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ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Welcome to This Being Human. I’m your host Abdul Rehman-Malik. On this podcast from the Aga Khan Museum, I talk to extraordinary people from all over the world whose life, ideas and art are shaped by Muslim culture.

 

NADIR NAHDI:

There’s a new generation that has a very unique perspective to how they see themselves as young Muslims in the modern world.

 

TANYA MUNEERA WILLIAMS:

I am this wide-eyed girl. I’m like, I want it all, I want to experience it all.

 

GINELLA MASSA:

Everyone has a story. Sometimes you just have to find out what it is.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Like the poem that inspires this podcast, The Guest House, by Sufi poet Jallaludin Rumi, we’re talking to people who seek meaning and joy in work and life…regardless of what the day brings.

 

SHANAAZ MAJIET:

That gunshot, just two inches above my heart, is my waking up.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

As soon as I met Shanaaz Majiet earlier this year, I knew I wanted to share her story with you.

 

On this show, we talk to people at the top of their game… often from fields like music, art or design. Shanaaz is also a master of her craft, though it’s one with a lower profile, closer to the ground – local government, policy and advocacy.

 

Shanaaz grew up in apartheid South Africa in a Cape Malay Muslim family. She spent her early years in the District Six area of Cape Town, before she and her family were forcibly relocated, along with tens of thousands of others.

 

Her new community presented challenges and despite dealing with multiple personal crises, she became a promising student, and was determined to go far. Yet at age 17 she was accidentally shot, leaving her paralyzed. It could have been the end for some, but Shanaaz quickly returned to her studies and was inspired to become heavily involved in disability rights –  including a stint as the National Advocacy manager for Disabled People South Africa.

 

Over the years, Shanaaz has become a trusted voice not just for disability rights, but also for tackling thorny policy dilemmas and troubleshooting governance problems in South Africa, as it rebuilt after Apartheid.

 

The conversation we had was full of fascinating insights about activism, love, South African history, and finding yourself when life doesn’t go the way you expected. Shanaaz’s name is one everyone who cares about justice and equality should know.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Shanaaz, welcome.

 

SHANAAZ MAJIET: 

Abdul-Rehman, thank you.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Let me take you back to that childhood before that traumatic event at the age of 17. Because that trauma at the age of 17 was sort of preceded by a really traumatic and a childhood of upheaval. Describe to me that growing up in Cape Town and growing up in the unique cultural, religious, spiritual milieu that was your community.

 

SHANAAZ MAJIET: 

I am my mother’s eldest child and born in District Six. I am my father’s 12th child. And my early memories of growing up with these two beautiful, loving parents, exceptionally hard-working, running a fruit and vegetable store and business with lots of people and family and friends – always in abundance – in and out of the shop. And remembering my mother’s presence and the essence of being such a magnet. I still hear stories of cousins and families, how they helped raise me when mom was busy in the store and how my mom would put me amongst the potatoes and the vegetables while she needed to get the tasks done. So growing up, you know, in that first years in District Six with the sense of community and lots of people and support around, I also grew up to be an early independent child. I felt safe and had a sense of freedom that I could as a three-year-old, as a four-year-old walk to the shop at the end of the corner. And being very clear about, you know, if the shop owner gave me the sweets that I didn’t point to that, no, that’s not what I wanted. I want the other one and I’m not going to leave the shop until I get it. So a clear sense of who I am and my personality manifesting at an early age.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

But that happy life was turned upside down in 1966 under the Apartheid regime. The government declared that only white people could live in District Six and they started to relocate the residents.

 

SHANAAZ MAJIET: 

And I remember, you know, when the eviction notices came, my only memory of that was seeing many people packing up. All the homes around us started to be vacated, it was empty. Bulldozers came. I remember that very vividly. And a sense of sadness that I’ve seen my parents had about our entire life as I knew it uprooted. And the place that we were dumped in, on the Cape Flats, it still had wet cement by the time we moved in. So my footprints are still, you know, they’re in the apartment block where we lived for many years.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Shanaaz’s family did their best to adjust to their new life. Her mom opened a shop in the new neighbourhood and became a pillar of the community.

 

Meanwhile, Shanaaz gravitated to school. She was an eager student, impatient to work her way up through the grades and move forward.

 

But her personal life continued to present challenges. Her parents had a terrible breakup and her mother eventually remarried.

