Dorothy Williams

 

South African police arrested teacher Dorothy Williams in the school playground – in front of her pupils

In September 1963, while teaching at Pauw Gedenk primary school in her home town of Wellington, South Africa, Dorothy Adams, who has died aged 83, was arrested under the "90-day law". Her former pupil Cudore Snell later wrote to her: "You were arrested like a criminal while we children watched you on the playground as you were put into the police van."
While in detention, Dorothy heard a fellow political prisoner whistling. She whistled back the tune of Dvorák's New World Symphony. The prisoner later mentioned this in his Jail Diary, published in 1966. His name was Albie Sachs. Many years later, in London, Dorothy was to take the stage with him after a performance at the Young Vic of David Edgar's adapation of Sachs's memoir.
Following her release in November 1963, Dorothy refused to testify against fellow members of the Cape Coloured Teachers League of South Africa and so was arrested and charged again. In August 1964 she was given a five-year banning order confining her to Wellington, which made it virtually impossible for her to earn a living. The Special Branch continued to track her movements after the ban expired, so she decided to leave South Africa. Quakers assisted in her quest, securing her a work permit, and for most of the next 20 years Dorothy worked for the Quakers in London. She was granted British citizenship in 1976. In 1986 she married my father, Frank Williams, a peace campaigner who worked at Friends House.
In 1989, based at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, Dorothy started work on a three-year project with Sachs, researching a new constitution for South Africa. Political change meant that she could return home in 1991 after 22 years in exile. In 1994, minority white rule ended. Working at the University of the Western Cape for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, she continued her contribution towards peace in the new country.
In 1999 Dorothy and Frank moved back to Wellington, the first mixed-race couple to live on the street that once marked the divide between white and non-white Wellingtonians. Frank died in 2006, and Dorothy moved into a nursing home the following year. She is survived by her sister, Florence.