Ellen Kuzwayo activism included serving as the president of the Black Consumer Union of South Africa and the Maggie Magaba Trust. On the 1985 publication of her autobiography, "Call Me Woman", in which she described being beaten by her husband, Kuzwayo became the first black writer to win South Africa's leading literary prize, the CNA Award. After Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South African president in 1994, Kuzwayo became a member of the country's first multiracial Parliament, aged 79, and served for five years until June 1999, when she was South Africa's longest-serving parliamentarian. With director Betty Wolpert, Kuzwayo was involved in
Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South Africa Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South Africa The Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South Africa (IDASA) later known as the Institute for Democracy in South Africa was a South African-based think-tank organisation that was formed in 1986 by Frederik van Zyl Slabbert and Alex Boraine. Its initial focus from 1987 was creating an environment for white South Africans to talk to the banned liberation movement in-exile, the African National Congress (ANC) prior to its unbanning in 1990 by the President F. W. de Klerk. After the South African election in 1994, its focus would be on ensuing the establishment of