards. In 1975, Dr Lillian was presented to Queen Elizabeth as the UK’s Best Neurological Nurse Specialist, and then invited to establish a regional neurosurgical unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London, which she managed for the next 15 years.
Dr Lillian has also been selected as one of South Africa's 21 icons, alongside Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Her most recent honour was being selected in August 2023 as a recipient of the annual ‘Power of Women’ awards, by the South African Mail & Guardian newspaper. But the accolades, although appreciated, are secondary to a life dedicated to duty. In her golden years, rather than deservedly resting on her laurels, Dr Lillian has devoted her expertise to empowering South Africa’s rural communities.
The surface seductiveness of the Edenic landscape of her birthplace camouflages a place pockmarked by poverty and neglect, populated by rural communities for whom the pot of gold at the end of the post-apartheid rainbow nation remains elusive. “It breaks my heart to see the daily struggles of rural communities to access the most basic services, from water to healthcare,” she muses. “Yet, they remain patient and hopeful. Their resilience constantly inspires me with passion and purpose.”
Dr Lillian attributes her exemplary work ethic to her family. Despite lacking a formal education, her maternal grandmother, Lydia Ngqunqushe, encouraged Dr Lillian’s mother, Winnie, to graduate as the first teacher in her village. Winnie subsequently became principal of a local school. Her father, Merriman Gasela Cingo, was similarly filled with pride and purpose, encouraging his family to pursue their ambitions. He was a boarding master at Flagstaff’s Faku Training College where Lillian completed her matric – final secondary school exams - in 1955. Her father remains legendary for mentoring students and promoting an ethos of Ubuntu, which calls on individuals to promote the welfare of collective society, within his family and community.
Nursing was Dr Lillian’s destiny. “My family and community were imbued with the maternal values of giving, caring and sharing as well as the importance of education,” she recalls. “They weren’t conscious choices. It was simply who we were.”
In Flagstaff her sole contact with whites had been through missionaries who ran rural schools and nurtured the gifted student. When she embarked on her nursing career in 1956, apart from two overseas students, there were no white trainees at the Thaba-Nchu Mission Hospital where she studied. But she had become painfully aware of apartheid’s institutionalised racism. “My uncle, Dr Reginald Cingo opened the first Black High School in Kroonstad, and it was horrifying for me to discover the treatment of our people, especially the children.”
Dr Lillian spent several years working at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto and won professional awards in nursing and midwifery. But her personal trajectory had become inextricably interlaced with the politics of oppression, particularly when her older brother, Sonwabo, was incarcerated for - amongst other charges - reading the banned book Naught for your Comfort – a searing indictment of apartheid penned by Anglican clergyman and activist Father Trevor Huddleston. His imprisonment was followed by the murder of her younger brother Sikhumbuzo, who she believes was targeted by an apartheid hit squad.
By the early 1960s the apartheid juggernaut was in full throttle. Dr Lillian had set her heart on studying neurosurgery and psychology – an impossible quest for a black woman in apartheid South Africa. “For me it wasn’t only about treating brain tumours and spinal lesions of individual patients but also about utilising psychological tools to provide constructive, compassionate input to their families.”
Her only option of pursuing the path of neuropsychology lay outside South Africa. In 1966 she left her beloved homeland for Britain. It was there that she met, fell in love with and married Reginald Hlongwane – a gifted sportsman and exiled founder of SANROC (the South African Non Racial Olympics Committee) who had been granted political asylum. It was a heady, tumultuous era - embracing international liberation movements, living in fear of being targeted by apartheid’s state security agents, while sharing rage, love, loss and longing for their homeland. The apartheid regime had refused to renew her passport and for five years Lillian was stateless, until eventually receiving her British citizenship, “It was devastating, but we persevered,” she recalls. “When my son Jameson was born in 1969 I felt a mixture of relief that he was protected from South Africa’s racism; but also sadness for my family back home who were deprived of sharing his formative childhood years.”
Dr Lillian and Reginald eventually divorced, but their bond remained, sealed through their son, their love for South Africa, their unwavering commitment to social justice and their desire to impart a legacy of respect for human rights to their progeny. Reginald passed away in London during 2022. His dying wish was to be returned to and buried in his birthplace – a desire that Dr Liilian fulfilled.
On Track towards Healing and Hope
Despite a flourishing international career in neuropsychology Dr Lillian’s yearning for home never diminished. Almost thirty years later, with the demise of apartheid, she returned. South African democracy was in its infancy and rural communities were still paying the heaviest price for the gaping disparities hewn by apartheid’s racial and socio-economic iniquities. “In London, everything I achieved was geared towards nurturing the building of a healthy South Africa. My heart lay with rural communities and the challenges they continue to bear. I was determined to assist them towards greater empowerment.”
