Elspeth Holderness was also the first white woman in the then Rhodesia to open a primary school for children of domestic workers at the back of her large home in the wealthy Highlands suburb of Salisbury (Harare) in the mid-1960s.

Those were the days when very few Europeans cared if blacks were educated or not – as long as they could repair walls, fix blocked drains, sweep up and wash dishes.

Thanks to her, “backyard primaries” sprung up all over Rhodesia. But as fast as they opened, they were closed down again by irate school inspectors determined that there would be “no lowering of standards” in white-ruled Rhodesia. But people such as Mrs Holderness and the journalist/ historian Diana Mitchell, did their best to defy the small-minded people who administered Rhodesia’s mini-apartheid system.

Mrs Holderness (known to family and friends as Elpie) was born in Glasgow in 1923, the fifth child of Allan and Grace Macdiarmid. The family lived at Crown Terrace until Elspeth was seven, when they moved to England.

She went to boarding school at Queen Anne’s, Caversham, and showed an early talent for music, mastering the piano, which she played almost until the end of her life.

In the summer of 1939, her brother, Niall, brought home one of his Oxford University friends, Hardwicke Holderness. His father ran a large law firm in Salisbury. She was 16, he was 24 and ambitious to excel as a lawyer back in Africa and a fighter pilot while in the Royal Air Force. They fell in love and, during short meetings in London, where Elspeth worked for the Ministry of Information, they sat and listened to Myra Hess lift the spirits of Londoners with a series of remarkable piano performances during the wartime blitz. After the war, the Hardwickes travelled to Rhodesia. They married at the Anglican Cathedral in Salisbury in January 1948. Two daughters followed, Dinah and Grizzled.

In 1953, Hardwicke Holderness became an MP in the Eighth Parliament of Rhodesia. He was a strong supporters of the New Zealand-born Prime Minister, Garfield Todd, who wanted to enfranchise more Africans – much to the anger of members of his cabinet who tossed him out in 1958. Hardwicke stayed loyal to Todd and his political career came to a halt. He found solace founding the multi-racial National Affairs Association and, though he was branded as “a dangerous liberal” by Ian Smith’s supporters, none of them dared label the country’s most highly decorated fighter pilot a “communist”. Meantime, racist attitude hardened and life for real liberals became unbearable. In 1975, the Holderness family left Rhodesia and moved first to Oxford and then Cheltenham where, in the early 1980s, Hardwicke wrote his fascinating book Lost Chance: Southern Rhodesia 1945-1958. It is the classic story of lost hope in Africa.

Daughter Dinah remembers her mother as a courageous fighter against white prejudice. “We had a thatched school in our garden, with a teacher, Mr Mavunga, and maybe 50 children up to 12 years old for at least a year until the government closed down the school.”

Mrs Holderness was a music teacher. When her husband died in March 2007 she wore a brave face and was delighted that so many prominent newspapers –including this one – carried lengthy obituaries marking his heroism during days of war and peace in Rhodesia.

She was a champion of truth and justice in a land where both are in short supply and is survived by Dinah and Grizelda.

Fighter for dignity and

education in Rhodesia;

Born February 9, 1923;

Died November 24, 2009.