Fatma Ahmed Kamal Shaker (Arabic: فاطمة أحمد كمال), better known by her stage name Shadia (b. February 8, 1931, Sharqia Governorate, Egypt – d. November 28, 2017, Cairo, Egypt), was an Egyptian actress and singer. She was famous for her roles in light comedies and drama in the 1950s and 1960s. Her first appearance was in the film el-Aql Fi Agaza (The Mind on Vacation), and she retired after her last film La Tas'alni Man Ana (Don't Ask Me Who I Am).
Born Fatma Ahmed Kamal Shaker in 1931, in the Sharqia Governorate, in Egypt. Her father, Ahmed Kamak Shaker, was an Upper Egyptian man whose family moved to El Sharqia and her mother was from a family of both Egyptian and Turk origin. She began acting at the age of thirteen.
Shaker was given the stage name "Shadia" by the film director Helmy Rafla. In her heyday during the 1950s and 1960s, Shadia acted in numerous melodramas, romance, and comedy films. However, it was her musical talent as a singer that established Shadia as one of the most important Egyptian cinema stars of her era.
Overall, as "Shadia", she performed in more than 100 films. She starred in more than 30 films with the actor Kamal el-Shennawi, and sang opposite Farid al-Atrash and Abdel Halim Hafez, such as in "The People's Idol" (1967). She also appeared with Faten Hamama in "An Appointment with Life" (1954), and in "The Unknown Woman" (1959) she played the role of Fatma in a heavy melodrama. Other notable films she starred in include "The Thief and the Dogs" (1962) and in her comedy roles in films "Wife Number 13" (1962) and "My Wife the General Manager" (1966). Indeed, Shadia was often cast in cunning and cheeky roles, however, she also played serious roles, such as in "The Road" (1964), and in the stage version of "Raya and Sakina", which was based on the true story of two Alexandrian serial killers and directed by Hussein Kama (1953).
After retiring from acting, Shadia joined a number of Egyptian actresses who took on the veil (hijab) in an act of Islamic resistance and salvation.
Shadia is considered one of the most popular and most talented singers and actresses in the Arabic movie and entertainment industry. Her songs and movies are still sought after, and her songs are popular among all generations.
Shadia was hospitalized on November 4, 2017 after suffering a massive stroke in Cairo. She was placed under intensive care. Her nephew, Khaled Shaker, said during a televised phone conversation that she recovered from the stroke and could identify her relatives and the people around her. He added, however, that her illness was complicated by pneumonia, despite her recovery. Shadia's condition stabilized on November 9, and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi visited her that day at Al-Galaa Hospital.
On November 28, 2017, Shadia died from respiratory failure caused by the pneumonia.
Mohammed Mahdi Akef (Arabic: محمد مهدى عاكف) (b. July 12, 1928, Kafr Awad Al Seneita, Dakahliya Province, Egypt – d. September 22, 2017, Cairo, Egypt) was the head of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egypt-based Islamic political movement, from 2004 until 2010. He assumed the post, that of "general guide" (Arabic: المرشد العام - frequently translated as "chairman") upon the death of his predecessor, Ma'mun al-Hudaybi. Akef was arrested on July 4, 2013. On July 14, 2013 Egypt's new prosecutor general Hisham Barakat ordered his assets to be frozen.
Akef was born in 1928 in Kafr Awad Al Seneita in Dakahliya Province, in the north of Egypt. The year of his birth was the year the Muslim Brotherhood Movement was founded.
Akef obtained his Primary Certificate of Education at Al Mansoura Primary School, and obtained his Secondary Certificate of Education at Cairo- Fuad 1st Secondary School. He then joined the Higher Institute of Physical Education and graduated in May 1950, after which he worked as a teacher at Fuad 1st Secondary School.
Akef first became involved with the Muslim Brotherhood in 1940, which was then led by Hassan al Banna.
Akef joined the Faculty of Law and assumed responsibility for the Brotherhood's training camps at Ibrahim University (present-day Ain Shams University). This was during the struggle against the British occupation in the Canal preceding the 1952 Revolution, after which he left responsibility to Kamaleddin Hussein, then National Guard Chief.
The last Sections Akef headed in the Muslim Brotherhood before 1954 were the Students Section and the PE Section at the Groups Headquarters.
