Madam Deputy Speaker and hon Deputy President, I move the draft resolution printed in my name on the Order Paper, as follows:
That the House -
1) notes that ANC veteran and anti-apartheid struggle stalwart Fatima Meer died on 12 March 2010 at the St Augustine's Hospital in Durban at the age of 82; 2) further notes that her political career started in 1944 at the tender age of 16 when she helped raise 1 000 for famine relief in Bengal and that she, like thousands of Indians, two years later was swept up by the 1946 Indian Passive Resistance Campaign, which was the most dramatic show of militant antigovernment action in South African history and in 1955 became a founding member of the Federation of South African Women, the women's organisation that organised the famous antipass march on the Union Buildings in Pretoria in 1956;
(3) recognises that she was a selfless leader, who in 1976 was arrested and detained, together with other women, including Comrade Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, who remained her friend and comrade until the end, and that after Fatima's release from detention, she was restricted to the Durban area by the apartheid regime, a restriction she contravened in order to advance the struggle for liberation;
(4) further recognises that in 1980 she was one of the vocal Indian revolutionaries who mobilised and fought against the tricameral system of Parliament, because she felt it was a shame for African people to be left out of Parliament any longer and therefore criticised the structural arrangements of Parliament into three houses;
(5) recalls that Fatima was a prolific academic who started to lecture in sociology at the University of Natal where she was the first black woman to be appointed as a lecturer at a white South African university and that she was also a writer, with two of her books being the compelling Trial of Andrew Zondo, the story of an executed ANC guerrilla, and Higher than Hope, an uncritical biography of Nelson Mandela;
(6) acknowledges that the role Fatima and her husband, Dr Ismail, played in cementing the relationship between the National Indian Congress and the African National Congress in the 1940s cannot be underestimated; and
(7) conveys its heartfelt condolences to her family, friends and comrades in the African National Congress and the alliance.
Agreed to.
The condolences of the House will be conveyed to the family and to all concerned.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I rise because I feel it would appear that the hon Trevor Manuel has been deposed as a Minister as he is looking for a seat in the back benches. I wonder who is going to help him. [Laughter.]
Order! I am sure, when we go to break later, that the hon Manuel will tell you why he is standing.