Cecile Stratton

Bo-m: the Ladies Cecile Stratton

PART 1 is about John-na, a fictitious nun sent, in the early sixties, to teach to Basutoland, South Africa. She forms a bond with three of her students. She leaves the Order and returns to Zambia as a nurse. She meets one of her former students who is training as a Freedom Fighter. PART 2 is about Eva, a coloured girl from Bechuanaland. Her mother works for an Afrikaners farmer who sired Eva. She sent the girl to study to Basutoland for protection and education. Eva obtains her papers as a white person and marries her Afrikaner boss' son. Their first child is coloured. They flee to England to avoid the law against inter-racial marriages and her husband father's ire. PART 3 is about Francina, a Xhosa, who becomes a Free Fighter. She trains in Zambia where she meets Johnna anew. She returns to South Africa and is involved in sabotage against the apartheid regime. Eventually she works in a new government for the ANC. PART 4. Veronica is a Masuto born in Soweto. Her life work is to help her Basuto Tribesmen to gain freedom by being enlightened. She sets up Co-ops in Lesotho and eventually moved back to Soweto where she works for the poor, the students, the jobless youth, etc. She is shot by a sniper bullet at Stellenbosch University while giving lecture on September 25, 1985. PART 5 finds the living ladies reunited in Pretoria, South Africa, to bury Veronica's ashes permanently in a special memorial which Johnna has had built for the BO-MÈ in the Freedom Cemetery. The memorial takes place on June 16th, 1996 - the government's "Youth Day".