Veteran Indian-origin S African activist dies after contracting COVID-19

Veteran Indian-origin South African activist Saeedah Cachalia has died after contracting COVID-19. Saeedah, 80, was the daughter of Ismail ‘Molvi’ Cachalia, who was the former vice-president of the Transvaal Indian Congress and an African National Congress (ANC) stalwart. Saeedah succumbed to COVID-19 at the weekend.

Veteran Indian-origin South African activist Saeedah Cachalia has died after contracting COVID-19. Saeedah, 80, was the daughter of Ismail ‘Molvi’ Cachalia, who was the former vice-president of the Transvaal Indian Congress and an African National Congress (ANC) stalwart.

Saeedah succumbed to COVID-19 at the weekend. She was the third generation in a family steeped in the freedom struggle that her grandfather Ahmed Cachalia started with Mahatma Gandhi during his time in the country.

"Saeedah was an activist in her own right, " said the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation that seeks to promote non-racialism and the principles within both the Freedom Charter and the South African Constitution. “As a young girl in the 1950s she would accompany her parents to protest meetings and political activities linked to the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1956 Women’s March to the Union Buildings against the extension of the pass law to African women," it said in a tribute.

Saeedah continued her parents’ legacy. She was active in the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress and later in the Transvaal Indian Congress, when it was revived in 1983. “She was detained in 1980 during the national schools’ boycott. She served on the Laudium Parents’ Support Committee that was established to support the boycotting students,” the Foundation said in a statement.