Dorita Field, who has died in Belfast aged 82, was remarkable as a white South African who became an elected representative of the SDLP. An elegant and commanding presence, she became the party's first councillor in affluent south Belfast and brought a unique touch to Belfast City Hall.
As a veteran of the South African Defence Forces, she was during several years the only councillor with war service and the only representative of a nationalist party to attend the municipal Remembrance Day Service. To the distaste of some unionists she stood at the Cenotaph wearing the traditional red poppy and also, as a lifelong pacifist, the white version.
When she decided to become active politically in Northern Ireland she chose the SDLP not out of empathy with Irish nationalism but because of what she saw as John Hume's espousal of social democracy and pluralism.
But she was perhaps too exotic for the mainstream of local politics and rarely appeared on air or in print as a party representative.
She was born Dorita Wilson in Pietermaritzburg on June 5th, 1922, and graduated with first place nationwide and a silver medal in zoology and mathematics from the University of South Africa.
When war came she joined the Women's Naval Service on Robben Island - later the place of Nelson Mandela's imprisonment - monitoring enemy ship movements.
Later she joined the Army Medical Corps and was working on polio and parasitology when she met her future husband, Belfast-born Claude Field, a surgeon lieutenant in the Royal Navy. The couple married in Johannesburg and came to Belfast in 1946, where Claude became consultant paediatrician in the City Hospital.
Dorita Field requalified in Belfast, again coming first in examinations for a diploma in social work, then an MSc in town planning. Her first research was into the miserable, overcrowded housing at Carrick Hill in north Belfast.
She taught briefly in Rupert Stanley college of further education before joining the then Belfast Corporation as a planner to work on redevelopment in the Markets and the Shankill. A comparative study she made of the Ballymurphy and New Barnsley estates correlated rental arrears and unemployment, a conclusion policy-makers found unwelcome. She eventually became director of community services, which prefigured the city's present-day network of community and leisure centres.
On retirement in 1982 she worked for two years in Zimbabwe, including a spell as director of the country's Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace.
In 1989 she was elected the SDLP councillor in the Balmoral ward and served for two terms, easily topping the poll in 1993. A plain speaker with low tolerance of inefficiency, her contribution to the party raised some hackles.
Serving as treasurer, she recommended a headquarters move from grand but over-expensive premises to more modest surroundings.
Electoral success in south Belfast brought unpleasant recognition. During a series of attacks on the SDLP in formerly solid unionist districts, a UDA gang in February 1993 left incendiaries at the Fields' home, describing Dorita as part of "the pan-nationalist front". In characteristic style she said: "Considering the real tragedies that political violence has produced in Northern Ireland, I don't want to exaggerate the importance of this."
In 1994 Dorita Field spent three months with the European Union team monitoring the first democratic elections in South Africa. She remained interested throughout her life in the development of democracy in her homeland, and nostalgic for its sunshine.
Her successor as SDLP councillor, Assembly member Carmel Hanna paid tribute to the Fields as friends and mentors and called Dorita "a Renaissance woman, who unstintingly placed her great talents at the service of others less fortunate than herself".
She was a member of the Eastern Health and Social Services Board, the Standing Advisory Committee on Human Rights, and the Agency for Personal Services Overseas.
She is survived by her husband Claude, daughter Jenny, son Simon and daughter-in-law Lynn, and grandchildren.
Dorita Field: born June 5th, 1922; died December 31st, 2004, in Belfast.