Winter 2008 Vol. VI, No. 2

Alumni Profile

And Justice for All

Growing up in South Africa, Zubeida Barmania (MA ’67) learned to turn anger into a passionate concern for justice and the plight of minorities. Being well educated gave her the self-confidence to stand her ground.

Zubeida Barmania knows the meaning of racial discrimination first-hand.

Growing up in South Africa during apartheid as an Indian, she was “non-white.” She remembers, “In my early childhood I became aware that people were divided into white, black, and some colored [as Indians were designated], but we lived only with Indians, had only Indian friends, and went to schools with Indians only. On Sundays at the beach I was always told we could not use the swimming pool—my first intimation that not being white was an issue. I watched with sadness and envy white children splashing and paddling in a pool I was not allowed to pollute.” She watched policemen humiliate her father for minor traffic violations and saw her family and others denied entry to restaurants.

At age 11, when her grandfather decided to send her to school in India, she was excited about the adventure, but did not then understand that he was rescuing her from a separate apartheid education.

Later the issue became more serious. “Gradually the consciousness of being the wrong color began to occur with regularity.” She was “struck with an insistent force,” that as a non-white, many doors were closed to her. “I believe that subconsciously I was indeed perhaps becoming angry, and as I grew older, it was time to convert this anger into a constructive channel. I wanted to be well-educated and to be able to stand my ground.”

And stand her ground she did. Zubeida’s subsequent passionate concern for justice and the plight of minorities was also rooted in her family, ever in the forefront of major civic projects. Her grandfather, A. I. Kajee, was “a politician of note,” who worked across social barriers with farmers, merchants, politicians, and educators. The family established scholarships for disadvantaged, aspiring Indian students who later served the community as dentists, doctors, and teachers. Still today, two schools bear Kajee’s name. Zubeida’s mother, an ardent women’s activist long before other women stirred outside their homes, ran a school for young children and later owned a successful business with a predominantly female staff. Infused with the family spirit of social commitment, Zubeida was inspired to devote herself to community service, with a focus on gender and equality issues.

After completing her early schooling in South Africa and India and pre-law university courses in South Africa, she trained as an advocate at London’s Lincoln’s Inn. Back in Johannesburg, she trained with the late Ismail Mahomed (later to become chief justice). In 1964 Barmania was admitted to the bar as Kwa-Zulu Natal’s first Indian advocate, but discrimination pursued her, limiting her prospects: not only was she a woman, but in the South Africa of the 1960s she was non-white. No briefs came her way.

Traveling with her parents in the Middle East in the mid-1960s, Zubeida visited Lebanon, and was persuaded by her stepfather to consider broadening her education by studying at AUB. She joined the MA program in Middle Eastern Studies and says her memories of her “academic life in Beirut form the best part” of her student years. “I began to understand,” she wrote, “that to some extent I was being freed from the prison of color coding . . . My professors, Nabih Faris, Nicolas Ziyadeh, Sayyed Husain Nasser, Zeine Zeine, and Yousef Ibish, all contributed toward filling in the gaps of an inadequate education.” Deliberately “publicizing the evils of apartheid,” she was surprised to discover “how little people knew about” the South African regime.

Without the possibility of work in her profession, Zubeida immigrated to Canada in 1968. In veritable exile from her own country, for 25 years she lived and worked in Ontario, developing her career in Canada’s corporate sector, and using her legal skills to advocate rights for women, equity for employees, and education for everyone. From 1974 to 1993 she was senior lawyer in the law division of one of the world’s largest hydro-electric utilities, Ontario Hydro, where she established the Employment Equity Association. She specialized in labor law, representing “many visible minorities” and seeking to secure equitable pensions for employees. Barmania, who is fluent in English, Gujerati, Urdu, and Hindi, and has some conversational Arabic and elementary isiZulu, was a member of the Academy of Urdu Literature and Toronto’s Urdu Ghalib Circle in Canada. She was also a member of the Heritage Festival of India and served as public relations officer for the National Association of Canadians of Indian Origin.

With the end of apartheid in the early 1990s, she was summoned back to South Africa