She was called “Fatima” by some, “Prof” by others. Some used “Behn”. Some “Fathu”. Yet others “Militant”. Some “Maverick”. A few “Whirlwind in a Sari”. Some “Mother”. Some “Saviour”. Others “Peoples’ Champion”. Some “Rabble Rouser”. It all depended on where you sat.
I worked with Prof, as I called her, for over two decades. Our lives were intertwined through work at the Institute for Black Research (IBR) and through the various trials and tribulations we encountered.
She was a remarkable woman despite being debilitated by a stroke and wheelchair-bound, remaining unshaken at the barricades, defending the poor, both nationally and internationally.
Few lives have been lived as fervently as hers. Few lives have left as lasting an impact as hers. A bougainvillea grows against a pillar on the verandah of 148 Burnwood Road. It bears white flowers.
It was planted more than four decades ago. Some years later a plant bearing red flowers was planted alongside it. These two plants received the most care in that beautiful garden. It was a familiar sight for me arriving at the house, seeing a slight frame bent over with a watering can, and gently snipping away at dead heads or twigs. When they bloomed, beautiful red and white flowers lit up the entrance.
I was told one day that the plant bearing the white flowers was planted by Ismail. Prof had planted the one bearing the red flowers. As they flourished they wound into one bush, symbolic of their different personalities, but indivisible in love and togetherness. IBR, founded in 1972, based at the then University of Natal, was a response to the failure of the then lily-white academic institutions to train black social researchers, analysts and writers.
Black academics were reduced to fieldworkers and never participated in the analysis or writing of reports concerning their society.
In 1987, IBR started Phambili High School, named by the late Constitutional Court Judge Lewis Skweyiya, president of the Institute. IBR’s education programme was aimed at remedying the crisis in black education. In the first week, the Security Branch paid us a visit.
They confidently reported that they would not interfere in the operations at the school. Our people would. We didn’t understand then what that meant.
At the beginning of 1988, after achieving tremendous results the previous year, there was a high demand for admission at the school. We did not imagine any threats and admitted as many learners as we could cater for.
No sooner had the year started, than a group of about 60-70 learners began agitating and disrupting schooling over petty issues. This continued for the year. Lives were threatened. Prof was “expelled” from the school by the agents provocateur and a beautiful project was destroyed.
In January 1989, I was at the Institute’s offices at the university when I met a learner who told me a chilling story of how they were “recruited” at the Medical School to close down Phambili. The recruiter, a seasoned student at all educational institutions in KwaZulu-Natal, and a member of all progressive organisations at the time, was eventually found out to be a state agent. He paid with his life in the Eastern Cape.
I remember Prof being a scholarly and an empathetic voice of the voiceless, a woman decades ahead of her time in building unity among our people and fostering what we now call social cohesion. Her track-record in the Struggle, fighting for South African freedom, runs into many more volumes than the story of her life. Her mission was to tell other people’s stories - the Black Woman Worker, the Indentured Indian, the Treason Trialists, the Passive Resisters, the Soldier-Martyr Andrew Zondo, and of course her epic Higher than Hope - the autobiography of Nelson
Mandela.
Hope
I remember Higher than Hope, the official biography of Prisoner Number 46664.
I remember the communication with Victor Verster Prison in 1989.
Whenever we needed to seek clarity, verify facts, or have a chapter checked, we either faxed the prison or called a Major Marais, who meticulously took down the message and hurried off to wherever Prisoner Number 46664 was in the complex.
This continued for the duration of the preparation of the manuscript. When it was finalised, it was sent to him at Victor Verster for a final read.
The corrected manuscript in his hand still exists. Prof’s courage and commitment in the causes she took up is well known. I remember her receiving a call from Orlean Naidoo, chairperson of the Westcliff Residents’ Association, informing her of armed security personnel with savage dogs evicting residents for being in arrears with their rents.
It was 1999, almost two weeks after her open-heart surgery. Immobile as she
was, she demanded, in her stubborn way, to be taken to Chatsworth to be with the people.
In the middle of this, Ismail Meer had returned home from Verulam from his law practice, and as was customary, he called the IBR office looking for her when she was not at home. I was given instructions to report that she was at her cardiologist’s rooms for a check-up.
That night all television channels carried the story. There she was, in all her glory, outside the Chatsworth Magistrate’s Court with the people.
During her lifelong struggle for justice in South Africa, Prof at all times fostered cordial inter-racial alliances among the disenfranchised. Her continued banning, arrest and imprisonment in solitary confinement, her son being forced into exile, and surviving a petrol bomb attack and two assassination attempts, did not break her resolve to champion the cause of justice and equality.
I congratulate Shamim for this real labour of love in completing the Fatima Meer autobiography. Fatima Meer: Memories of Love and Struggleis a fine tribute to her mother.
In written form, it will now be a story to be told for a 1000 years.
Another view
First Judge President Ismail Mahomed summarised Professor Meer’s life at her 70th birthday in 1998 as
follows:
“She was only 17 when her voice was heard for the first time from public platforms in Durban in support of a brave and sustained campaign against racial legislation in 1946 “It became a compelling and distinctive voice of rare beauty over the next five decades.
“Driven by a caring and sweet spiritual temper, an instinctive capacity for moral passion, incredible reservoirs of productive energy, a gifted and prolific pen
“Her influence was
pervasive.
“In brave and mass campaigns against racial injustice, against capital punishment and against passes for women
“Among the poor and the rich and the young and the old, in graceful saris and simple sandals, in learned volumes of advanced sociological scholarship and in crusading literature
“In controlled essays and spirited biographies, in sweet poetry and in scolding prose, her voice was heard nationally and internationally.
“Even during repeated bannings, and during solitary incarceration, and in the face of persistent criminal prosecutions by the State
“In all this, her extraordinary combination of gifts - both spiritual and intellectual - enabled her
somehow to find the space to sing her great songs of beauty and to continue to dance within our hearts.”
* Harcharan previously served as deputy director of the Institute for Black Research.
* Shamim Meer is the eldest of the Meers’ three children. She is one of South Africa’s pioneers of feminist media - a founding member of the Speak and Agenda collectives in Durban.