Fatima Meer's 95th Birthday

Google Dooles 12.08.2023 04:00  Date: August 12, 2023 Today’s slideshow Doodle celebrates the 95th birthday of Fatima Meer, a South African writer, artist, scholar, and anti-apartheid activist. She advocated for human rights and gender equality, and helped found many organizations that sought to improve the quality of life in South Africa. Meer was born on this day in 1928 in Durban. As a child, she helped produce her family-owned newspaper, Indian Views, and learned about the harsh realities of South African society. These early experiences nurtured her English proficiency and shaped the foundation of her career. Meer’s political activism started in high school. In 1946, she helped create the Student Passive Resistance Committee in support of the Indian Passive Resistance Campaign and was invited to speak at several mass rallies. She went on to study sociology at the University of Natal. Her rising popularity as an activist caught the attention of both the public and the South African government. In 1952, as a result of the Suppression of Communism Act, Meer was banned from attending any public gatherings and prohibited from publishing any works for three years. Although the ban was meant to suppress her voice and ideas, it instead fanned the flames in her heart. Throughout her career, Meer helped organize many public gatherings including Women’s Marches, night vigils to protest against mass detention of anti-apartheid activists, and more. She also co-founded various groups like the Federation of South African Women, the Black Women’s Federation, the Institute of Black Research, and the Concerned Citizens Group. Beyond her activism, Meer became involved in charity work, published several books, and taught sociology at her alma mater. She was close friends with the Mandela family, and Nelson trusted her writing so much that he chose her to pen his first authorized biography, Higher than Hope . To honor her memory and legacy, Meer was awarded the Vishwa Gurjari Award for Contribution to Human Rights in 1994 and The Order of Luthuli in Silver in 2017. Happy birthday, Fatima Meer! Special thanks to Fatima Meer’s family for their collaboration on this project. Below, they share a note. We are very pleased that our mother is being honoured with this doodle, and it is our hope that remembering her in this way will inspire new generations of activists. Our mother is well known for the fearless way in which she engaged in the struggle against apartheid. She engaged in direct activism as well as through her academic teaching and writing. Her activism started when as a teenager and still at school in 1946, she made her first speech at a political rally against racist laws. Despite being banned in the 1950s, imprisoned by the apartheid government for a few months in 1976, and having her home petrol bombed in 1977 and 1985, she was undeterred in her resistance against the injustices of apartheid. Unhappy with the continued economic hardship experienced by the majority of South Africans in the post-apartheid South Africa she continued her fearless struggle against oppression and for freedom and dignity. She worked with community groups resisting evictions and disconnections of their water and electricity supplies, this time challenging her comrades and friends in the governing party of the country. She said in the early 2000’s “We have to be in the process of perpetual revolution to progress and guarantee the rights of people. There can be no peacetime so long as there is poverty and hunger and so long as basic human rights are trodden. The cause of rampant crime in our country is inequality. We are the second most unequal country in the world. More than half the population lives in poverty. Can we call this living in peace? The definition of peace is equity, harmony, not starvation. I believe we need to strengthen the numerous community based organisations in our country and increase the voices of civil society”. Location: Tags: