Freedom fighter
COMRADE MAGGIE: STANDS UP FOR THOSE FACING HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES
Sometimes, looks can be deceiving. With her baby-blue jacket, high heels and red lipstick, it was hard to imagine Magdalene Moonsamy, aka comrade Maggie, was an admitted attorney of the high court. Her biggest love was Western Sahara.
Moonsamy served on many organisations’ boards and the Solidarity Forums of Western Sahara was by far her favourite.
“I love the desert,” she says.
Moonsamy, who spent some time in Palestine, says if you thought what you watch on TV is shocking, you had to be there to experience it.
“Even the children were used to it. We could be sitting down having tea and the next moment everybody got down on the ground. It became a second natural thing,” she says.
Moonsamy says what she loved the most about the desert was the sand and the stars.
“It humbles you, as close as you are to the earth, you need to be grounded and humbled frequently,” she says.
Moonsamy says Western Sahara had a special place in her heart because a lot of her character development came from living in the desert.
When she’s not dreaming about the desert, Moonsamy exchanges her fur coat twice a year for her lecturer’s cap to teach commercial law at the Law Society School for those who have practical training.
“There I am known as comrade Maggie,” she laughs.
Moonsamy was born during the apartheid-era in Kenville in Durban and remembers moving around with her parents and two siblings. In 2005, Moonsamy moved to Pretoria to join the department of social development where she worked on the policies such as the Children’s Act before joining the National Youth Development Agency as the chief operations officer.
Before coming to Pretoria, Moonsamy also served on the provincial executive committee of the ANC Youth League in KwaZulu-Natal.
“I joined politics at a very young age. Remember we were banned, so I started with the activism against human rights abuses at 11 or 12 years old. I just wanted everybody to be free,” she says confidently.
Between school and going to university, Moonsamy actively helped establish branches for the ANC, where she served on the national executive committee for three terms before it was disbanded.
Then. Moonsamy joined the conceptualisation of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).
“We still had energy and life left in us, this radicalism, and still a need to ensure fixing was being done, then the EFF was born.”
Moonsamy served as the first national treasurer-general of the EFF from 2015 until 2016, after she resigned as a member of parliament.
“I wanted to do my articles because I never had a chance to because I had been working from a very young age,” she said.
She started her articles in June 2015 and was admitted as an attorney of the high court by February 2016.
“I decided to open my practice in May 2016. I was advised against it but I thought if they could do it, then I could too,” she says.
In August 2016, Moonsamy also founded the Women’s Justice Foundation.
She says she became ambitious when she started reading at a young age.
“I have always wanted to be a lawyer,” she says.
Moonsamy served in various international structures and is currently serving as chief justice at the United Nations tribunal against the United States government and crimes committed of human rights abuses against black, brown and indigenous people, such as police brutality.
“Last year, one of the milestones came true when I served as chief justice at the United Nations. Next month, I will be off to New York to finalise the judgment,” she says.
“I have many milestones but there are still many that I want to achieve.”
I just wanted everybody to be free