Akef was arrested on August 1, 1954 and stood trial on charges including smuggling Major General Abdul Munem Abderraoof (one of the Army chiefs who spearheaded the ouster and expulsion of King Farouq), and was sentenced to death in absentia before the ruling was commuted to life imprisonment.
Akef was released in 1974 and was reappointed General Manager of Youth – a department affiliated to the Ministry of Reconstruction.
Akef then moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to work as an advisor for the World Assembly of Muslim Youth and was in charge of its camps and conferences. He took part in organizing the biggest camps for the Muslim youth on the world arena; in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Turkey, Australia, Mali, Kenya, Cyprus, Germany, Britain and America.
Beginning in 1987, Akef was a member of the Steering Bureau (Guidance Bureau) of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Akef was elected Member of Parliament in 1987 for the East Cairo electoral constituency.
In 1996, Akef was court-martialed, charged with being head of the Muslim Brotherhood International Organization, and was sentenced to three years. He was released in 1999.
In 2005, he denounced what he called "the myth of the Holocaust" in defending Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust, and accused the United States of attacking anyone who raised questions about the Holocaust.
On October 19, 2009, Egyptian newspapers reported that Akef had resigned as the general guide of the Muslim Brotherhood after a dispute among various leaders in the group. However the following day reports on the Muslim Brotherhood website stated that Akef had not resigned and would continue to serve as the group's general guide until elections in January 2010.
Akef's health deteriorated while he was imprisoned by the Egyptian authorities after the 2013 Egyptian coup d'etat, his daughter affirmed that he was isolated in the prison hospital and was only allowed a visit once a week, despite his old age and poor health.
Mahershalalhashbaz "Mahershala" Ali Gilmore (b. February 16, 1974, Oakland, California), an American actor and rapper, began his career as a regular on series such as Crossing Jordan and Threat Matrix before his breakthrough role as Richard Tyler in the science-fiction series The 4400. His first major film release was in the 2008 David Fincher-directed romantic fantasy drama film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and his other notable films include Predators, The Place Beyond the Pines, Free State of Jones, Hidden Figures, and as Boggs in The Hunger Games series. Ali is also known for his roles in the Netflix series House of Cards as Remy Danton and as Cornell "Cottonmouth" Stokes in Luke Cage.
For his performance as mentor Juan in the drama film Moonlight (2016), Ali received universal acclaim from critics and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the SAG Award and the Critics' Choice Award for Best Supporting Actor, and received a Golden Globe and a BAFTA Award nomination. his win at the 89th Academy Awards made him the first Muslim actor to win an Oscar.
Ali was born in 1974, in Oakland, California, the son of Willicia and Phillip Gilmore. He was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and returned to Oakland when he was fourteen. He is named after Maher-shalal-hash-baz, a biblical prophetic-name child. Raised Christian by his mother, an ordained minister,he later converted to Islam, changing his surname from Gilmore to Ali, and joining the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. His father appeared on Broadway. He attended St. Mary's College of California (SMC) in Moraga, where he graduated in 1996 with a degree in mass communication.
Though Ali entered SMC with a basketball scholarship, he became disenchanted with the idea of a sports career because of the treatment given to the team's athletes. Ali developed an interest in acting, particularly after taking part in a staging of Spunk that later landed him an apprenticeship at the California Shakespeare Theater following graduation. Following a sabbatical year where Ali worked for Gavin Report, he enrolled in New York University's graduate acting program, earning his master's degree in 2000.
Ali was known professionally as Mahershalalhashbaz Ali until 2010. He is known for his portrayal of Remy Danton in the Netflix series House of Cards, Cornell Stokes in Luke Cage, Colonel Boggs in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, and Tizzy in the 2008 film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
His first major film release was in the 2008 David Fincher-directed romantic fantasy drama film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and his other notable films include Predators, the Place Beyond the Pines, Free State of Jones, Hidden Figures, and as Boggs in The Hunger Games series.
For his performance as mentor and drug dealer Juan in the drama film Moonlight (2016), Ali received universal acclaim from critics and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Screen Actors' Guild (SAG) Award and Critics' Choice Award for Best Supporting Actor, and received a Golden Globe and a BAFTA Award nomination. His win at the 89th Academy Awards made him the first Muslim actor to win an Oscar.