 

SHANAAZ MAJIET:

She married a person that wasn’t good for her, wasn’t good for us. And we went through a period in our lives that was very dark with our family breaking up. I had a little sister at the time. And my childhood ended. I was eight years old. I had to grow up very fast because my job then became being the caretaker of my little sister because my mother was distracted. I had to learn to physically fight at that age, So that I can distract the aggressor in the home, when he was abusing my mother physically and tormenting her and the household. Part of that made me become looking for ways on how am I going to make sure I can deal with this terror. I cannot be afraid of this terror. I can stand up to this terror. And part of my strategy was I’m going to find friends amongst the gangsters that I can use when necessary to repel the aggressor in the house, who was a coward as well. And the boy who shot me with a gun was one of these friends. And the best sense that I can make out of me and my relationship with my wheelchair is a reawakening to my Deen, to my Islam because I was heading down a track of immersing myself with bad company that’s not good for me and it’s going to take me off my track of where I needed to go. And Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala in his infinite mercy and wisdom reset my track for me with this wheelchair. That gunshot, just two inches above my heart, is my waking up. It is my gift from my creator to get me on the track of where I’m meant to be, to get me on the track of discovering beautiful people and take me out of, take me and my family, out of our period of darkness. And to bring nur back into my life and into my family’s life and into our home.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Your description is breathtaking Shanaaz. I’m almost at a loss for words. It’s a wisdom that I think has come over the years, hasn’t it, as you’ve looked back on that moment at the age of 17 when you were hit by this bullet. And yet I also know that in that year that followed the gunshot and your paralysis and your becoming a person who was in a wheelchair, you turned things around. You went back to school. You graduated at the top of your class Shanaaz.

 

SHANAAZ MAJIET:

You know, AR, that year I remember it’s normal for this type of disability and paraplegia that your rehabilitation period in hospital is between six months and a year, right? So there I was in a hurry to get out of hospital because it is my final year at school. I’ve waited for it for a long time and I missed the first quarter of school already. I said to the doctors, listen, you know, there’s parts of my rehab that’s not concluded here. I’ve missed the first term of school. I’ve got to get back to school. I can come back during the school holidays to come and continue other parts of my rehabilitation. But I’m going back to school, right? So I remember the occupational therapist giving me a lift from hospital home. And on my way home I asked her to stop at my school so that I can go and meet with the principal to make arrangements to come back when school restarts. I remember sitting outside the principal’s office, these doors open, I’m waiting, you know, for him to see me. And I hear him being on the phone, having a conversation with he called one of the special schools for persons with disabilities. And the conversation goes like this: I need a place for one of your own. I burst into his office. I ask him to put down the phone. I did not ask him to make such a call. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here to make arrangements for how we’re going to deal with things when I’m back. And I’m back in a few weeks. And he says, but how are we going to do this? The logistics of this and that and the other and so on. I told him, yeah, I know, we don’t have a wheelchair-accessible school. We do not have wheelchair-accessible bathrooms. I know all of that. I know it best. And we’re going to figure it out. Let me worry about the toilet issues and stuff. The classes that are upstairs, we’re going to move down. Those that can’t be moved down, the kids in my class will carry me up and down steps. We’ll figure it out. But that’s how it’s going to go, right? So that’s how I went back to school – kids walking with me to school, helping me wheel, pushing me. The boys in my class, they got extra foot and extra muscles carrying me up and down steps. And that’s how I did that school year. But the best part of the story is in that year of not knowing of the craziest uncertainty about having to adapt and adjust is falling in love. In the midst of all of that, finding love in the most oddest of times and places. To a person that, you know is central to my life and central to all that I’ve learned and become.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

That person she fell in love with is Shuaib Chalklen. And like Shanaaz, he’s been fighting for the dignity of people with disabilities for most of his life. He’s been a special rapporteur to the United Nations and is currently the Executive Director of the Africa Disability Forum. They met when they were young, when Shanaaz was still in rehab. She was attending a peer support group meeting for the first time.

 

SHANAAZ MAJIET:

We get to the meeting venue, we sit in this large room in a circle, and now I’m fidgeting with myself, feeling really self-conscious. The meeting’s about to start. Everyone quiets down, and I finally have the courage to look up. And I look up straight ahead of me sits this most beautiful man I have ever seen. The first thought that flashed through my mind AR. This is the man you’re going to get married to. I blushed. I felt so embarrassed. I thought that, you know, you could see what I was thinking. They think there is this gullible young girl, lays her eyes on the first man she sees and thinks this. So now I couldn’t wait for the introductions to happen because I wanted to hear his name and a voice. And to a 17-year-old girl, that’s important. I did not pay attention to the meeting discussion. I cannot remember because I wasn’t paying attention. I was just looking, staring at this man in front of me. And I caught him a couple of times looking in my direction too. So the meeting’s over. I have to pass him at the doorway, leaving back with a hospital transport. And I felt so sad because I thought, I’m never, ever going to see this man again. And if my neck would turn 360 taking a last glance at him while the transport moves on. So there I was, going back to hospital, having had this beautiful experience. And two weeks later, I’m doing a workout with my physiotherapist at the gym. Outside the gym, she’s trying to teach me how to wheel through a gravel patch, a stony gravel patch. Now I got frustrated easily with struggle because I wanted to be instantly good at doing something – part of my personality flaws. And there I was struggling, frustrated. And I looked up towards the veranda outside the gym. And I see there’s a guy staring at us. And I’m thinking, who’s this fool watching me struggle like this? I look again and there he was, Shuaib. I say to the physiotherapist, session’s over. This is too compromising a scene for me to be seething. This is not making me look good at all. Now she thinks I’m in one of my moody days and I’ve got moods. And she’s trying to persuade me, let’s just try one more apparatus. And she takes me around the corner where I could try and compose myself. And now I can’t do the gravel patch AR. She’s trying to show me how to do a wooden staircase to wheel my chair up and down. And I think, woman, you must be crazy. I can’t do a gravel patch, how on earth am I going to do that? And now Shuaib comes over and he demonstrates how to do it. Now AR, men showing me what I can’t do is a declaration of war. Right?

