She was the first of two daughters of Gérard Ngwenya, a Sotho man from South Africa who was a Methodist missionary and had moved to Southern Rhodesia.
She divorced her husband in 1960 after he had urged her not to pursue politics, but she sacrificed her marriage for her freedom from the British Empire and never remarried.
Her dislike of white people in Rhodesia started after her grandfather was beaten and imprisoned in addition to having his cattle stolen.
[5] In February 1959, the African National Congress was banned and she was imprisoned for two weeks alongside her two year-old daughter, Elisabeth, which started the breakdown of her marriage.
[9] In 1963, Ngwenya was arrested several times for her involvement in resisting the Rhodesian Front, led by Winston Field and Ian Smith, who would later lead Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965.