The Second World War had just ended. Across the country, people were thinking about how to mark what had happened, what had been lost, what might yet be built. In Cape Town, a group of men made a quiet decision. Rather than raise a statue, they would raise a hospital.
Gus Ackerman was one of them. He had been too old to fight and had spent the war years working for the Governor General’s Fund. When peace came, he turned that same energy towards something he believed in deeply: the health and welfare of children who had no voice and no means.
His son, who would later become Wendy Ackerman’s husband, remembers sitting beside his father in his study every evening. The work was unglamorous. There were letters to fold, envelopes to seal, stamps to press down one by one. Appeals going out to anyone who might listen, anyone who might give.
“He thought he was doing a very important job sending out appeals to people to build a Children’s Hospital.” — Wendy Ackerman
For Wendy and her husband, the hospital was never just an institution they admired from a distance. It became personal in the way that only grief can make something personal.
“When one talks about children, there’s always a reason. And sometimes it’s a very sad reason.” — Wendy Ackerman
They lost a grandchild. A baby, born with a heart problem, who did not survive. The hospital had cared for that child, and for the family, with what Wendy describes simply as great kindness and compassion. In the aftermath of that loss, she and her husband did not step away. They stepped closer.
They raised funds for a CT scanner. They funded an entire operating theatre, and Wendy donated the surgical instruments to fill it. She visited the wards and read stories to children in the little school on the premises.
“It wasn’t merely a big building on Rondebosch Common. It was an important part of the lives of the children in Cape Town and environs. Children came from all over the country.” — Wendy Ackerman
What began with a father and son sealing envelopes by lamplight grew into something that has saved hundreds of thousands of lives. The Ackerman family’s connection to it spans three generations, shaped by both the joy of giving and the weight of loss. That is what it means to truly believe in something.
