Shelagh Marjorie Willet (1931-2015)

Abstract

Shelagh Willet grew up in South Africa on a farm near Pietersburg (now Polokwane), where she felt close to nature and formed a love of all life, which gave her the great strength she had in all her doings. After she completed studies at the University of Witwatersrand in Social Anthropology and Afrikaans she taught at Morija in Lesotho for a few years. She returned to Wits to earn a diploma in librarianship. Her Social Anthropology dissertation was on the San (Bushmen) from 1652 to 1662. In 1965 she became the deputy librarian at the University of Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland (UBBS) whose main campus was at Roma in Basutoland (now Lesotho). At Roma she initiated the Boleswa (Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland) Collection of documents on the three countries. In 1980, with David Ambrose, she published the first definitive annotated bibliography on Lesotho, with over 2500 entries and 500 pages