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

I could see that. Without a doubt. Without a doubt.

 

SHANAAZ MAJIET:

And I had to get my sense back to myself in that moment and think, okay, he’s right here. Okay, this is an opportunity. What needs to happen here? Finally, the physiotherapist realizes that something’s happening here. She needs to disappear. And instantly, we started having a conversation and I felt at home with Shuaib, as if I’ve known him my entire life. And I could be myself and have a conversation with him and build a beautiful friendship from there. Finding out all the necessary details – studying at UCT, driving his own car. And instantly I decided, well, I’m in my matric year. Next year I’m going to UCT. I’m going to study law there. That’s where he is. This plan is unfolding. I’ve always wanted to drive a car. He’s showing me that that’s still an option. You know, it’s as if he opened a sense to life and my appetite to dream again. And that’s what he’s done for me and my entire family. He’s our gift.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Was there a moment Shanaaz in those years at university as you were navigating all of these new challenges, these new realities, these, in some ways, new knowledges, where you said, I’m going to be bigger than an advocate for myself and the people that I love. But my life is going to be advocating for those who deserve better and more.

 

SHANAAZ MAJIET:

I was in my second year at Varsity and part of the women’s movement that I was active in was organizing as part of the, you know, the changes that was happening, you know, in the pre-1994 era. And they needed an organizer to represent women with disabilities as part of the delegation that’s part of the African National Congress, the women’s wing. And they asked me to be the representative. So I’ve already organized and been active in the disability movement in South Africa and being, you know, an active youth voice about women’s rights and about making the linkages with how women with disabilities are excluded within the larger women’s movement. And that’s where I found my voice and my place and my, you know, deploying my agency. So organizing women with disabilities to be part of the different formations within the larger women’s movement across the political lines. And that was the time when I got pushed into being one of the leaders within the National Women’s Coalition, a coalition across party lines for looking at what’s the common women’s agenda as we negotiate peace at CODESA.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

CODESA was the Convention for a Democratic South Africa. This was 1991 and Apartheid was coming to an end.

 

All the major political parties, as well as other groups across the political spectrum, got together to discuss how to build a multiracial, transitional government for the country. It was a major event in creating the South Africa of today.

 

SHANAAZ MAJIET:

I had the great honour and privilege at the age of, what, 22 at that time, to be elected as the first chairperson for the National Women’s Coalition. And at that time, others could see some of the leadership skills that I, you know, embodied about being able to hold difficult conversations across different party lines, right? And to forge a way about, so what what do we stand for? What can we agree on? And how are we going to build those programs? And, you know, the visibility that came from that as a woman, you know, going around in the world with a wheelchair, it helped to bring disability rights centrally onto the agenda. And get to hold all of the structures, all of the other political parties accountable for what’s their own stance. Where does disability rights feature in their own manifestos? And from that, that got me into a national space of understanding and bringing the arguments to bear about understanding disability rights as part of human rights and not seeing it as an add-on. And having a seat at the table at all the spaces where it mattered.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

When I look at your CV Shanaaz, it’s in a way, it’s dizzying. Because it feels like Shanaaz is engaged in so much and such a big part of what you’re engaged in now is local government. And you work in the Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality, which encompasses South Africa’s capital, Pretoria. You train leaders not only in your own municipality, but you train and coach and facilitate leadership right across the country. You could have gone, you could have gone to the international sector. I’m sure. I’m sure you could have gone to places of policy and the places that are seeing big picture. And not that Shanaaz doesn’t see the big picture. I know that you do. But you’ve chosen to have your work – the blood, sweat, and tears – be on the ground. Was it even a decision or was that where your heart always was? Or was there a time when you thought, where should I be? And I need to be here. I need to have my feet firmly in the communities that I live, work and breathe in.

