PIONEER
Zainunnisa “Cissie” Gool
Politician | Community activist | National Liberation League leader
Born: 6 November 1897 Died: 1 July 1963
“Don’t watch the experiment; join the struggle; it’s yours, it’s mine; it’s ours. We shall resist.”
Who is
Zainunnisa “Cissie” Gool?
Political leader of the National Liberation League (NLL) and the Non-Europe United Front (NEUF), who mobilised protests and mass action against apartheid.
Professions
and Roles
Political leader of the NLL and NEUF, advocate and City Councillor.
Best Known For
Co-founding and serving as President of the NLL and the NEUF.
Life highlights
- Gool was the first black woman to receive a Master’s degree from the University of Cape Town, as well as the first black woman advocate called to the Cape Town Bar.
- In 1935, Gool co-founded the multiracial NLL, and served as its first President.
- In 1938, Gool was elected as the President of the NLL’s offshoot for African and Indian leftists, the NEUF.
- Gool was elected to the Cape Town City Council in 1938, and served until her death in 1963. She was the first black woman to become a City Councillor.
- In 1939, the NEUF staged a march in central Cape Town involving between 5 000 and 10 000 people protesting segregation.
- Gool became a Communist Party member and a member of its Politburo in 1939.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
“Millions of people have died in the war against Nazism and Fascism … the battle for freedom is only beginning in this country. It must go from passive resistance to active resistance, then to strike action, until the whole economic machine of the country is paralysed.”
– Cissie Gool
IN THE WORDS OF OTHERS
“Mrs Gool in an impassioned appeal for unity under the wing of the United Front movement held her audience spellbound for fully an hour.”
– Cape Standard report on Cissie’s tour of the Western Cape to gather support for the NEUF, May 1939
“At a time when a woman’s role was to be in the kitchen and to look after children, Cissie was out there.”
– Albie Sachs, former Justice of the Constitutional Court
“These were difficult times. People of Cape Town, people of District Six, were under severe attack. There was a slow process of disenfranchisement and Cissie Gool was seen to take up the struggles of the people. There’s absolutely no doubt that she was a charismatic leader in whom people had confidence.”
– Ciraj Rasool, Professor of History, University of the Western Cape
