 fatima meer (12 august 1928 â 12 march 2010) was a south african writer, academic, screenwriter, and prominent anti-apartheid activist. ==early life== she was born in durban, the largest city in what is now kwazulu-natal province, into a middle class family of nine, where her father moosa ismail meer, a newspaper editor of the indian views, instilled in her a consciousness of the racial discrimination that existed in the country. she completed her schooling at the durban indian girls high school and subsequently attended the [university of the witwatersrand] where she was a member of a trotskyist groupfatima meet timeline and the university of natal, where she completed a masters degree in sociology. ==political activist== in 1946, meer joined many other south african indians in a passive resistance campaign against apartheid, during which she started the student passive resistance committee. she also helped to establish the durban district women's league, an organisation started in order to build alliances between africans and indians as a result of the race riots between the two groups in 1949. after the [national party south africa national party] gained power in 1948 and started implementing their policy of apartheid, meerâs activism increased; she was one of the founding members of the federation of south african women, which spearheaded the historical women's march on the union buildings on 9 august 1956. as a result of her activism, meer was first "banned" in 1952 ("banning" was a government practise that, amongst other things, limited the number of people a person could meet at any one time as well as a person's movements and also prohibited a person from being published).  in the 1960s, she organised night vigils to protest against the mass detention of anti-apartheid activists without trial. during the 1970s she was again banned and later detained without trial for trying to organise a political rally with black consciousness movement figure steve biko. she narrowly survived an assassination attempt shortly after her release from detention in 1976 when she was shot at her family home in durban, but luckily not harmed. her son, rashid, went into exile in the same year. she was attacked again and blamed the second attack on the black consciousness movement."fatima meer dies", by taschica pillay, sunday times, 12 march 2010 she was a strong supporter of the iranian revolution and boycotted salman rushdie's trip to south africa in 1998 claiming that he was a blasphemer."fatima meer dies", ibid. ==
1928_births 2010_deaths Academics_of_the_London_School_of_Economics Anti-apartheid_activists Communist_women_writers Deaths_from_stroke People_from_Durban South_African_Muslims South_African_Trotskyists South_African_non-fiction_writers South_African_people_of_Indian_descent South_African_women_writers University_of_Natal_alumni University_of_Natal_faculty