PIOs bag South Africa`s highest awards |
Two Indian-origin women veterans of the freedom struggle in South African were conferred the highest National Order awards by President Jacob Zuma .Fatima Meer posthumously received the Order of Luthuli in Silver; while Shantie Naidoo joined 21 others, who were part of a group who suffered at the hands of the apartheid-era security police who tortured them and held them in solitary confinement, to receive the same award at the Presidential Guest House in Pretoria. Meer, a lifelong friend of the late Nelson Mandela together with her husband Ismail Meer, started her activist career as a high school student aged 17 in 1945. The Indian community suffered the enactment of the first Segregation Act which restricted their economic and residential rights to specific areas in the country, according to Meer`s citation from the presidency. Meer mobilised high school students and established the Students Passive Resistance Committee to canvass and raise funds for the Passive Resistance Campaign.Excelling as a historian and sociologist, Meer was a prolific writer, including a biography of Mandela, as well as the script for the film titled Taj Mahal, made by Indian filmmaker Akbar Khan.
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