Hadje Halime (b. 1930, Salamat, Chad - d. January 7, 2001) was a Chadian activist, educator, and politician called the "mother of the revolution". Hadjé Halimé Oumar was born in the town of Salamat in 1930 to a mother from Salamat and a father from Abeche. She became involved with the Parti Progressiste Tchadien (PPT) in 1950 while working as a Quranic instructor. She was able to bring in more women who did not know French due to her knowledge of Chadian Arabic. At the time she had only a limited grasp of French. She was particularly close to Gabriel Lisette, the founder of the party, and his wife, Lisette Yéyon. She became responsible for recruiting Northern women following the General Meeting of April 2, 1950. Halimé harshly criticized the colonial administration's poll tax, and declared that if the PPT secured a victory, the poll tax would be abolished for all despite the platform calling for ending the tax only on women. She declared that Lisette was the undisputed leader of the party, despite the rise of Southern Chadian politician Francois Tombalbaye, and traveled to France on Lisette's urging to meet with the French politician Rene Coty.
However, in 1959 and 1960, Tombalbaye gained power and Lisette was removed from power. Halimé became the target of repression soon after independence, unlike her PPT female colleague Kaltouma Nguembang. As part of a purge of those near to Lisette, Halimé's only son was murdered, and she was arrested in September 1963. At first, she was taken to Massenya in Chari-Baguirmi Region, then to a central prison in Chad's capital of N'Djamena, and finally to a dreaded prison at Kela. At the Kela prison, she was regularly tortured by guards through electrocution while French and Israeli army officers supervised. Her torture resulted in her losing all her fingernails and hair. Despite Tombalbaye wanting Halimé to be killed, a French officer spared her life. In an interview, she stated that only her faith was able to keep her going through the difficult circumstances of torture. She was finally released on April 28, 1975, days after the overthrow of Tombalbaye and his regime. Out of 600 people who were imprisoned during this purge, she was one of only 45 who lived.
Lisette, who had been exiled in France, helped bring her to Paris to receive medical treatment. Halimé spent time in a hospital in Cote d'Ivoire, where the president Felix Houphouet-Boigny mandated that her medical care be free. She later joined the National Liberation Front of Chad or FROLINAT, which was based in Libya. In 1978, she moved to Tripoli and returned to politics. FROLINAT members dubbed her "the mother of the revolution", and the party seized power in 1979. She also began educating girls in Libya and founded an Islamic school, the Rising New Generation, where she taught religion, home economics, and child care. She taught over 3600 girls at the school during her years there.
Halime returned to N'Djamena in 1980 with the Popular Armed Forces (FAP) leader Goukouni Oueddei. She was then the president of the women's faction of FROLINAT. After the election of Hissene Habre in 1982, she left with forces loyal to Oueddeï in Libya. While in Libya, Halimé taught military skills to exiled Chadian women. She returned to Chad in 1991, a year after the overthrow of Habré by Idriss Deby. Many people told Deby they would support him only if he received the backing of Halimé, which she eventually gave. Shortly after her return, she won a seat in Chad's parliament and served there until 1996.
In 1993, Halime participated in the National Sovereign Conference (CNS), and was one of the most fervent defenders of the Arabic language. In 1994, she created an association called Women Az-Zara. On behalf of the association, she was voted among ten women candidates to be a member of the Higher Council of Transition, staying four years. In June 1996, she ran for parliament as a member of the opposition National Front of Chad party, as it was impossible to run as an independent.She was defeated but maintained the election was rigged. Halimé afterwards cared for orphans whose parents were killed during the Habré regime. She also opened an Arabic school in N'Djamena.
Halime went on six pilgrimages to Mecca in her life, including one last trip in 2000. She died on January 7, 2001.
*Amina Cachalia, a South African anti-Apartheid activist, women's rights activist, and politician was born in Vereeniging, South Africa. In 1995, while President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela proposed to Cachalia.
Amina Cachalia, (b. Amina Asvat; June 28, 1930 Vereeniging, South Africa – d. January 31, 2013, Johannesburg, South Africa) was a longtime friend and ally of Nelson Mandela. Her late husband was political activist Yusuf Cachalia.
Cachalia was born Amina Asvat, the ninth of eleven children in Vereeniging, South Africa, on June 28, 1930. Her parents were political activists Ebrahim and Fatima Asvat. She began campaigning against Apartheid and racial discrimination as a teenager. She became a women's rights activist, often focusing on economic issues, such as financial independence for women.
