Ganief Hendricks

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I was a Kid from District Six

a cartoon of my life, by Ganief Hendricks

Rosedale Primary and Easter Peak Primary Schools. He served as chairman of the Management and Leadership Development Association (Malda) in Langa.

Ganief  is the recipient of an award as a ‘Pioneer of the Internet’ and he was the founder and president of the MSA;  chairman of Radio 786 and director of Seriti   Sechaba Publishers; president of AL JAMA-AH, the only Muslim political party elected to Parliament and he serves as the party’s Member of Parliament.  Prior to taking up the MP position, he served as the party’s councillor in the City of Cape Town.

The autobiography skilfully espouses his role at the higher institution of learning for Coloureds, University of the Western Cape (UWC) which he helped to transform from being known as a “bush college” to a prestige university. This learning propelled him in the corporate world against all odds including job reservation and the Group Areas Act to get an award as a pioneer of the internet by South Africa’s No 1 JSE listed company.

He excelled in labour relations and later when he became secretary of a trade union he won a landmark case on equal pay for work of equal value. He also won the first discrimination case against women workers in terms of the anti-discrimination clauses in South Africa’s new Constitution and Bill of Rights.  He the right of workers with disabilities to receive a pension fund and won workers’ rights for obese women.

The author offered labour law rights to listeners of three generations on the Cape Flats which was broadcast on a community radio station. While at UWC, the first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela’s chief of staff was his news editor of the campus newspaper where he served as editor in chief. His passion for Islam drove him to form the Muslim Students Association of South Africa (MSA).

While still a student, he also served as an official of the most leading Muslim bodies in South Africa.

Later he became one of the founder members of the Muslim community radio, Radio 786 along with former Robben Islander Imam Achmad Cassiem and Fatima Haron daughter of Imam Abdulla Haron who was killed in detention without trial in 1969.  He hosted via satellite in the radio’s studio, the extinguished leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and welcomed the Nation of Islam’s executive member, Louis Farrakhan from America when he visited Radio 786 for an interview.

Ganief Hendricks was vice-chairman of an organisation which consisted of 300-strong affiliates of Muslim organizations who called for a boycott of South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994. But he then decided to cast his vote and later formed his own Muslim political party.  When South Africa reached 25 years of democracy, the World Bank reported in 2018 that the country is the world’s most unequal society. Ganief commented on the findings and referred to SA’s freedom as rather ‘cosmetic’ and called for the restoration of land without compensation.

Ganief is currently President of AL JAMA-AH and is the party’s Member of Parliament, a definite “voice for the voiceless” as he continues to champion for justice and the true liberation so many sacrificed their lives for. 

He is married to Fatima Hendricks (Sedick) and they have three sons Jihaad, Ismail and Aziz as well as a daughter, Ghairoennisaa, named after his late revolutionary mother. He has seven granddaughters Aqila, Ra’eesa, Layla, Layaan, Haadiyah, Misha and Zia as well as four grandsons Laeeq, Jawaad, Fahad and Deen.

Selected titles by author: Ganief Hendricks

Teachers have Rights Too | I was a kid in District 6 Chapter. Available on Kindle – Amazon | Shaken. Equal pay for equal work still a dream. Available on Kindle & Amazon | Was our Freedom Fake. Available on Kindle – Amazon.

MY STORY … 

Mogamad Ganief Ebrahim Hendricks was born and raised in District Six.

He is the Leader of Al Jama-ah party he founded in 2007. Al Jama-ah is the only Muslim political party to have obtained a seat in Parliament. Mr Hendricks is a staunch adherent of the Sunni school of thought; he was trained by and learned his fundamental beliefs from the Cape’s best Muslim theologians.

At a young age, he was inspired by his father Shaikh Ebrahim Latiff; and he was exposed to politics by his activist mother, Gairooneesa Ally Hendricks (also known as Mrs Shaikh). During the 1960s, the Latiff family was forced to change their surname to Hendricks to avoid being deported to Natal. Hendricks’ maternal and paternal grandparents hailed from Johannesburg where they were anti-apartheid activists.

When he was a young boy, he accompanied his mother on visits to political prisoners and meetings. Often, he had to give up his bed to “visiting” political activists who were on the run from the security; this also applied to the respected Gogos who travelled to Cape Town to visit their loved ones incarcerated on Robben Island.