Amina Cachalia

Who was Amina Cachalia?

Amina Cachalia, OLB was a South African anti-Apartheid activist, women's rights activist, and politician. She was a longtime friend and ally of former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela. Her late husband was political activist Yusuf Cachalia.

Cachalia was born Amina Asvat in Vereeniging, South Africa, on 28 June 1930. 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, 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 his was separated from his current 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 Graça Machel in 1998.