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Cissie (her nickname) Gool was born Zainunnisa Abdurahman on this day in 1897. She comes from a family of political activists. Her mother Nellie James was from Scotland. Her parents met while her dad Abdullah was pursuing his medical degree.
The Abdurahman's founded the African People's Organisation in 1902 which is one of the earliest anti-racist movements in 20th century South Africa. Nellie led the women's wing of this movement. Cissie was 4 years old at this time.
In 1919 Cissie married her husband Abdul Gool and in 1933 she joined the Cmmunist Party of South Africa. This is also the same year she graduated with a master's in psychology at UCT becoming the first black woman to obtain this degree at that university.
In 1935 she and other members of the CPSA formed their own organization, the National Liberation League. She served as its founding president.
Three years later the Non-European Unity Front was formed and she was elected its first president as well. By 1942 she and Abdul Gool divorced. As president of NEUF she mobilized marches against segregation policies and successfully so.
This is the same movement that would successfully disrupt Van Riebeeck Day celebrations in Cape Town, among the women who organized this was Phyllis Ntantala-Jordan.
Whenever I think on the ways BCM defined blackness, I think of Cissie Gool and the work her parents did which preceded her generation. There is a long history of rejecting colonial and apartheid South Africa's divide and conquer strategy through racial classification.
Of course the BCM is the most radical of all, but it's nice to find history on the ways previous formations were attempting to do this work, where they may have missed the mark and where they got it right.
For example the APO was the first organisation to call itself African. This organization was home to people of Khoe, Coloured, Black, Indian descent. They were actively resisting being divided which is kind of similar to what the BCM was doing with the term Black.
