Affectionately referred to as meekulu ("grandmother"), she is remembered as a freedom fighter in the Namibian struggle for independence from South Africa.

Putuse Appolus was born on September 23, 1930 in Cofimvaba, a small village in today's Eastern Cape province of South Africa.

The youngest of fourteen children of subsistence farmers, she was educated at Lovedale College and studied nursing in Kwazulu-Natal.

While working in Cape Town, she met Emil Appolus, a journalism student who would become a leading activist for Namibian independence.

Doctors at the hospitals in Windhoek refused to treat the wounded, telling them to "go to the United Nations for treatment because these people were political patients".