Mary De Haas Biography, Age 2025, Career, Personal Life, Recognitions, Early Life, Controversies

Mary De Haas Biography – Have you ever met someone who simply refuses to look away when injustice is happening right in front of them?, Someone who, for over forty years, has stared down warlords, corrupt cops, and even ministers all while most people would have chosen comfort or silence? That person is Mary de Haas, and this Mary de Haas biography is going to show you why she is one of the bravest, most principled people still fighting in South Africa today.

You might not see her face on billboards or hear her name on radio talk shows every day, but, ask anyone who really knows the dark underbelly of KwaZulu-Natal politics and policing, and they will tell you: when the bodies are piling up and no one else dares speak, Mary de Haas is already there documenting, intervening, demanding answers.

Early Life

We actually know surprisingly little about Mary de Haas’s exact date of birth or the little town she grew up in and that somehow feels fitting. She has always put the story of the voiceless ahead of her own. What we do know is that she came of age during the brutal heart of apartheid, a time when white South Africans could easily pretend the townships were another planet.

Something in her maybe a childhood encounter with raw inequality, maybe a family that actually talked about right and wrong at the dinner table made her unable to unsee the suffering. Long before it was fashionable or safe, she felt a burning civic duty to the people the system wanted invisible. That fire never went out. It only grew hotter when she saw children orphaned by political violence, women terrorised by warlords, and entire communities treated as disposable. Those early years planted a seed: if you have the privilege of education and safety, you damned well better use it to protect those who don’t.

Education

Mary de Haas didn’t just stumble into activism she armed herself for it. She earned her Master of Social Science (cum laude) in Anthropology from the University of Natal (now UKZN) with groundbreaking research on African marriage, divorce, bridewealth, and family structures. Imagine being a white woman in apartheid South Africa going deep into Black communities, sitting on the floor, listening for years, earning trust, and then writing about family law in a way that actually respected African customary systems. That thesis alone was revolutionary.

She went on to lecture at the University of Natal/UKZN for twenty solid years, eventually becoming Senior Lecturer and Programme Director for Social Anthropology. She taught medical students about the social side of medicine, ran Women’s Studies courses, chaired the Bioethics Reference Group, and served fourteen years on the Biomedical Research Ethics Committee. In short, she built an intellectual fortress of knowledge anthropology, social work, medical ethics, law so that when she spoke later, no one could dismiss her as “just an activist.” She was, and is, a scholar who chose the battlefield over the ivory tower.

Career

it’s the mid-1980s. KwaZulu-Natal is burning. Inkatha-ANC violence, state-sponsored hit squads, warlords ruling townships with AK-47s. Most white academics stayed on campus. Mary de Haas drove into the war zones.

She started collating data on political killings when almost no one else was doing it systematically. By 1989 she was publishing the Natal Monitor (later KZN Violence Monitor still online at violencemonitor.com), a meticulous, fearless chronicle of murders, torture, and disappearances that the government desperately wanted buried.

She registered as a social worker, counselled traumatised families at FAMSA Durban, and even ran a children’s home part-time. But the violence kept pulling her in deeper. She began intervening directly phoning generals, writing to ministers, meeting lawyers at night, smuggling information out of townships. After retiring from teaching in 2002, most people would have retired to the garden. Mary doubled down. She became an Honorary Research Fellow in UKZN’s School of Law, co-founded the Medical Rights Advocacy Network (MeRAN), exposed the oncology crisis in Durban, fought for mortuary reform, and kept monitoring violence with a ferocity that would shame people half her age.

Activism and Key Contributions

Let’s be blunt Mary de Haas has done more to expose political killings in KZN than the entire SAPS Crime Intelligence combined.

For decades she has documented hit lists, taxi wars turned political assassinations, police complicity, and the terrifying nexus between politicians, business, and contract killers. She sat with mothers whose sons vanished, attended funerals where gunmen waited outside the cemetery, and still kept writing reports that made powerful people sweat.

