Families were friends for 50 years
IT’S NEARLY a week since Winnie Madikizela-mandela died, but Dr Farouk Meer, whose family’s ties with the Mandela family spanned more than five decades, is unable to accept that she’s no more.
“I still wake up and believe she is going to call me,” said Farouk, brother of the late Struggle veteran Professor Fatima Meer, Madikizelamandela’s close ally.
“I’m shocked. Although she was ill, I did not think she was going to pass on. I will always remember her as a strong and loving woman.”
He recounted memories of the Mandela family.
“When she was arrested, my sister Fatima took care of her daughters. They became part of our family.
“We were pulled together by our Struggle for the emancipation of the people,” he said.
“It’s a sad moment for the country and the world to lose someone like her.”
Meer is the former secretary of the Natal Indian Congress.
Madikizela-mandela will be buried next Saturday.
So close were the Meer and Mandela families that Fatima, in her book Memories of Love and Struggle, had Madikizelamandela pen the foreword.
She wrote: “Every time I land at Durban Airport, I am haunted by the memory of Fatima Meer – my dearest friend, sister and adviser whom I worshipped and treasured like my own possession.
“I have agonised for months about writing this foreword, wondering how anyone could do justice to this phenomenal woman’s life.
“No words seem eloquent enough to describe her or capture the essence of that intellectual giant who epitomised the spirit of a totally liberated and emancipated soul.”
She continued: “Our relationship goes back many years to when I was a junior social work student and had just met and fallen in love with Nelson Mandela. From our first date on March 10, 1956, Madiba spoke to me about his classmates from Wits University, Fatima and Ismail Meer. As we drove to a farm, known today as Orange Farm, he wanted to know if I would like to visit the Meers in Durban as they were newly married.”
After Madikizela-mandela was released from detention in 1977 and banished to Brandfort, Fatima was her first visitor.
Madikizela-mandela, in her foreword, said she and Fatima had simply gravitated towards each other from when they first met. Farouk Meer agreed, saying: “They became sisters who were always there for each other no matter the threats from the enemy, which was the apartheid government.”