Tania Leon


Tania Leon was a South African women's activist. She was a member of the anti-apartheid movement in the Netherlands and of the Dutch unit of the ANC.

Biography

Ruth Naomi Leon was born on Friday May 4, 1945 in Wellington, South Africa. She was the youngest child of a family of nine. Leon trained as a teacher and in the academic year 1960–1961 she obtained her "lower primary teacher's certificate" at the Athlone Institute in Paarl, South Africa. From January 1969 to June 1972 she worked as a teaching assistant at the Mountain River High School in Wellington. After this, Leon decided to leave South Africa because the apartheid regime became increasingly repressive. Via Denmark she arrived in the Netherlands in 1973, where in 1984 she was made a Dutch citizen. Leon pursued a nursing course in Amsterdam from 1973 to 1976 and worked from August 1982 until early 1985 as a district nurse at the Amsterdam Cross Societies. Subsequently, she worked from August 1986 to 1989 at the Foundation for Women and Informatics in Amsterdam, as well as a lecturer at the Women's School of Informatics from August 1987. Leon died on Thursday, August 15, 1996 at the age of 51 in Nigtevecht.