Caroline Nompozolo

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Caroline Nompozolo (17 August 1916 – 7 April 2008) was the first native South African woman to become a physician. Born in South Africa, she attended Healdtown High School in the Eastern Cape, where Nelson Mandela would study later, and then studied science at Fort Hare (the South African Native College).

Her dream was medicine. In 1937 she tried to study medicine in the United Kingdom. The University of St Andrews would not recognize her college, but the School of Medicine of the Scottish Medical Royal Colleges admitted her. She studied at Anderson’s College, Glasgow, and St Mungo’s College, with clinical training at Glasgow Royal Infirmary and the Western Infirmary. She qualified as a doctor in 1942.

She then went to Dublin for postgraduate courses in midwifery and pediatrics. In 1953 she worked as a house surgeon at St Charles Hospital in West London. Caroline Nompozolo died in Bridgewater, Somerset, England on 7 April 2008 at the age of 91.