Of intimacy, ideology and intellectuals: the professor as outcast

WHETHER with sari billowing in the wind, kaftan loosely draped, or cap shielding her from the sun, Fatima Meer was always an inspiring figure. She bred devotion, she took surprising turns in conversation, she knew her own mind, she had exquisite social graces, she was impishly naughty, she humbled herself in community meetings and, when it suited her, she cut the figure of a formidable stateswoman.

- PROFESSOR ASHWIN DESAI

These qualities carried through half a century of resistance politics. Activist, academic, mother, wife, confidant - her life wove together disparate roles that defied any attempt to box her into a single ideology. That refusal mirrored her resistance to the sectarianism that engulfed anti-apartheid forces as they regrouped in the 1970s. It also underpinned her commitment to grounded, empirical studies through the Institute of Black Research (IBR).

Fatima came of age in the turbulent, path-breaking 1950s. As a young bride with three children, her husband Ismail faced a charge of treason.

Love on trial

In his biography Meer recounted in vivid detail apartheid's knock on his door in 1956. Given an initial reprieve because he was recovering from an operation, he was kept under guard by the security police and given a few days to recuperate. At least he was prepared for his ordeal, unlike the others, who were whisked off to Pretoria without a chance to inform family and comrades.

As Ismail remembers, "the whole extended family came to see me off".

His son Rashid was too young to comprehend what was happening; his toddler daughter Shenaaz clung to him and "cried frantically"; while his elder daughter, Shamim, "was withdrawn and taut with fear".

Fatima Meer "had to forcibly wrench the girls away from me as the police prepared to take me".

Ismail recounted that the trial "challenged family morale. The absence of husbands and fathers told on the wives and children".

As the trial unfolded, Meer's sixth wedding anniversary approached.

He wrote to his wife, Fatima: "I greet you, my wife, on this day of our anniversary. The eleventh day of March is the most important day in my life, for on this day, the most beautiful woman in the world became my wife. Without her, this world and everything in it becomes meaningless. I love you. Thank you for being so patient with me. I who am such a difficult person."