Cissie gool biography of donald

One hundred years ago, on February 28, 1924, a four-foot-10-inch woman of colour gave a speech at the Wanderers Hall in Johannesburg. Despite speaking at the home of both rugby and cricket in the Transvaal province, she poured scorn on the British, writes historian Goolam Vahed, for thinking “they were the ‘masters’ and the Indians the ‘menials’.” She parodied the British attitude as follows: “We conquer, we rule, we trample down, we make graveyards where there were gardens, we rule with the iron heel, we flash the sword and daze the eyes of those who would look us in the face.”

And she ended with a warning. If the British thought they had successfully “fettered and manacled and trampled” Indians, this was “[their] illusion. In the end, the land goes back from the conquered to the true inheritors.”

Sarojini Naidu, the 45-year-old Indian poet-politician, had arrived in Johannesburg a few days earlier, via Kenya and Mozambique. She had come to protest Prime Minister Jan Smuts’s Class Areas Bill, which proposed “compulsory residential and trading segregation for Indians throughout South Africa.”

Nicknamed the Nightingale of India by her mentor and champion, Mahatma Gandhi, words did indeed tumble out of Naidu’s mouth for the duration of a two-month sojourn in which she addressed packed venues in all of South Africa’s main cities. But not everyone who heard them found them mellifluous. Despite being a dark-skinned visitor in a white man’s land, Naidu spoke her mind. And her ideas – regarding race, empire and women – were well ahead of their time.

While Naidu was vehement in her criticism of the Bill, she went to great pains to stress that South African Indians should oppose any legislation that discriminated on racial grounds, as historian Goolam Vahed has shown (PDF). The struggle in South Africa was, she said, “only one incident in the whole struggle which is taking place … Oppre

Interview by

Sean Jacobs

Cissie Gool was a legendary political activist in Cape Town. She helped found the Non-European Unity Movement—a group of black (read also coloured) activists, who actively campaigned against the country’s racist government in the mid-20th century. Her father, Abdurahman, founded South Africa’s first national-level black political organization, the African People’s Organization. Mr. Gool also became Cape Town’s first black city councilor in 1904 when some classes of black people still had a vote. Cissie herself became a city counselor in 1938 until 1951. By then the government struck coloured representatives from elected office and stripped coloureds of the right to vote. She represented District Six, a cosmopolitan, mostly working-class coloured ghetto on the edge of the city center. She also lived there. After the white supremacist National Party gained power in 1948 it quickly made laws to prevent the “mixing” of the “races.” This included destroying communities and neighborhoods like District Six. Footnote: the “liberal” City of Cape Town stood by doing nothing. Cissie died in 1963.

By the beginning of the 1970s, District Six was reduced to rubble, its residents dumped in dormitory townships across the Cape Flats. Some were lucky to relocate to Woodstock, the next suburb over from District Six. Despite apartheid, Woodstock developed a reputation as a defiantly mixed neighborhood, not just racially but also because of the different economic classes of people living there. Most of its poor, black, and coloured residents were renters. It stayed like that until the advent of democracy in 1994. Fast forward to the present when Woodstock became the subject of gentrification. Food markets, new high-rises, and Airbnb apartments began to dot the suburb. It was not long before working-class residents of the area were being squeezed out by greedy landlords. The same began to happen in other neighborhoods with working-cl

By Sue Valentine

Although Cissie Gool had a reputation for being an attention-grabber, her commitment to the poor of Cape Town was undeniable, says artist Ruth Sacks, and this is reflected in the memorial to the "Jewel of District Six".

"I'm not trying to shout out anything, I'm just trying to make something that quietly affirms the political career of a woman who did a great deal," says Cape Town artist Ruth Sacks when asked about her design.

In the face of a character as charismatic, controversial, vibrant - and physically beautiful - as Cissie Gool, Sacks chose to focus on her commitment to improving the lives of Cape Town's common people.

Sacks says that although Gool was criticised for being an attention-seeker and for not having a clear political philosophy, she was firmly committed to representing the city's poorer people.

"From my research," says Sacks, "it seemed that, sure, Cissie Gool wanted attention; I think we all do in our own way, but she was better at getting it! And what became very clear is that she was hugely ethical. If she switched political leanings it was because she would do absolutely anything to make a difference for the common man, and I honestly believe that."

Sure, Cissie Gool wanted attention; I think we all do in our own way, but she was better at getting it!

Sacks's installation comprises a series of 17 concrete bollards of different heights. "They can be used to sit on, play on; they can be stepping stones or they can be podiums," she explains.

Each bollard is inscribed with text documenting Gool's political contribution. These include gathering money to take 2 000 children from her District Six constituency to see the Walt Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarves for the first time, or fighting for a wage increase for firemen, or for the right of people of colour to serve as traffic wardens.

"These things weren't really newspaper headlines, or wouldn't go down in the his

How Political And Civil Rights Leader, Cissie Gool, became the Jewel of District Six.

Cissie Gool was a woman of action who walked the talk in taking up the struggle. Her podium was often the back of a truck, or a street corner. Many times she would be found leading a throng of marchers as she encouraged people to stand up and claim what was rightfully theirs. She once said; ‘Don’t watch the experiment; join the struggle; it’s yours, it’s mine; it’s ours. We shall resist.’ From her childhood she had been exposed to politics and she was not one to back down from a fight, especially if it was in the cause of justice.

Cissie Gool was born in Cape Town in 1897. One of South Africa’s most popular and renowned female political leaders, her father was the prominent politician, Dr Abdullah Abdurahman, leader of the African Peoples Organisation (APO) which he had helped to form in 1902. Abdurahman was also the first black South African to be elected to the Cape Town City Council in 1904. Gool attended Trafalgar High School and later earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Cape Town, then in 1962 a law degree which she had pursued part-time over years. In 1919 she married Abdul Hamid Gool and was thereafter always known as Cissie Gool.

In the disenchantment and swing away from the Cape Liberal paternalistic political tradition a trend began in Cape politics which has continued since. Radicalism became an end in itself and a bizarre competitiveness emerged where each proponent wanted to postulate as more radical and purer in their beliefs.

In contrast, Cissie Gool’s political standard was to build unity and focus on key issues of concern to the majority of black working people and to extend this unity to include other class forces and formations which shared an interest in halting the progress of the neo-Nazi path down which the South African government was rapidly going. The ultra-radic