Amina Cachalia

In the early 1950s, she joined the ANC and worked hard to help Defiance Campaign become a successful movement by distributing leaflets, making home visits and recruiting volunteers to join the movement.[10] On 26 August 1952, Cachalia participated in the Germiston march, led by Ida Mtwana. The Germiston march consisted of twenty-nine women in all: eleven Indian, one coloured (Susan Naude), and seventeen African women. All participitants in the march were arrested and sentenced to 14 days in Boksburg Prison.[3]

On 17 April 1954, the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW or FSAW) was founded in Johannesburg from the idea of Rachel Simons to found a women's organisation which included women from all races and colours. The organisation was led by Helen Joseph, Lillian Ngoyi and Cachalia as the steering committee for the organisation.[11] Cachalia was the treasurer of the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW) and a leading supporter of the Federation of Transvaal Women.[12] FEDSAW decided to organise a women's march to Pretoria on the Union Building on 9 August 1955 to protest against the passed law. At that time, Cachalia was pregnant with a son, Ghaleb. Cachalia became one of the 20,000 marchers.[9]

During the 1956 Treason Trial in Johannesburg, she helped her sister Zainab Asvat to support the accused and their families, who had been left impoverished by the loss of their main wage earner by collecting food and money for them.[9] Amina Cachalia and Yusuf Cachalia were friends of Nelson Mandela before his imprisonment at Robben Island in 1962. She became a staunch anti-apartheid activist. After the treason trial, Cachalia spent fifteen years under house arrest throughout the 1960s and 1970s.[13]

After her house arrest ended, Cachalia immediately joined to oppose government's plan to allow Indians to elect their own representative without giving the same right to black South Africans by forming Anti-SAIC committees to oppose the sham election. Though the majority of Indians boycotted the election, the government still kept on to their plan by proposing a Tricameral Parliament system. The controversy resulted in the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and she became one of the active members of this organisation. In the 1990s, Cachalia served on the committee of PWV (Union of Pretoria, Greater Johannesburg (Witwatersrand) and Vaal Triangle (Vereeniging)] region on African National Congress Women's League (ANCWL) after the organisation was resuscitated.[3]

In 1995, Mandela asked Cachalia to marry him. At that time, he had been separated from his wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Cachalia turned down Mandela's proposal because she said, "I'm my own person and that I had just recently lost my husband whom I had enormous regard for".[14] Mandela divorced Madikizela-Mandela a year later and married Graça Machel in 1998.[14]

Cachalia was elected to the National Assembly of South Africa in the 1994 South African general election, the country's first with universal suffrage.[12]