Amina Pahad

Amina Pahad OLS (; July 1918 – 26 May 1973) was a South African anti-apartheid activist. A member of the Transvaal Indian Congress, she rose to prominence for her role in passive resistance against the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act of 1946. She was also known as the matriarch of the Pahad family's politically active home in Johannesburg.

Early life and Orient House Pahad was born in July 1918 in Klerksdorp in the former Transvaal. She became politically active as a teenager, attracted to Mahatma Gandhi's satyagraha campaigns,

Orient House was near several political landmarks, including the magistrate's court; Chancellor House, which housed Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo's law offices; and the offices of two prominent anti-apartheid organisations, the TIC and the African National Congress. Ben Turok, for example, calling Pahad "the best curry cook in the [anti-apartheid] movement", later recalled lunching at the flat to evade state-imposed banning orders.

Though fluent in Gujarati and Hindi, Pahad initially spoke little English, but she was renowned for her hospitality; according to one of her sons, she insisted on offering refreshments to the Security Branch officers who frequently arrived at the flat for a raid or interrogation. and Walter Sisulu described Orient House as "a home away from home".

Passive resistance Pahad was a member of the organising committee for the passive resistance campaign against the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act, waged by the South African Indian Congress from 1946 to 1948. On 17 June, she was injured when the resistance site was attacked by white youths, and she was later arrested and imprisoned for a month, but upon her release she returned to the site for re-arrest. ' overturning what Sisulu's biographer, Elinor Sisulu, described as the presumption that Indian women were "conservative and unwilling to involve themselves in public life".

Later life and death In the 1960s, Pahad and her husband moved to England to follow two of her sons, activists Aziz and Essop, who had been banned by the apartheid government. where Pahad died in a car accident on 26 May 1973. Mbeki, who was by then the second post-apartheid President of South Africa, awarded Pahad the Order of Luthuli in silver for her "Excellent contribution to the struggle for democracy, equality and justice in South Africa." ''