ALBANY — It was in New York and later Atlanta that south Georgia born-and-raised Gloria Gaines became a boots-on-the-ground warrior in the international battle against the horrors of apartheid in South Africa.
Gaines, an Albany native who is a long-serving member of the Dougherty County Commission, recently returned home from a free South Africa — one of “more trips to the country than I can count on all my fingers and toes” — a bona fide published editor having served in that capacity for “Thandi — Liberation: My Struggle for South Africa and Exile in America,” the riveting story of exiled — and triumphantly repatriated — freedom fighter Thandeka Luthuli Gcabashe.