Ismail Chota Meer

Ismail Chota Meer (5 September 1918 – 1 May 2000), sometimes spelled Ismael Meer, was a South African lawyer, writer, and anti-apartheid activist. He was the secretary of the Transvaal Indian Congress during the presidency of Yusuf Dadoo, and he later held leadership positions in the Natal Indian Congress and South African Indian Congress. After the end of apartheid, he represented the African National Congress in the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature from May 1994 until his death in May 2000.

Early life and education Meer was born on 5 September 1918 in Waschbank, a small town in northern Natal Province (now KwaZulu-Natal). His father, Chota Meer, had migrated from Surat, India to Natal in 1893, opening a general store called C. A. Meer in nearby Dundee. He was a teenager when his father's business collapsed during the Great Depression, and he moved to the urban centre of Durban to find work.' He matriculated in 1939 at Sastri College in Berea, Durban. Thereafter he moved to Johannesburg to study law at the University of the Witwatersrand. In Flat 13 he also became a political mentor to Ahmed Kathrada, who said in his memoirs that Meer was, "more than an individual – he was an institution". His own political influences included Jawaharlal Nehru and Clements Kadalie. In April 2011, President Jacob Zuma admitted him posthumously to the Order of Luthuli, granting him the award in silver for "His excellent contribution to a non-racial and democratic South Africa, struggle for liberation, workers rights and for the formation of the Natal Teachers' Union." he married Fatima Meer, who was his father's grand-niece.