Fatima Meer

Fatima Meer
Born	(1928-08-12)12 August 1928 Durban,Natal,South Africa
Died	12 March 2010(2010-03-12)(aged 81) Durban,KwaZulu-Natal Province
Resting place	Brook Street Cemetery, Durban
Alma mater	University of Natal
Occupation(s)	Writer and academic
Notable work	Higher Than Hope
Title	Professor
Spouse	Ismail Chota Meer
Children	3, includingShehnaz

Fatima Meer(12 August 1928 – 12 March 2010) was a South African writer, academic, screenwriter, and prominent anti-apartheidactivist.

Early life

Fatima Meer was born in the Grey Streets ofDurban,South Africa, into a middle-class family of nine, where her fatherMoosa Ismail Meer,a newspaper editor ofThe Indian Views,instilled in her a consciousness of the racial discrimination that existed in the country. Her mother was Rachel Farrell, the second wife of Moosa Ismail Meer. Her mother was orphaned and of Jewish and Portuguese descent. She converted to Islam and changed her name to Amina.When she was 16 years old in 1944, she helped raise £1 000 for famine relief inBengal,India.She completed her schooling at theDurban Indian Girls High School.When she was still a student she mobilized students to found the Student Passive Resistance Committee to gather funds for the Indian community's passive resistance campaign from 1946 to 1948. The committee led her to meetYusuf Dadoo,Monty Naicker,andKesaveloo Goonam.She subsequently attended theUniversity of the Witwatersrandfor one year where she was a member of aTrotskyismgroup that was affiliated toNon-European Unity Movement(NEUM).She went to theUniversity of Natal,where she completed aBachelor's degreeandMaster's degreeinSociology.

Political activist

Meer andKesaveloo Goonambecame the first women to be elected as executive of theNatal Indian Congress(NIC) in 1950. She helped to establish the Durban and District Women's League on 4 October 1952 as a group of 70 women. This organisation was started in order to build alliances between Africans and Indians as a result of therace riotsbetween the two groups in 1949.Bertha Mkhizebecame the chairperson and Meer became the secretary of the league. The league undertook work such as organizing child care and distributing milk atCato Manor.The League also gathered funds for victims of a tornado atSpringswhere Africans became homeless, and successfully collected £4000 for theSea Cow Lakeflood victims.

After theNational Partygained power in 1948 and started implementing their policy ofanti-apartheid,Meer's activism increased and as a result of her activism, she was first "banned"in 1952 for three years.She was one of the founding members of theFederation of South African Women(FEDSAW), established on 17 April 1954 in theTrades Hallon Rissik Street, in centralJohannesburg,which spearheaded the historical women's march at theUnion Buildings,Pretoria,on 9 August 1956. She was one of the leaders of theWomen's Marchin 1956.At the same year, she organized a committee to gather funds for bail and support the families of Natal political leaders who were in thetreason trial.

In the 1960s, Meer organised night vigils to protest against the mass detention of anti-apartheid activists without trial outside Durban prison. She was also one of the organisers of a week-long vigil at the Gandhi Settlement inPhoenix.The leader of the vigil wasSushila Gandhi.During the 1970s, Meer started to embraceBlack Consciousness IdeologywithSouth African Student Organisation(SASO) led bySteve Biko.

In 1975, Meer co-founded theBlack Women's Federation(BWF) withWinnie Mandela.Meer became the first president of the organisation.A year later, she was banned again for a period of five years. The banning order came after she attended a meeting of the Black Studies Programme where she was a key speaker with a speech entitled "Twenty-Five Years of Apartheid Rule".In June 1976, afterSoweto Uprisings,11 women from BWF were arrested and detained under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act. They were placed in solitary confinement atFort PrisononJohannesburg.She narrowly survived an assassination attempt shortly after her release from detention in 1976 when she was shot at her family home in Durban, but not harmed. Her son, Rashid, went into exile in the same year. She was attacked again and blamed the second attack on theBlack Consciousness MovementandInkatha Freedom Party.

During the 1980s, Meer founded Co-ordinating Committee of Black (Indian, Coloured, African) Ratepayers Organisations to oppose the injustices which were happening to the black townships caused by Durban municipality.She declined the offer of a seat in parliament in 1994, because of her preference for non-governmental work.In May 1999, Meer founded the Concerned Citizens' Group (CCG) to persuade Indian people not to vote for white parties in the next election.

She was a strong supporter of theIranian Revolutionand boycottedSalman Rushdie's trip to South Africa in 1998, claiming that he was a blasphemer.She was involved in protests against the oppression and assault of the Palestinian people and the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. She founded Jubilee 2000 to campaign for the cancellation ofThird World debt.