Towards this end Dr Lillian became one of the drivers of a ground-breaking initiative to fast-track healthcare to rural areas, literally. From 1995 to 2008 she served as the Joint Manager of the Phelophepa Health Train. The Sotho/Tswana word meaning ‘good, clean health’, Phelophepa has been dubbed “the train of hope”. The Transnet-owned locomotive still travels countrywide, serving as a one-stop multiservice facility for rural communities. Dr Lillian spent nine months of every year aboard the Phelophepa train as it wound its way through South Africa’s most remote areas. “Each day I learned so much about the generosity of rural communities. It was a give-and-take relationship,” she says.
So successful was the train of hope that by early 2000s it had serviced over 600,000 people. Dr Lillian and the Phelophepa Portfolio Co-ordinator Dr Lynette Coetzee, who Dr Lillian still lauds as a role model, received the Order of St John’s Award by Queen Elizabeth.
Dr Lillian emphasises that Phelophepa was a healing train, not only of the physical body but emotionally and spiritually, as well. “Although the staff hailed from different backgrounds we were a united team, riding the train together on the journey of democracy.” She adds, “We felt that, just as the ocean is made up of droplets, we could each contribute to solving problems, one drop at a time and one step at a time.”
Empowering the Sisterhood for Sustainable Communities
It was the Phelophepa model of personalised, empathetic healthcare that subsequently drew Dr Lillian to another pioneering programme. While still working on the Phelophepa train she met philanthropist David Altschuler and his wife Jenny, who in 2001 had founded an NGO called One To One. Although established in the United Kingdom, One To One has made an indelible footprint on the rural landscape of South Africa. It partnered with Dr Lillian on the Phelophepa Training, providing paediatric education and outreach programmes.
One To One’s trailblazing accomplishments include spearheading the distribution of anti-retroviral treatment to HIV-positive mothers and children during South Africa’s AIDS denial years. One To One’s methodology of healthcare delivery and empowerment has become a model for the South African government. In 2014, One To One Africa was established within the most impoverished communities of rural South Africa, in the region formerly known as Transkei, in the Eastern Cape, which is South Africa’s poorest province. Dr Lillian is a One To One Board member and regularly visits these remote communities, close to where she was raised. They remind her of her childhood in Flagstaff.
“When I was a child, everyone felt part of an extended family,” she reflects. “One to One implements a similar nurturing and maternal approach to healthcare. They truly connect with the community, from the traditional chiefs and healers, to young and old alike.”
As the name One To One suggests, its success is predicated on a personalised, supportive, one-on-one model, implemented one step at a time. Through a ground-breaking initiative called the One to One Mentor Mothers programme, local women are trained as community healthcare workers. Daily, these intrepid heroines visit households in 36 rural villages on foot, treading for hours along precarious mountainous paths to ensure the needs of families are being met.
Their services range from monitoring nutrition and arranging documentation for social grants, to detecting early pregnancies. They serve as first responders, providing assessments and referrals to clinics located hours away. In the absence of ambulances, they also arrange transport to public health facilities. Additional initiatives spearheaded by Mentor Mothers include growing food gardens, Early Childhood Development and Mentor Brothers programmes. They also train healthcare workers in the province’s beleaguered health department.
Many One to One Mentor Mothers have experienced their own health challenges – 90% are HIV positive, for example. Therefore, their approach is not prescriptive but empathetic. Together with Dr Lillian, they are healing and empowering the sisterhood through compassion, practical support and a mother’s touch.
“Despite being poor in resources, rural communities are rich in resilience and our visits are always filled with joy, from the jubilation of the families who greet us, to the pride of the mentor mothers in their achievements, like providing seeds for food gardens and validating the families they serve,” Dr Lillian enthuses. “Previously malnourished children now look healthier, their eyes shine with excitement. Mothers, who were depressed now smile, confident in the support they receive. Entire communities are feeling uplifted by this model of empowerment that can be implemented worldwide.”
She adds: “Hope is a fantastic choice because it’s about believing that life will be better. This is what I returned home for: healing and hope.”
Extract from Tell Your Mother's Story, Volume 6, by the Oral History Association of South Africa (OHASA), and launched 10 October 2023 at South Africa's 20th Annual National Oral History Conference.
Series Editor: Dr Kogielam Archary.
Copyright Owner: South African Department of Sport, Arts & Culture (DSAC).
Photo: Adrian Steirn for 21 ICONS South Africa