Amina and Yusuf Cachalia were friends of Nelson Mandela before his imprisonment at Robben Island in 1962. She became a staunch anti-apartheid activist. She spent fifteen years under house arrest throughout the 1960s and 1970s. She was the treasurer of the Federation of South African Women (Fedsaw), a leading supporter of the Federation of Transvaal Women, and a member of both the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress and Transvaal Indian Congress during the Apartheid era.
In 1995, Mandela asked Cachalia to marry him. At the time, he had been separated from his wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Cachalia turned down Mandela's proposal because she said that "I'm my own person and that I had just recently lost my husband whom I had enormous regard for". Mandela divorced Madikizela-Mandela a year later and married Graca Machel in 1998.
Cachalia was elected to the National Assembly of South Africa in the 1994 South African general election, the country's first with universal adult suffrage. In 2004, she was awarded the Order of Luthuli in Bronze for her contributions to gender and racial equality and democracy.
After her death, in March 2013, her autobiography When Hope and History Rhyme was published.
Cachalia died at Milpark Hospital in Parktown West, Johannesburg, January 31, 2013, aged 82. The cause of death was complications following an emergency operation due to a perforated ulcer.
Her funeral was held in her home in Parkview, Johannesburg, according to traditional Muslim customs. It was attended by South African President Jacob Zuma, former Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe, ANC Deputy Cyril Ramaphosa, former First Lady Graca Machel, former Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and fellow activisti Ahmed Kathrada, among others.
Andimba Toivo ya Toivo, Namibian Independence Leader, Dies at 92
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Andimba Toivo ya Toivo, center, with fellow Namibian activists Anton Lubowsi, left, and Hage Geingob, the current president of Namibia, in 1989.CreditJohn Liebenberg, via University of Cape Town
Andimba Toivo ya Toivo, a Namibian nationalist leader who fought a long and dogged campaign for his land’s independence and was jailed for 16 years alongside Nelson Mandela in South Africa’s notorious Robben Island prison, died on Friday in Windhoek, Namibia’s capital. He was 92.
The newspaper The Namibian and other news outlets in Namibia reported his death, drawing tributes from the Nelson Mandela Foundation and other African organizations.
While his international stature did not attain the fabled aura that surrounded Mr. Mandela, Mr. ya Toivo nonetheless secured enduring status among Namibians as the inspiration for their uneven struggle against South Africa’s disputed control of their land, once called South West Africa.
Like Mr. Mandela, Mr. ya Toivo was skilled in courtroom oratory, which offered opponents of white minority rule a rare public platform.
“We find ourselves here in a foreign country, convicted under laws made by people whom we have always considered as foreigners,” he said during a Supreme Court trial in Pretoria, South Africa’s capital, that lasted from August 1967 to February 1968.
Standing before the bench, Mr. ya Toivo cataloged his reasons for challenging South Africa’s refusal to heed United Nations demands for Namibia’s liberation.
“We are Namibians, and not South Africans,” he said. “We do not now, and will not in the future, recognize your right to govern us, to make laws for us in which we have no say, to treat our country as if it were your property and us as if you were our masters.”
Mr. ya Toivo’s repudiation of South African hegemony was so resolute that he and his compatriots incarcerated on Robben Island refused to seek better prison conditions, for fear that their complaints would be taken as de facto acknowledgment of Pretoria’s authority.
Indeed, Mr. ya Toivo acquired a pugilistic reputation after punching out a white prison guard during a search of prisoners’ cells. In return he was beaten and given long spells in solitary confinement, in which his jailers would even black out the windows to prevent him from seeing the sky or sunlight.
He “shows no respect or cooperation,” his captors said in declassified records published in Namibian newspapers after independence in 1990.
“He does not submit to any authority and is unsatisfied to be held in a South African prison,” the records added.
They described him as “a martyr leader” and “a very good orator.”
For all his credentials, though, Mr. ya Toivo fell short of the reward that accrued for many other liberation heroes.
When Namibia finally became independent, the presidency went to a fellow campaigner, Sam Nujoma; Mr. ya Toivo was appointed minister of mines.
Both men had been central players in the founding of the insurgent South-West Africa People’s Organization, widely known as Swapo, which came to be recognized by the United Nations as the sole legitimate representative of the Namibian population.
