the KwaZulu-Natal ANC provincial legislature. In the 1960s he was arrested and charged with treason, along with Nelson Mandela, and other activists. In 2000, Fatima Meer's son Rashid died in a car accident. She is survived by two daughters Shehnaaz, a Land Claims Court judge, and Shamin, a social science consultant. Academic and writer Meer became a lecturer of sociology and a staff member of the University of Natal from 1956 to 1988. She was the first non-white person to hold that position. She was also a visiting professor at a number of universities in abroad. Meer became a fellow of the London School of Economics, and received three honorary doctorates. First, she received an Honorary Doctorate in Philosophy from Swarthmore College (1984) and in Humane Letters from Bennet College in the United States (1994). Later, she received Honorary Doctorate in Social Sciences from Natal University in South Africa (1998). She founded the Institute for Black Research (IBR), which became a research and publishing institution and educational NGO in 1972 Works Books Portrait of Indian South Africans (1969) The Apprenticeship of a Mahatma (1970) Race and Suicide in South Africa (1976) Towards Understanding Iran Today (1985) Resistance in the Townships (1989) Higher than Hope (1990) (the first authorized biography of Nelson Mandela, which was translated into 13 languages) The South African Gandhi: The Speeches and Writings of M.K. Gandhi (1996) Passive Resistance, 1946: A Selection of Documents (1996) Fatima Meer: Memories of Love and Struggle (2010) Television Screenwriter, The Making of the Mahatma, a Shyam Benegal film which was based on her book The Apprenticeship of a Mahatma; the film was co-produced by India and South Africa. Honours, decorations, awards and distinctions Union of South African Journalists Award (1975) Imal Abdullah Haroon Award for the Struggle against Oppression and Racial Discrimination (1990) Vishwa Gurjari Award for Contribution to Human Rights (1994) Top 100 Women Who Shook South Africa list (1999) #45 Top 100 Great South Africans (2004) South African National Order: Order for Meritorious Service (2009) The Order of Luthuli in Silver (2017) Death and legacy Fatima Meer died at St. Augustine's Hospital in Durban on 12 March 2010, aged 81, from a stroke which she suffered two weeks earlier. A collection of Fatima Meer’s political and academic writings entitled Voices of Liberation was published in 2019. Her paintings and drawings have been exhibited at Constitutional Hill since August 2017.