Winkie direko biography wife

She attended school at the Anglican St. Her commitment to social and community activities started while she was at that school, and it later grew into a life-long mission to serve the African communities at a local, provincial and national level in the Girl Guide Association of which she eventually became national president. She completed her teacher training at Modderpoort Teacher Training Institution [1] , returning to Bloemfontein to take up a teaching post, where she spent more than four decades in the teaching fraternity.

It was here that she acquired an understanding of the impact of apartheid in so far as imbalances in education were concerned.

Isabella Winkie Direko (27 November – 17 February ) was a South African politician born in the Free State province of South Africa.

In the field of education, while she served as a teacher, deputy principal and later principal of Sehunelo High School, Winkie was part of the delegation urging the then Ministry of Education to allow African students to register as students at the Orange Free State University [ currently University of the Free State], a mission which was unsuccessful.

Through further negotiations with representatives of the Education Ministry, the delegation was successful in attaining the establishment of Vista University in Bloemfontein [2]. This was a victory for Winkie because African students were able to enroll and improve their qualifications. She sometimes spent time in courts mitigating on behalf of students arrested for political reasons who because of their trials could not continue with their schooling.

Her greatest achievements in and around Bloemfontein ensued in the field of community service which was to some extent politically motivated, wherein she would take a bold standpoint in tackling the problem of evictions of widows from their homes by the municipal authorities after the death of their husbands. Although she faced some challenges in the portfolio to which she was appointed as the premier of the Free State Province, Direko never allowed herself to be deterred from her vision of making the province one of the most successful provinces in the country.

She commenced programs to reach out to the communities, this time not as a community worker but as a politician. She met with the Public Service Anti-Corruption Unit in Bloemfontein in an attempt to engage the unit in uprooting corruption in the public sector. This is a meeting where the various communities have direct talks with the MECs and the premier.

Mistress Winkie or Ausi Winkie, as she is affectionately known, was born 74 years before.

Her commitment to the interests of her constituency was best illustrated in the provincial opening address on 16 February , when she allocated R3 million to the Maluti-a-Phofung Local Municipality [5] to relieve unemployment problems, improve the infrastructure, pursue resource development and establish an Aids Council to educate people about that disease.

Winkie Direko passed away on 17 February after suffering a stroke she was 82 years old. Staff Reporter.