Charity work

She published her book entitledPortrait of Indian South Africansin 1969 and donated all revenue from the sale of the book to the Gandhi Settlement for the needs to build Gandhi Museum and Clinic.She helped an operation to rescue 10 000 Indian flood victims at Tin Town which was located on the banks of theUmgeni River.Meer built temporary housing in a tent and organized relief food and clothing. Later, she successfully negotiated permanent settlement for them inPhoenix.Meer also founded and became a leader of Natal Education Trust which gather money from the Indian community to build schools inUmlazi,Port ShepstoneandInanda.

She founded Tembalishe Tutorial College at Gandhi's Phoenix home to taught blacks in secretarial skills in 1979. Crafts Centre also established at the Settlement to taughtscreen printing,sewing,embroideryandknittingfor unemployed, Both the college and the crafts Center were closed in 1982 following after Fatima detainment for breaching her banning order caused of supervising the work outside of Durban boundary.During the 1980s, she organised scholarships for ten students to go to United States and assisted the "SAVE OUR HOMES COMMITTEE" which was founded by the Coloured community of Sparks Estate to seek justice for who were threatened by the Durban Municipality whom wanted to take their homes.They succeeded gain the compensation for the act.Through the cooperation withIndira Gandhi,she organized scholarship for South African students to study medicine and the political sciences in India.IBR does tutorial programmes to improve the low matric pass rate and Phambili High was founded in 1986 for African students.

In 1992,(2 years before the first democratic election) Fatima Meer founded the Clare Estate Environment Group as a response to the needs of shack dwellers and rural migrants. They have no right in urban areas and need clean water, sanitation and proper settlement.Khanyisa School Project was founded in 1993 as a preparatory school for underprivileged African children before they go to formal school. She was also founded Khanya Women's Skills Training Centre in 1996, which teach 150 Black women inpattern-cutting,sewing, adult literacy and business management.

Personal life

Fatima Meer married her first cousin in 1950,Ismail Meer.This was not uncommon in the Sunni Bhora community where she grew up. Ismail Meer was a prominent lawyer and anti-apartheid activist. He was an active member of the KwaZulu-Natal ANC provincial legislature. In the 1960s he was arrested and charged with treason, along with Nelson Mandela, and other activists. In 1995, Fatima Meer's son Rashid died in a car accident.She is survived by two daughtersShehnaz,a Land Claims Court judge, and Shamim, a social science consultant.

Academic and writer

Meer became a lecturer of sociology and a staff member of theUniversity of Natalfrom 1956 to 1988. She was the first non-white person to hold that position.She was also a visiting professor at a number of universities in abroad. Meer became afellowof theLondon School of Economics,and received three honorary doctorates. First, she received an Honorary Doctorate inPhilosophyfromSwarthmore College(1984) and inHumane LettersfromBennet Collegein the United States (1994). Later, she received Honorary Doctorate inSocial SciencesfromNatal Universityin South Africa (1998).

She founded the Institute for Black Research (IBR), which became a research and publishing institution and educational NGO in 1972

Works

Books

• Portrait of Indian South Africans(1969)
• The Apprenticeship of a Mahatma(1970)
• Race and Suicide in South Africa(1976)
• Towards Understanding Iran Today(1985)
• Resistance in the Townships(1989)
• Higher than Hope(1990) (the first authorized biography ofNelson Mandela,which was translated into 13 languages)
• The South African Gandhi: The Speeches and Writings of M.K. Gandhi(1996)
• Passive Resistance, 1946: A Selection of Documents(1996)
• Fatima Meer: Memories of Love and Struggle(2017)

Television

• Screenwriter,The Making of the Mahatma,aShyam Benegalfilm which was based on her bookThe Apprenticeship of a Mahatma;the film was co-produced by India and South Africa.

Honours, decorations, awards and distinctions

• Union of South African Journalists Award (1975)
• Imal Abdullah Haroon Award for the Struggle against Oppression and Racial Discrimination (1990)
• Vishwa Gurjari Award for Contribution to Human Rights (1994)
• Top 100 Women Who Shook South Africa list (1999)
• Pravasi Bharatiya Samman(2003)
• #45Top 100 Great South Africans(2004)
• South African National Order:Order for Meritorious Servicein silver (2009)
• The Order of Luthuli in Silver(2017)

Death and legacy

Fatima Meer died at St. Augustine's Hospital in Durban on 12 March 2010, aged 81, from astrokewhich she suffered two weeks earlier.A collection of Fatima Meer's political and academic writings entitledVoices of Liberationwas published in 2019.Her paintings and drawings have been exhibited at Constitutional Hill since August 2017.

See also

• List of people subject to banning orders under apartheid

External links

• Biography in Encyclopædia Britannica
• Biography on SA History online