Eulogy to Fatima Meer

I love and respect Fatima Meer so much that to speak of her in any terms other than those in which she presented herself to the world would be a betrayal of this icon – my icon. My heart is broken at her passing but my lungs are filled with esteem.

Fatima Meer – or 'the Auntie' as we referred to her behind her back – was nothing less than the spiritual leader of the strivings for social justice and equality we have seen in South Africa post-1994. This is a massive claim but it is deserved and it is true.

This is not to deny or forget her epic contribution to the struggles against apartheid in which she featured as a trailblazing female revolutionary. This is not to deny the deep and endearing comradeships she formed with the generation of Congress leaders to which she belonged, people such as Winnie and Nelson Mandela, Albert Luthuli, Monty Naicker and Yusuf Dadoo. It is not for me to speak of these times or dare to render these relationships.

But I have seen the photographs and I have fallen in love with her over and over again, standing behind the mo-town microphones on soapboxes in the 1950s, delicate waist but eyes blazing with a passion for an unseen future.

But it was her conduct after apartheid that distinguished Fatima Meer as probably the greatest champion of freedom that South Africa has known. This is because she is the only one of that grave and distinguished generation who were able, analytically and with no end of courage, to also contest the outcome of the liberation struggle in which they participated when it became clear that this outcome had been compromised. She was the only major liberation figure to organise against ANC (African National Congress) parliamentarians when they did the same things to black people that the Tri-Cam did.

I met Fatima Meer in 1999 when she was campaigning for the ANC for the Indian vote in Chatsworth. She quickly realised that disenchantment with the former liberation movement did not stem from racism or apathy but that people in these poor areas were under direct attack by the ANC municipality. Their lights and water were being cut, they were being evicted. A granny, Begaim Govindsamy, older than Fatima by a year, had been turfed out of her council flat in the pursuit of cost-recovery. This is the other photograph that I treasure. Fatima went to Begaim Govindsamy’s poky flat and said, 'We will not move.' Fatima switched tack. She stopped campaigning for votes and started rebuilding resistance. Out of that refusal to simply tow the party line, social movements in Durban were born.

Fatima is not some safe anti-apartheid icon, although there will be many efforts to cast her as such, to claim her and neutralise her legacy. Fatima Meer was the grandmother of social-delivery protests that, right now, have this government, her movement, in panic mode. And a proud grandmother she was of these troubles too.

She recognised how the poor were on the receiving end of GEAR (Growth, Employment and Redistribution). At the height of the authoritarianism of Thabo Mbeki and his cabinet, with people dying of an AIDS virus that did not exist, at the height of water disconnections and a cholera epidemic that did not exist, Fatima Meer became a resistance fighter once more. Her role was not symbolic. She marched, or rolled when her legs became weak. She wrote and read memoranda before thousands at the World Conference against Racism denouncing ANC policies. She gave interviews supporting the protests. She raised funds. She harangued officials. She courted arrest. Above all this, she let it be known that she had taken these new stirrings of dissent and criticism of the ANC under her wing. She gave those involved so much cover. It is no exaggeration to say that without her name and protection, we would have been smashed.

And it was not as if Fatima was untouchable. Mbeki’s vile henchmen and spin doctors took her to task. She was old, she was out of touch, she was bitter, she was never that sound from the beginning. But Fatima had strength and she had mettle.

God, did she have mettle. Remember that this was the time when protests against the ANC and for service delivery were unheard of. This was a time when the NIA (National Intelligence Agency) pounced as soon as someone coughed 'Phantsi GEAR'. The Malemas, the Blades, the Zumas are Johnny-come-latelys. Fatima Meer saw the Mbeki era for what it was – and said so – years before it was fashionable or safe to do so. What I am saying is that she made it possible to ask questions about the outcome of our struggles, to imagine a return to civil protest – that the ANC with its claims to historical and moral pre-eminence – had successfully absorbed or crushed.

The social movements that Fatima Meer and people like Dennis Brutus supported are largely a spent force. The initial energies that invigorated them have been trapped in innumerable court cases. Andile Mngxitama recently remarked at the Time of the Writer that Durban shackdweller movements, which were initially militant and independent, have now taken to begging for permission to march; they cast themselves as responsible, governable citizens and their rage has become white-anted by the academics and middle-class sympathizers who write them up.

The striving for justice that Fatima embodied has now moved over to the largely leaderless, supposedly ideology-less 'service delivery protests'. Fatima knew that eruptions such as in Sakhile were necessary. Our society is built on unsustainable exclusions and privileges, she warned. It is built on myths of unity and opportunity that no sporting event can re-animate. Our society is ordered towards making the rich comfortable. The movements we have built over decades are rotten to the core and the ideas that now dominate them (tenders, hotel suites, fancy cars, state power and prestige) must be swept away. Throughout her life Fatima knew that power yields to nothing other than power.

Ironically the death of Fatima Meer also allows us to say new things about power in South Africa. She is one of the last leaders of a generation that were so grand and strong and beautiful and principled in their day that it was almost impossible for us to imagine ourselves not consulting with them or not waiting for them to speak. Moreover, we could not imagine abandoning the legacies that they had built, like the Congress movement, the Alliance, the Constitution, the new South Africa.

Now that these golden statues of the era of the 1950s and 1960s are going unto dust, it is only the bronze men, the dollar green men, the clay-footed men, the tender men and women, the BMW and Gucci comrades who stand between us and our dreams and desires for a new world. These hollow intellectuals, these spin doctors, these grubby com-tsotsis, who are they to stand in our way, when we have been fed the food of the greats and shown the way to stand up and fight?

I used to resent this generation for not delivering the promised land. Now I can appreciate that they have taken us halfway. And this was very far indeed. This laudable generation are dead or dying, and this means we are now free to sweep the intermediaries, the usurpers of our struggle from the nests they have made in our movements.

We will not miss you Fatima, we will proudly remember you. We will not mourn you, we will be grateful that you took a chance at educating and struggling with us. We will not honour you but will, Insha’Allah, take forward your struggle for justice for all.

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