FATIMA MEER - A STRUGGLE STALWART WHO ESPOUSED TRUE VALUES AND PRINCIPLES OF NON-RACIALISM AND DEMOCRACY

(PHOTOS SUPPLIED BY SHAMIM MEER - DAUGHTER OF FATIMA MEER)

In this feature in our series on Struggle Heroes and Heroines, veteran journalist writes about Professor Fatima Meer, a sociologist, writer, academic and anti-apartheid activist, who passed on in March 2010 at the age of 82. She would have turned 89 last week Saturday on August 12. Early this year in March an autobiography of Professor Meer’s life was published by her family. This special feature concentrates on an interview that Subry Govender conducted with Professor Meer in August 2008 when she was celebrating her 80th birthday.

“I lived in a South Africa which was full of challenges and I am grateful today that I more or less rose to the challenges. The challenges were our opportunities and we either grabbed those opportunities and ran with them or we were apathetic, turned our backs on them and lost out on what had been given to us,” Professor Fatima Meer was speaking in an interview with this correspondent at her home in Durban about her life and struggles against apartheid and white minority rule on her 80th birthday in August 2008. She was one of the most prominent anti-apartheid activists who made an indelible contribution in the struggles prior to 1994. I had come to know Professor Meer very closely since the early 1970s when I worked for the Daily News at that time situated at 85 Field Street in central Durban. Professor Meer was attached to the then University of Natal (now University of KwaZulu-Natal) and was involved in a number of social and womens’ organisations.

(Fatima Meer with her husband, Ismail Meer, M N Pather, George Singh, Monty Naicker) I would telephone Professor Meer on a regular basis about the work she was doing in promoting – among other things - social inter-action, upliftment of education among the marginalised and poor, and, her total rejection of those who worked with the apartheid regime in institutions such as the South African Indian Council (SAIC), the House of Delegates (HOD) and the bantustans. She has been involved in the struggles almost all her life despite the harassment by the former security police, bannings and house-arrests, detentions, denial of a passport to travel overseas, and an assassination attempt on her life while she was restricted at her home in Durban. Her social and political awareness became enmeshed in her while growing up in a Durban home where her father, a newspaper editor, constantly spoke to his large family of nine children about the racial inequalities that persisted in South Africa at that time. Her active involvement against the apartheid system started to surge forward during her student days at the University of Natal and when she became involved in the 1946 Passive Resistance campaigns. She initiated the Student Passive Resistance Committee. With her husband, Ismail Meer, also a socialist and anti-apartheid activist, she worked very closely with Nelson Mandela, Dr Albert Luthuli, Dr Yusuf Dadoo, Dr Monty Naicker, Ahmed Kathrada and Dr Kesavaal Goonum before the ANC was banned in 1960.

(FATIMA MEER ADDRESSING A UDF RALLY IN DURBAN) Thereafter, she worked with leaders such as Winnie Mandela and Steve Biko, and other leaders in the black consciousness movement. She was also part of the leaders who established the Federation of Black Women. For most of the 1980s and 1990s she concentrated her social and political work in the Institute of Black Research, which was based at the University of Natal. Even after the ANC came to power in 1994, Professor Meer with other community leaders, established the Committee of Concern to highlight the plight of the poor.

At the time of her 80th birthday in 2008, there was disquiet among former anti-apartheid activists about all the reports of fraud and corruption; the growing gap between the rich and poor and the infighting within the ANC. It was against this background that I spoke to Professor Meer about her struggles and what she had hoped for the new non-racial and democratic South Africa. She was concerned at that time in August 2008 that the values and principles that she and tens of thousands of others had fought and died for had not been realised in the new South Africa.

(FATIMA MEER WITH NELSON MANDELA AFTER HIS RELEASE FROM PRISON IN FEBRUARY 1990) “Although we applaud our constitution all the time and walk around thinking that we have the best constitution in the world, the truth of the matter is that democracy has evaded the people,” she had said. “Democracy has been captured and confined to the political parties and that is our problem. “It is very sad that when you think of the ANC as a liberatory organisation and what it has become as a government. Most of the promises of liberation have not been materialised. That is our greatest tragedy.” She had added: “In general the governing body has not established equality. Poverty is rampant among our people, so we have to reform in true sense of the word to re-establish, reform, renew, and govern with the same values that you fought with. “This corruption must end, the money must go back to the people, the land must be re-distributed among the people and we must develop our agricultural resources.