But while Mr. Nujoma left Namibia to become Swapo’s exiled leader, Mr. ya Toivo remained in southern Africa to face arrest, trial and incarceration on Robben Island until 1984.
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Mr. ya Toivo in 2015. He retired from active politics in 2006 after holding three successive ministerial posts.
There were forecasts that divisions between Mr. Nujoma and Mr. ya Toivo would blunt Swapo’s bid for power, but the public confrontation never came. Still, rivalries lasted. As late as 2014, when Mr. ya. Toivo celebrated his 90th birthday, the newspaper The Namibian reported that Mr. Nujoma had “pointedly declined” to offer a public tribute to him.
The destinies of both men were intertwined with events far beyond their native land. South Africa had taken control of Namibia, a former German colony, under a League of Nations mandate after World War I. But its refusal, much later, to give up control of what had become a virtual South African colony — run on the model of South African apartheid — played into a Cold War confrontation that drew in Cuban troops and superpower diplomacy.
Over time, American and other Western officials sought to broker a peace that would deliver independence to Namibia in return for a withdrawal of Cuban troops from neighboring Angola. The Cubans, sharing Marxist sympathies with Angola, had been deployed there to support their ideological allies around the time of Angola’s independence from Portugal in 1975.
But it was only after a showdown in the late 1980s between the Cubans and South Africa, and its surrogates, in a battle for the Angolan town of Cuito Cuanavale, that the peace deal was cemented.
In all this, Swapo’s guerrillas in the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia — backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union — played a relatively limited role. But, as in many African bush wars, the guerrillas’ aim was simply to endure.
“In the kind of anticolonial struggle they have been waging,” Joseph Lelyveld wrote in 1982, when he was the southern Africa correspondent for The New York Times, “survival and victory are virtually synonymous.”
Herman Andimba Toivo ya Toivo was born on Aug. 22, 1924, in a village near Ondangwa, in northern Namibia, an area known as Ovamboland after the territory’s biggest ethnic group, the Ovambo. He attended Christian mission schools, qualifying as a carpenter, then studied to be a teacher. During World War II he joined the segregated, all-black Native Military Corps of the South African Defense Force, which fought on the British side.
After a spell teaching and running a store, Mr. ya Toivo left for Cape Town in 1951 and worked there as a railroad police officer. He soon became active in political groups, like the Modern Youth Society, which was run by college students and labor unionists. In 1957, he and other nationalists founded the Ovamboland People’s Congress, the forerunner of the Ovamboland People’s Organization and Swapo itself.
Much of Mr. ya Toivo’s energy went into challenging South Africa’s quasi-annexation of Namibia and seeking better conditions for migrant workers. In 1958, the South African authorities sent him back to northern Namibia because of his activism. Two years later, he and other nationalists, including Mr. Nujoma, formally created Swapo.
In 1966, Swapo guerrillas launched the first military operations of their uneven armed struggle against vastly superior South African forces. Within months, Mr. ya Toivo was arrested and imprisoned in Pretoria, where his captors repeatedly tortured him, he said.
In February 1968 he was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment and sent to Robben Island.
“He wanted very little to do with whites, with the warders,” on Robben Island, Mr. Mandela recalled in an interview after his own release in 1990. Mr. ya Toivo, he said, “wouldn’t cooperate with the authorities at all in almost anything.”
Even when the South African authorities released him in 1984 after 16 years, Mr. ya Toivo was reluctant to leave his cell while fellow nationalists were still jailed. According to Michael Dingake, a fellow prisoner, “the prison authorities had to trick him out of the cell and then lock him out” to make him leave.
When he returned to Namibia, thousands of jubilant supporters were there to greet him, pouring into the streets of Katutura, a segregated black township near Windhoek.
Soon afterward, on a visit to New York, Mr. ya Toivo met Vicki Erenstein, an American labor lawyer. They married a week after Namibia finally gained independence, in March 1990. In 1993 they had twin daughters, Mutaleni and Nashikoto.
While Mr. Nujoma served three terms as president, from 1990 to 2005, Mr. ya Toivo held three successive ministerial portfolios — mines and energy, labor, and correctional services. He retired from active politics in 2006.
But even later he seemed to sense that his mission was incomplete.
“The struggle to develop our beloved Namibia and to share its wealth among all of our people,” he said in 2014, “will take longer than the political struggle, but where there is a will, there is a way.”
