Cissie Gool and the National Liberation League
Zainunnisa Cissie Gool was born in Cape Town in 1897. Her father was the prominent politician, Dr Abdullah Abdurahman, leader of the African Peoples Organisation which he had helped to form in 1902. Cissie became a member of the CPSA but was active in many radical circles in the Cape. In 1937 she founded the National Liberation League (NLL) and became its first president. Its membership comprised the coloured intelligentsia of Cape Town. That same year, when the CPSA initiated its United Front programme against the government (in cooperation with the ANC), the NNL was also drawn into the campaign that included strike action, boycotts and demonstrations. She was less concerned with women's suffrage than remaining in the mainstream of the struggle for political freedom. Together with Ray Alexander she was one of the important female political leaders to be nurtured in the CPSA and to come to political prominence in the 1930s.
Cissie later represented Cape Town's District Six on the Cape Town City Council and for several years was the only woman serving on the City Council. In 1949, she was elected chairperson of the city council's health committee. During the 1940s she was elected as the president of the Non-European Front and became active in a campaign to start passive resistance. She was subsequently arrested and charged for this involvement.
Cissie Gools Biography here...
Cissie Gool 1954.© Bailey's Archives
