Fatima Kaffoor turned 100 last Friday, June 23, with friends and family visiting and wishing her well throughout the day. The official celebration took place on Sunday at the Venue on Klip in Lotus River.
According to her youngest daughter and caretaker, Yasmin, Ms Kaffoor has now lived in the Bo-Kaap for 77 years, walks independently, does not take any medication and has no chronic ailments.
Despite the recent loss of memory as well as hearing difficulties, she vividly recalled snippets of her childhood and where she grew up in Durban with her grandmother.
“My father died when I was very young, he was a Fredericks, and my mother was a Abrahams. My mother remarried and my step-father also passed a few years later, and then my mother died, and all this was in my teenage years. I was raised by my grandmother and her name was Fatima. I’m the eldest of four, I was the only girl, and we lived in Berea,” Ms Kaffoor says.
Her brothers Taypie, Adnaan, and Ebrahim are all deceased. Her husband, Hashiem, passed away seven years ago, just months before their 66th wedding anniversary.
They have five children: Ayesha, 75, Ishgaak, 74, Salie, 73, Fareed, 63, and Yasmin, 60. The centurion has 17 grandchildren (two of whom have died), as well as 22 great-grandchildren.
“After my grandmother died I moved to Cape Town and lived with Boeta Joe (Yusuf Abrahams), my mothers eldest brother. I met my husband through friends of the family, we were visiting aunty Diejie in District Six, that’s where we met. I wasn’t too young, and I wasnt old either when I got married, and we lived in Bo-Kaap from the time we got married,” she says.
“I was a dressmaker and he was a tailor and that’s how we made our living. I worked from home and we were very happy. My favourite time was walking to town with my children. I loved walking, my husband and I would walk to Woodstock and Salt River and back with them,” Ms Kaffoor says.
“I can’t walk in the road because of the cobblestone streets but I do a lot of walking in the house and I do enjoy washing dishes. But I don’t dry the dishes, they must drip-dry. I don’t cook either, Yasmin cooks and I enjoy her food because I taught her,” she said.
“My mom worked for the theatre, it was called Nico Malan then, and my dad too was a tailor and he specialised in making ladies dresses. She was very strict with us, very family-oriented. We would take a bus on Sundays to visit family that lived in Claremont, Bonteheuwel – wherever they lived, my parents insisted we visit family and we were welcomed wherever we went. We really had a good upbringing,” says Yasmin.
“And my mother taught me to cook, to bake, everything, so now it’s my turn to do this for her,” she says.
With five children, Ms Kaffoor also took on the responsibility of looking after her aunt Amina’s children, her mother’s sister, and taught herself Afrikaans.
Yasmin says that the cousins regularly check up on the aunt who raised them.
“I enjoyed looking after my children and my aunt’s children as well. There was Tootsie, Boy, Yunus, Farook, Cookie, Aysie and Raymond,” Ms Kaffoor says.
“My mother learnt to read and write in Afrikaans on her own. We spoke English growing up and some neighbours refer to us, and still tease us, about being the English-speaking family but now my mom speaks Afrikaans most of the time,” says Yasmin.
While Yasmin often reminds her that it’s her 100th birthday, Ms Kaffoor says she doesn’t feel old.
“Sometimes we have to repeat one thing again and again. She does ask lots of questions and she also tries to ‘help’ in the kitchen. I know that she had a tough childhood but she, actually they, my mother and father, gave us a good childhood and we are very grateful for her life,” Yasmin says.