“Prior to colonialism we had a very strong and vibrant African peasantry. Colonisation destroyed that. It is our duty to resurrect that peasantry so that it becomes one way of dealing with poverty. If our people can't work the land and raise food from the land, there's going to be movement from the rural to the urban areas. “Crime has to come to an end. So there's an enormous amount of work to be done. We can do it. India used to have its five-year plans under Jawaharlall Nehru and they worked. Today India is a great booming economy and we could also become like India. “We have to have another government. Now I am quite convinced that the ANC will suffer an erosion in support in forthcoming elections. The electorate will be significantly weaker in numbers and that will reflect in the withdrawal of support of the people. “People know exactly what is wrong and they are going to put it right and that is my hope and that is our hope.”

(FATIMA MEER WITH ADVOCATE ISMAIL MAHOMED, NORMAN MAILER AND BOBBY MARIE) Meer also spoke about the lack of leadership among people of Indian-origin, saying she was concerned that the ANC needed to change its strategies in order to garner the support of a people who once worked very closely with the ANC and with organisations such as the United Democratic Front in the 1980s and early 1990s. This was her view: “You see the Indians had a very strong organisation in the Natal Indian Congress and I wrote to Mr Mbeki long, long ago that it had been a tragedy that the ANC had asked the NIC to be disbanded. It was a tragedy because it was an organisation founded by Mahtma Gandhi in the last century. It was an organisation that stood by the ANC always.

“Now the ANC had made the biggest mistake, I had pointed out to Mr Mbeki, by saying to the Indians you don't need an Indian organisation, you can belong to the ANC. “Politically, as a political party the ANC was fine and totally acceptable but to organise the Indian people, the Indian people needed an organisation.” Professor Meer was of the view that the ANC had committed a major mistake and a dis-service to the people by forcing the disbanding of the NIC and thereafter getting into bed with the leaders of the former tri-cameral institutions. “I consider that to be disgraceful and disloyalty to former patriots and to former partners in the revolution. The ANC deluded itself into thinking that these people represented the Indian people and that it would have the Indian vote and the Indian support through these elements. That was a mistake made by no less a person than Nelson Mandela and then it was continued thereafter. That is what I pointed out to Mbeki many years ago soon after he took over the leadership.” What was her answer for strengthening the support base of the ANC within people of Indian-origin? “I would prefer we resurrect our roots, our history and we revive the Indian Congress. The ANC must recognise the support the Indian Congress gave in the time of revolution and that today to, in the time of government, this support should continue. “It should deal with progressive forces who have principles and programmes that are akin to the ANC, instead of going around piece meal, picking up people who have money.”

(A PAINTING DRAWN BY FATIMA MEER WHEN SHE WAS IMPRISONED AT MODDERBEE PRISON IN JOHANNESBURG IN 1976) Although Professor Meer’s call at that time for the revival of the Natal Indian Congress and the South African Indian Congress was discussed in certain progressive quarters, her suggestion was dismissed by other elements. However, a number of former anti-apartheid leaders have discussed alternative strategies to garner the support of the people for the ANC, instead of the people moving to other reactionary political movements. Professor Meer, who passed on nearly two years after the interview on March 12 2010, was a leader who was not afraid to speak her mind on socio-economic and political issues affecting the people. This was also reflected in the nearly 60 publications and books that she edited and authored during her life. Some of these included Protrait of Indian South Africans, Apprenticeship of a Mahatma, Documents of Indentured Labour, Passive Resistance and Higher Than Hope, the first authorised biography of Nelson Mandela. One of the publications she edited and published in 1989 was the 1985 Treason Trial that the former apartheid regime instituted against 16 top political leaders of the Natal Indian Congress and the United Democratic Front at the height of the struggles in the mid-1980s. Professor Meer with the assistance of a number of researchers chronicled the lives of the leaders – Mewa Ramgobin, George Sewpersadh, M J Naidoo, Essop Jassat, Aubrey Mokoena, Curtis Nkondo, Archie Gumede, Devadas Paul David, Mrs Albertina Sisulu, Frank Chicane, Ebrahim Salojee, Thozamile Gqweta, Sam Kikine, Isaac Ngcobo, and Ismail Mahomed, who was the defence lawyer in the case. Despite her disillusionment at that time during the 15th year of our freedom, Professor Meer was still hopeful and confident about the future. She had said: “I am hopeful because I think our people are aware of this and they will, just as our people won liberation for the country and established democracy, in the same way resurrect all the promises made to ourselves. “So my hope is in the people's capacity and strength and the fact that the people hold values that the leaders may have somehow foresaken and forgotten.” Professor Meer’s sentiments are becoming a reality when many leaders within the ruling ANC, former veterans and stalwarts, non-government organisations, religious organisations and civil society groups have come out bravely and openly to speak out against all the allegations of fraud and corruption, inefficiency in government services at national, provincial and local levels and the general falling standards in our educational and health systems that plague her beloved South Africa today, 23 years into our free and “non-racial” democracy. – ends subrygovender@gmail.com