 

SHANAAZ MAJIET:

I remember a special conversation with one of my mentors, now passed. And I was in that in-between period and I asked him, should I go boots and all into working from government from the outside in as a consultant? Or should I stay on the inside? I was at that moment exiting one of the high profile roles where I was head of a big government agency and my contract was coming to an end. And the politics of the time was going to eject me from the role because of political notions and so on. And he asked me in response to my question, a very powerful question. He asked me, where do you think you will add the greatest value? And that was a no-brainer. Being on the inside. Being in the belly of the beast. That’s where I do my best work. That’s where I’m most purposeful. That’s where I’m most alive. And yes, it is a decision. It’s a decision that comes with many sacrifices. It’s a decision of, I love working in large systems. The role that I chose is a role that positions me at a nerve point in a large, complex metropolitan organization of 30-odd thousand individuals in our capital city that’s an apartheid city that we haven’t yet transformed. And it’s about saying, how can I, from the seat as head of learning and development, reach into this institution in multiple and multidimensional ways and unleash potential. And mobilize a movement, a coalition of public servants that reignite and get a new, a fresher understanding of our sense of purpose because part of having lived in this democracy now for 27 years, many public servants have lost their way, have disengaged, have become disenchanted with our why and that’s my mission.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

You wrote in an article once and I want to quote this because now that you’ve described this kind of incredible landscape of work and action and solidarity and activism and advocacy. What you say here to me feels a lot even more poignant than it did when I first read it. You wrote, “nondisabled persons tend to either view us as helpless things to be pitied or as, quote unquote, Super-Crips gallantly fighting to overcome insurmountable odds.” Do you still find that after all these years of advocacy, engagement, organizing locally, nationally, globally, that sometimes you still deal with this binary of the helpless or the superhero?

 

SHANAAZ MAJIET:

Unfortunately, yes AR. Unfortunately, yes. In corporate spaces, in large organizational systems, before I open my mouth, people have a different read on me. And then when they hear the thinking, the energy, the way one carries oneself in spaces, then there’s a difference. So at first people would make patronizing remarks. “Oh, look, look at how nifty you are at maneuvering your wheelchair.” Like a very pet. Let me be kind to you. Let me say something nice to you. So statements like that, depending what mood I’m in on the day, I would either be graceful about it and think I just don’t have the energy for this nonsense right now. I’m not even going to go there or I’m going to engage it and say, oh, that’s really interesting. And pick a political argument fight. But most days it’s about I need to be strategic here right now. This is a colleague that I need to educate right now. I’m going to need allyship from this individual some way down the road because, you know, there’s things in her department, she’s head of the property management department. And property management and disability’s got a lot of work to do together. So I’m going to need to see how I want to use this opportunity right now to build relationship, to educate, to make some investment and to make a big ask for when I’m going to go and sit down with her and say, listen, there’s a couple of things here that you need to to do differently. So it’s a mixture of those. I best love it when I’m in the supermarket and there’s a mother with a young child. And the young child is fantastically curious, you know? The child’s in the pram. I’m in the wheelchair. There’s something in common going on here. There’s something curious. We’re both getting around with wheels. And the child asks and the mother wants to disappear. “Don’t ask that. Don’t say that. Ah shame.” And I want to engage with the child because, you know, here is a fantastic moment. And laughing at the discomfort of the other.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Shanaaz Majiet, who or what would you like to welcome into your guest house?

 

SHANAAZ MAJIET:

Gratitude. Gratitude. Gratitude. My life story. Gratitude and forever being in touch with it. Aware of it. You know, celebrating it.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Thank you for being with us on This Being Human.

 

SHANAAZ MAJIET:

Alhamdulillah. Thank you, Abdul. Shukr, shukr to you.

 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER:

Thank you for listening to This Being Human. And thank you to our guest, Shanaaz Majiet. You can find some links to her work in the show notes.

 

This Being Human is produced by Antica Productions in partnership with TVO.

 

Our Senior Producer is Kevin Sexton. Our Associate Producer is Hailey Choi. Our Executive Producer is Lisa Gabriele. Mixing and sound design by Phil Wilson. Original music by Boombox Sound.

 

Stuart Coxe is the president of Antica Productions. Shaghayegh Tajvidi is TVO’s Managing Editor of Digital Video and Podcasts. Laurie Few is the executive for digital at TVO.

 

This Being Human is generously supported by the Aga Khan Museum, one of the world’s leading institutions that explores the artistic, intellectual and scientific heritage of Muslim civilizations around the world. For more information about the museum go to www.agakhanmuseum.org

 

The Museum wishes to thank Nadir and Shabin Mohamed for their philanthropic support to develop and produce This Being Human.