Abstract: Nokukhanya Luthuli, known respectfully as MaBhengu, was a South African mission-educated teacher, women’s leader, farmer, mother of seven, and wife of African National Congress (ANC) president Chief Albert Luthuli. The role of presidential First Ladies has been much better studied in non-African contexts, but it is an expanding area of feminist scholarship about the contemporary continent. Adopting “First Lady” as an analytical lens forefronts what this prominent spousal relationship made possible for women and what women did with that platform before and after independence. It shines light on the political and intellectual work of the wives of the leaders of the ANC beyond “Mother of the Nation.” Drawing on Luthuli family letters in disparate archives and mining isiZulu and English language newspapers, the article reveals that Nokukhanya Luthuli was a political thinker and actor in her own right, committed to the multiracial organizing of the Congress Alliance, but that her public life as the wife of an ANC president also shaped her actions.