She and her daughter, Katryn Schoon, were killed by letter bomb in June 1984 in an operation carried out by the Security Branch of the South African Police.
She was released without charge in November, after two months' detention, but was subjected to a five-year banning order which severely restricted her political activity.
[1][3] Shortly after her release, she met Marius Schoon, another banned activist who had recently served a long prison sentence for a sabotage plot under the auspices of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
In September 1981 they were hired as co-directors of the Botswana branch of the International Voluntary Service, a British aid programme based in Gaborone.
Schoon's husband later told Hilda Bernstein that the British High Commissioner, in mid-June, personally informed them of an assassination plot and advised them to leave the country.
[5] In the immediate aftermath of the bombing, Terror Lekota of the United Democratic Front told the press that "the black community will assume that the hand of the [South African] government is in this somewhere", a sentiment echoed by the ANC.