About this site

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

Chalmers, Judy

Click here for list of interviews

Judy Chalmers was born in Port Elizabeth in 1932, coming from an Eastern Cape family who were among the 1920 settlers.  She is married with three daughters and six grandchildren.

She was educated in Port Elizabeth and continued her education at college in England.

During 1970s and 1980s she worked in various anti apartheid organisations: -

Ø. Black Sash.  She was chairperson of Eastern Cape Region and then from 1986 fieldworker in the Advice Office for approximately five years, travelling the length and breadth of the Eastern Cape, often with her sister Molly Blackburn  who was then a Progressive Party Provincial Council member, principally monitoring and reporting on Human Rights abuses in the province.  She was involved in assisting communities after the Uitenhage Langa massacre in 1986, after the assassination of the Cradock Four, Pebco Three, etc.

Ø. Human Rights Committee

Ø. Eastern Cape Land Committee

Ø. Uitenhage Advice Office

Mrs Chalmers has received awards for community work from the Union of Jewish Women and from Rotary (Paul Harris Award)

In 1994 she was elected as an African National Congress Member of Parliament to National Assembly in Cape Town and was re-elected in 1999 and 2004.

Throughout this period she has worked in rural constituencies in the western region of the Eastern Cape, particularly in the Camdeboo and Mid Karoo.

She sits on the Portfolio Committees of Environment and Tourism and Social Development and Joint Monitoring Committee for Women, Youth and the Disabled as well as various ad hoc committees.

This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. Return to theThis resource is hosted by the site.