Born in Cape Town, she studied at the Maria Zell Teacher Training College in Matatiele in what was then as East Griqualand.
In 1948 she started teaching at Lourdes, a school located at the border between the Cape and Natal.
In 1949, while on holiday at Port Elizabeth, she met the Zimbabwean nationalist Josiah Chinamano.
The two married in 1950 and shortly afterwards they went to Rhodesia, where she taught at Waddilove Institute, near Marandellas, 60 km east of Salisbury.
In 1964 she was detained in Gonakudzingwa Restriction Camp, near the Mozambique border, with her husband and spent the next decade in and out of detention.