She helped form community networks that feed her information no “official” channel would dare touch. She has written submissions to parliament, advised the Moerane Commission, served on the national Farm Violence Committee, sat on PSIRA council, and worked with Norwegian People’s Aid and FrontLine Defenders. When the Durban oncology scandal broke cancer patients dying because politicians stole radiotherapy money Mary and MeRAN were the ones who forced accountability.

And today, 18 November 2025, she is literally testifying in Parliament (right now as I write this) before the Ad Hoc Committee investigating police corruption, repeating under oath what she has said for years: the Political Killings Task Team (PKTT) was irregularly formed, politically interfered with (including by former minister Bheki Cele), and never necessary in the first place. She told MPs that Cele personally interfered in cases, that criminal syndicates have infiltrated SAPS, and that whistle-blowers live in fear. When pushed to name confidential sources, she refused because naming them would sign their death warrants. That is the level of moral clarity we are talking about.

Controversies

Of course a woman like this makes enemies. KZN Police Commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi previously dismissed her as a mere “desktop researcher” who relies on hearsay. Today in Parliament itself tried to pressure her to reveal sources, with some MPs expressing “disappointment” in her evidence. She didn’t budge. Good. Sources would be killed by morning if she did.

She has been accused of being the hidden hand behind Minister Senzo Mchunu’s decision to disband the PKTT. She says the unit was never needed — political killings should be investigated by normal detective branches, not a special “task team” that can be politically manipulated. Her critics call it naivety. Those who know the body count call it courage.

The truth is that Mary de Haas has been right far more often than the police leadership likes to admit. When she speaks, history usually proves her correct just a few years too late for the dead.

Awards and Recognitions

In 2021 Rhodes University gave her an honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD) only the second white woman in its history to receive one, and the citation praised her for speaking truth to power at great personal risk. FrontLine Defenders lists her as one of the world’s human rights defenders worth protecting. Yet she lives modestly, drives an old car, and still answers her own phone.

Personal Life

She has at least one son, Christian, who once said Paul Simon’s line “seeking out the ragged quarters where the ragged people go” perfectly described both his mother and her late friend, journalist Paddy Harper. That tells you everything about the company she keeps and the life she chose one of service rather than comfort.

There is no flashy lifestyle, no big house in Umhlanga, no lucrative corporate board seats. Just an ordinary-looking Durban home filled with files, a landline that never stops ringing with desperate pleas for help, and a woman in her eighth decade who still works seven days a week because the killing hasn’t stopped.

Conclusion

Mary de Haas could have had a quiet, respected academic career and a comfortable retirement. Instead she chose the hardest road imaginable bearing witness to atrocity after atrocity, carrying the grief of thousands, and never once flinching. South Africa owes her a debt it can never fully repay. As political killings continue, as police corruption festers, as the poor Black communities remain under siege, her voice clear, evidence-based, utterly fearless remains the closest thing we have to a conscience.

The next time you hear someone complain that “nothing ever changes,” remember Mary de Haas is still out there, still writing reports, still answering that phone, still refusing to be silenced. That is that kind of stubborn, inconvenient courage that actually changes nations.

 FAQs

Why does Mary de Haas refuse to name her sources, even in Parliament?

Because in KZN naming a source is often the same as killing them. She has watched too many whistle-blowers die to ever betray that trust.

Was the Political Killings Task Team (PKTT) really unnecessary, as she claims?

Yes according to her, political killings are just murders with political motives and should be handled by normal detectives. Special units become easy to manipulate or infiltrate, exactly what happened.

How has Mary de Haas stayed safe all these years?

She hasn’t always. She has received death threats, been followed, and knows her phones have been tapped. FrontLine Defenders keeps an eye on her safety, but mostly she relies on her reputation: killing her would create a martyr the state cannot afford.

What is the KZN Violence Monitor and why does it matter?

It is the longest-running independent record of political and criminal violence in the province started in 1989. Without it, hundreds of assassinations would have been quietly forgotten.

Can ordinary citizens support people like Mary de Haas?

Absolutely. Read the KZN Violence Monitor reports, share them, write to your MP when she testifies, donate to organisations that protect human rights defenders, and never, ever stay silent when you see injustice. That’s exactly what she would tell you to do.