Jill E. Kelly

Zamindlela Conco

Doctor Wilson Conco – Was post of national president of ANC a little outsize for this soft-spoken doc? This 37-year-old medical doctor has thrown his wisdom and his spirit into the common fight for a better South Africa. Wilson Zamindlela Conco got his earliest lessons in politics whilst a medical student at the University of the Witwatersrand. We also find Dr Conco presiding over the 1955 Congress of the People at Kliptown, Johannesburg, the meeting which launched the Freedom Charter. He was already on the executive of the Natal ANC.
Zamindlela Wilson Conco, Drum Magazine, BAHA.

The second black academic physician in South Africa after Tiyo Soga. Brilliant medical student. Rural physician. International psychiatrist. Lay Preacher. Defiance Campaigner. Treason Trialist. Nuisance to the Security Branch. Exile. Friend of the storied Luthuli family and inscrutable Inkosi Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Adherent of Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu.

Zamindlela Conco: Voices of Liberation (in preparation for HSRC Press) brings the political and medical writings of one of South Africa’s early black academic doctors to the public alongside a biography that reveals the intersection of medical care and political visions in the life of one committed to equality in South Africa. As Nelson Mandela said in his 1996 memorial to the late Dr. Conco: “To him liberation meant health care for all.”