Amina Desai [SEP] sex or gender
Amina Desai
Amina Desai (c. 1920 – 10 June 2009) was South Africa's longest serving female Indian political prisoner.
In 1996, aged 76, she was a witness for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
In 2013 she was posthumously awarded South Africa's national Order of Luthuli.
Arrest and incarceration.
Amina was arrested and accused by the apartheid government of conspiring with her lodger, Ahmed Timol, (who was arrested just days before) to further the aims of the then-illegal African National
in Johannesburg, which at the time was "whites only". Amina became the only non-white student, attaining qualifications in typing, commerce and shorthand.
In 1943 she married Suleiman Desai. He was a key member of the Transvaal Indian Congress, then engaged in a passive resistance campaign against the apartheid government. Desai was also owner of an agency for Watson's shoes, a large local brand; when he died in 1969, Amina immediately assumed control of her husband's business, undeterred by being a woman