Final farewell to veteran activist Vera Scharneck

Family and friends of the late Vera Scharneck, 84, lined the street outside her Beacon Valley home on Saturday October 12 to pay their final respects to the veteran community activist who passed away on September 28.

Ms Scharneck, a respected member of the ANC, is widely revered for her fearless resolve during Apartheid when she, among others, served on the Beacon Valley Ratepayers’ Association during the 80s and 90s.

Ms Scharneck was born in Graaff-Reniet in 1940, and moved to Cape Town as a young women in 1959. Like many of her peers of her time, her first job was that of a domestic worker in Sea Point, and she later became a home care nurse.

Ms Scharneck mostly raised her nine children alone after becoming a widow at an early age. She settled in Mitchell’s Plain in the early 1980s and became involved in civic activism through her children who joined the student uprisings.

During an interview with the Plainsman in August this year, Ms Scharneck recalled the countless times she defied the Apartheid government by helping families move back into their Beacon Valley homes after they were evicted because they had fallen on hard times and couldn’t pay their municipal accounts.

“My mom was a loving, but no-nonsense person. She sang with the Golden Voices of the New Apostolic church and belonged to the ANC women’s and veteran leagues.

“On one occasion between 1987 and 1988, while my brother Ziggy was in jail as a political prisoner, she prevented the security police from coming into our house.

“Standing with my daughter Zemone, who was in a pram that time, she told them, ‘You are not coming in to take anyone out of this house.’ Ziggy wrote his final matric exam in Victor Verster prison that year.

“We spent so many years together, and I am not sure what I will do with my time now that she is gone,” recalled Ms Scharneck’s daughter Julie-Ann McConney.

Ms Scharneck is survived by her nine children, 28 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.