Caroline Nompozola

Caroline Nompozolo (born 1908) was the first native South African woman to qualify as a physician. She studied medicine at the School of Medicine of the Scottish Medical Royal Colleges and was later house surgeon at St Charles' Hospital.

Early education
She was educated at Healdtown High School in Eastern Cape Province, where Nelson Mandela was also a pupil from 1937. She went on to study science at South African Native College, Fort Hare in Alice in the Eastern Cape. The South African Native College, later the University of Fort Hare, was founded in 1916 on  the  site  of  a former British military garrison. The College offered European style higher education and alumni include Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Robert Mugabe. Nompozola's ambition, however, had always been to study medicine. In 1937, after completing the first year of science course, she applied to the University of St Andrews to study medicine but was rejected on the grounds that the university did not recognise the South African Native College. Her examination passes were however recognised by the School of Medicine of the Scottish Medical Royal Colleges, to which she successfully applied to study medicine. As the first black women to do this her story was reported in the press.“Before she sailed for Europe she was met at nearly every railway station by teachers, journalists and clergymen who wished her Godspeed”. (The Daily Colonist, July 1938)

Medical education
The Principal of the School of Medicine, Professor John Orr accepted her application and arranged for her to be admitted as a medical student to Anderson’s College, Glasgow, where she studied anatomy and physiology, with further classes then being taken at St Mungo’s College, Glasgow, both part of the extramural school. Her clinical training was carried out at Glasgow Royal Infirmary and the Western Infirmary, the two main Glasgow teaching hospitals.

She qualified as a doctor with the Triple Qualification in 1942.

Medical career
She received funding to travel to Dublin for postgraduate courses in midwifery and paediatrics.

In 1953 she was a house surgeon at the St Charles Hospital in West London.