President Nelson Mandela and Fatima Meer. Fatima Meer’a activism began in her garage where she taught literacy classes to domestic workers, and in high school when she organised a fundraising campaign for the victims of the famine in Bengal. – Picture: Supplied
Author: Arjumand Wajid
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2024
By Shannon Ebrahim
Former BBC journalist Arjumand Wajid launched her intimate biography of the late anti-apartheid activist Fatima Meer this week at a book launch co-hosted by the Mandela and Kathrada Foundations, as well as in Durban – Meer’s hometown.
Fourteen years after Fatima Meer’s passing, she remains one of the most loved community activists in South Africa who devoted her life to improving the lives of the poor, empowering women, and fighting apartheid in all its vestiges.
The book aptly depicts Fatima Meer as a humanist who never stopped doing everything possible to make the lives of others better. While she never joined a political party, her ultimate loyalty lay with the people and her unending drive to improve their living conditions.
This commitment to humanity is her lasting legacy to our country, and explains why Nelson Mandela held her in the highest regard from an early age, and remained close to her for the duration of his life. Fatima Meer remains an inspiration to all of us to look beyond ourselves and work on the ground to make a difference in any way we can.
Fatima Meer encouraged Arjum Wajid to write her biography, and the author has written a beautiful tribute to a life well lived in the service of others. While our genre of struggle books has exploded with stories, this is one worth investing in as Fatima Meer was an unsung national heroine, and it is befitting that we honour her this Women’s Month for her incredible contribution to our emancipation.
The book describes how Fatima was born in the 1920s to a prominent Gujarati Muslim family near the shorelines of the Indian ocean. She was born to the descendants of the first Asian businessmen who came to South Africa seeking opportunity and fortune, but arrived in the country on boats filled with indentured labourers from India’s southern states.
These labourers often unknowingly gave away their freedom for an opportunity at a dignified life. One could argue that this freedom was not won back until over a century later, when the system of Apartheid was finally brought down by crusaders like Fatima Meer.
Wajid weaves together Meer’s life in a manner that tells the story not just of one woman, but of the Indian diaspora in South Africa as a whole, and the crucial role these immigrants played in the country’s 100-year-long struggle against racial injustice.
Wajid begins her book forty years before Meer’s own birth, tracing the lives of her ancestors who set up shop on South Africa’s eastern coasts at the end of the 19th century, and almost immediately began agitating on behalf of their fellow Asian expatriots. By the 1920s Meer’s family had become the proprietors of The Indian Views, a newspaper local to Durban that served as the central bullhorn for Indian-South African political discourse.
Born amidst this rebellious milieu, Meer was primed for a life of activism. We see why Wajid chose Born to Struggle as the title of her book.
Meer’a activism began in her garage where she taught literacy classes to domestic workers, and in high school when she organised a fundraising campaign for the victims of the famine in Bengal. She gave her first political speech at the age of 17 in Durban’s Red Square during the Resistance Campaign alongside Indian leaders Dr Yusuf Dadoo and Dr Monty Niacker.
Fatima later championed a food drive for the refugees of the Cato Manor Riots and started a nursery school for the children of shack dwellers. She played an instrumental role in the work of the Durban and District Women’s League - a collaboration between Black and Indian women who sought to improve living conditions in the local community.
Fatima organised women alongside Lilian Ngoyi during the 1952 Defiance Campaign, and established the Federqtion of South African Women which drafted the Women’s Charter which later formed part of the Freedom Charter.
In 1954 Fatima was the first Indian woman to be banned for her activities, but still managed to teach as the University of Natal’s first non-white lecturer in Sociology. She was revered by the likes of Steve Biko and Saths Cooper for her intellectual honesty and ability to listen to different and often more radical points of view.
One of Meer’s major successes was the establishment of the Institute for Black Research which stood in contrast to the Institute of Race Relations which only published the work of white academics related to the black population. Attached to the Institute for Black Research was Madiba Publications which published books on South Africa by South Africans.
Meer and her family’s fight for equality did not play out in isolation. It succeeded precisely because it moved in lockstep with the country’s broader anti-Apartheid movement, and with its most prominent black leaders such as Nelson and Winnie Mandela.
In fact, the Meers and the Mandelas were among the closest of friends, as well as comrades in their struggle to end Apartheid. Fatima’s husband Ismail was arrested alongside Nelson Mandela, and was a Rivonia Trialist. Fatima herself was briefly imprisoned in the same compound as Winnie, the two communicating across the prison’s walls during their one hour of daily exercise time. While Nelson Mandela was in prison he asked Fatima to pen his biography, and this became one of the projects she is best known for - as Nelson Mandela’s first authorised biographer.
Here Wajid’s book takes on an almost self-referential structure. In her introduction, Wajid details the difficulties of putting together the biography of someone who is no longer around to tell their story, despite Wajid having known Meer for almost two decades before her passing in 2010.
Thus the story behind the book comes to mirror a slice of the story within it: Meer’s own burdensome effort to piece together a biography of Nelson Mandela while he was locked away on Robben Island, unable to speak with him directly for seventeen years. And yet, both biographies are sweeping and personalised, as if the subjects had been sitting right alongside their authors the entire time. Meer only managed to visit Nelson once on Robben Island when Winnie gave up one of her two annual visits to her husband so that Fatima could visit him.
Born to Struggle is by no means an introductory crash-course on the anti-apartheid movement. It will likely be most interesting and rewarding to those who already know the broad-strokes of South Africa’s struggle history. The writing assumes some basic knowledge of both South African politics and South Asian culture.
While embracing a broad approach, the book is ultimately a personalised deep-dive into the life of one woman. Those most interested in her story will likely be readers from within her own community, for whom she struggled and who now enjoy the fruits of her efforts. But for such readers, Born to Struggle will serve as a comprehensive first-hand look into the life of a public figure and revered social justice activist whose name they will certainly know.
Fatima Meer will forever be remembered as a model of action and compassion. Having read her biography, one can understand why she was listed in 1999 as one of the “100 women who shook South Africa”.
* Shannon Ebrahim is a former Foreign Editor and writes in her personal capacity.
** This views expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of The African
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