Zuleikha Mayat

Mayat attributed her caring nature to her father, Mohamed, a prominent businessman in Potchefstroom.

Mohamed’s father, Hassim Bismilla, was drawn to South Africa by the gold rush in 1879 and settled in the old Transvaal.

Hassim opened a small shop in the “Asiatic Location”. Mohamed was born in India and his father brought him to Potchefstroom when he was 5, and returned to India when he was 18, to marry Amina in 1910, Amina eventually joined Mohamed in South Africa, three years later.

But when she arrived and worked in the general dealer store that Mohamed operated in Potchefstroom, she became popular with the way she did business, even though Afrikaans was the dominant language.

Soon the shop got named “Mina’s se winkel”.

“My mother believed that if you kept working, you would never go hungry,” said Mayat.

While the shop was popular and always had a steady stream of customers, there were many who lived below the breadline and relied on Mohamed’s generosity to feed their families.

“Customers would come to my dad in desperate need of goods, often short of cash and already with a big bill. But dad never refused anyone.

“Each night when he counted the day’s takings he would take out a percentage for charity.”

For Mayat and her siblings, life revolved around the shop.

After completing her primary level of education, she wanted to go further, but there was no facility available in the area that could accommodate her – there was a convent school, but it only catered for white pupils.

Her brothers encouraged her to study via correspondence and she managed to complete matric in that way.

She continued to work in the shop post-matric, but her lot in life changed when she met her husband, Mohamed, who was a friend and fellow student of her brother, Nasim.

Mohamed and Nasim were students at Wits Medical School.

Nasim would invite Mohamed and other friends to Mayat’s Potchefstroom home during the holidays.

“Males and females ate separately in those days but Mohamed got to talk to me in the shop and we eventually decided to marry in 1947,” she said.

The couple moved to Durban the same year and lived with Mohamed’s parents in their Mansfield Road home, but that family unit was broken by the Group Areas Act of the 1960s.

Mayat and her husband bought a home in Clare Estate and were neighbours of the celebrated photographer Ranjith Kally, who died last week.

Mayat, the housewife, did housekeeping duties and managed her husband’s books.

Mohamed, a gynaecologist, teamed up with two other doctors and opened the Shifa Hospital, a 70-bed facility, in 1968.

Mayat and her husband were progressive and open-minded people, and counted Ismail and Fatima Meer as good friends.

They often interacted with, and housed, anti-apartheid activists on the run from the authorities.

One such guest at the Mayat household was Nelson Mandela.

Mayat remembers her husband getting a call from Ismail Meer saying petrol was cheap at a particular garage. But that was a coded message directing