Gisèle Rabesahala

Marie Gisèle Aimée Rabesahala (7 May 1929 – 27 June 2011) was a Malagasy politician and activist who was the first woman to hold a ministerial position in the government of Madagascar. She entered politics at the age of 17, campaigning on behalf of political prisoners, and becoming Madagascar's first woman municipal councillor, before becoming the first Malagasy woman to establish and lead a political party. She was a committed Marxist and co-founded the communist Congress Party for the Independence of Madagascar, which took power in 1975. In 1977 she became Madagascar's first female minister, responsible for promoting revolutionary art and culture, but lost her job in 1991 when her ministry was abolished in the course of Madagascar's return to multi-party democracy. She remained an active political campaigner and journalist until her death in 2011.

She was born into a politically active family in the central highland city of Antananarivo. Her father was a non-commissioned officer in the French army, so her childhood saw the family moving between his postings in France, Tunisia and Mali. They moved back to Madagascar in 1942 when he died. She had aspired to become a nun in her childhood, but she took advantage of the opportunity, which few Malagasy women had at the time, to have a full education. She obtained work as a shorthand typist and became involved in the 1950s with Malasy nationalist circles, at the age of only 17.

Rabesahala became the secretary general of the Comité de Solidarité Malgache (Malagasy Solidity Committee), an organisation that worked to defend the victims of French colonial repression following the 1947 Malagasy Uprising. She worked to secure the freedom of thousands of prisoners, writing articles for the press and attracting international attention to their plight. She liaised with left-wing members of the French National Assembly to organise petitions to the French President, Vincent Auriol, while her Solidary Committee worked to provide support to the families of the prisoners to help them cope with the hardships that they were experiencing.

...
Wikipedia