Val Viljoen

Valerie Viljoen, formerly Valerie Sullivan, is a retired British–South African politician and activist. She represented the African National Congress (ANC) in the National Assembly from 1994 to 1999 and during apartheid was a member of the Black Sash in the Eastern Cape's Border Region.

Early life and career

Viljoen was born in Surrey, England to a family of Liberal Party supporters. After finishing high school, she moved to London, where she completed a secretarial course, found a secretarial job in a firm, and married an engineer. She and her husband lived in Rhodesia from 1966 to 1969 while her husband was on a work assignment. Thereafter he was transferred to a post in East London in South Africa's Cape Province.

Apartheid-era activism

While living in East London, Viljoen joined the Border branch of the Black Sash after reading about its work in the Daily Dispatch. After divorcing her husband in the 1970s, she also began work at the South African Institute of Race Relations, initially as a part-time administrative secretary and later as regional secretary. She left the institute in 1984 or 1985 when it began to re-orient itself as a primarily research-based organisation, placing comparatively less emphasis on project-based activism. She continued to work for the Black Sash's advice office thereafter, and she was a motivating force for a major internal inquiry in Black Sash, known as the Viljoen Commission, which investigated the organisation's management practices across the country.