PERSONALITY PROFILE

Suraya Hassim

Fordsburg.com’s Women’s Month recognition goes to Suraya Hassim, founder of The Islamic Relief Fund in Fordsburg which aids poverty-stricken communities throughout Gauteng, and other provinces.

“It was the year 1962 – a woman knocked at my door and said that she has five young children and her husband was killed in a train accident. She needed food but insisted on working for it.”

Suraya was deeply touched by the woman’s pride, “She helped clean the house and washed all my windows, and then we went to the local shop where we bought all types of food, and I delivered them to their home, which was a small shanty in an informal settlement.”

She then sent a letter to the Minister, appealing for help for the family, and the children were each given social grants.

This was the starting point of Suraya’s journey towards helping destitute people. “I formed, with a group of women, the Women of Peace organization, and our work took us throughout the Vaal Triangle, where we touched many lives with the blessings of Allah.”

The Islamic Relief Fund was then formed in 1968, and through the kindness of the Indian Muslim community, the organization was able to reach many communities in the Vaal.

Suraya says “We are able to do community work because we have compassion and love for the people who are suffering, and we do not differentiate between race and colour.”

Suraya’s major contributor in the early days of the organization was her husband, Hashim who helped her financially, so that she was able to immediately help many people. As time went by, she was pleased with the calibre of community members in and around Fordsburg, who donated money and goods to every cause that Islamic Relief ventured into.

With the donations, they were able to ease the burdens of communities from Kliptown, Orange Farm, Soweto, Eldorado Park, Riverlea, Bosmont, Fordsburg, Palm Springs, Mpumalanga, Orange Free State, amongst others.

She says “Islamic Relief feeds over 200 000 children each year and help many families with food, clothing, burials and much more. We have sewing projects, where women are taught to sew and through this, manage their household expenses and become self-sufficient. We have 64 kitchens throughout the Vaal Triangle and also carry out counselling to all communities. We assist an orphanage in Kliptown and a preschool in Soweto with food on a daily basis. We also help people who are HIV positive, children orphaned due to HIV, those with Tuberculosis and we conduct door-to-door programmes.”

Suraya Hassim with colleagues Safiya,who works in a preschool in Soweto and Katija who works in an orphanage in Kliptown.

“Recently we set up kitchens in the Brakpan and Booysens refugee camps of xenophobia victims. We will also be feeding more than 22 000 people this Ramadaan, through our soup kitchens.”

Suraya says “I have encountered thousands of people who have asked me about Islam, and more than three decades later, over 16 000 people have become Muslims. As a Muslim woman who strongly believes in her religion, I am pleased that I have achieved this result.”

She is humbled that there are many others in the community who have stood by her and helped to make many lives worth living again, and have herself made a difference to thousands.

She says “They call me ‘Mother Theresa of Fordsburg’ amongst many other names, and I am pleased to have people remember me in their prayers and thoughts.”

Suraya has fond memories of Fordsburg, remembering that her favourite restaurant ‘hangout’ with her family, was at Solly’s Akhalwayas Take Away and her favourite outing was to the Lyric Cinema which ironically was owned by Hashim, her late husband.

Today, she has a great fondness for the Al-Mehran restaurant on Central Road.

She loved to teach ballet in the ballerina school that she had opened in Fordsburg, and the thing she loved best about Fordsburg was the close-knit community.

“I am sad to see that social decline has taken place in Fordsburg, where communities are divided. It used to be a clean place with no drugs, but today many of our children are becoming drug addicts. I have often taken a walk on the Fordsburg Square, and would like to see things improve because children’s behaviours there have become pathetic. I feel that Fordsburg can become a drug-free community once again if communities rally together to fight crime.”

Born in 1938 in Vrededorp, Suraya had emerged into a compassionate and helpful young woman, who at the age of eighteen, married Hashim and has three children who have given her six beautiful grandchildren. This young woman has travelled a long and uphill journey, to ease poverty-stricken communities, and has become a role model for her family and the community of Fordsburg.

Interview

by Fathima Jhani