Fasiha Hassan | |
|---|---|
 Hassan in 2016 | |
| Member of the National Assembly | |
| Assumed office 14 June 2024 | |
| Member of the Gauteng Provincial Legislature | |
| In office 22 May 2019 – 28 May 2024 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Fasiha Hassan (1993-11-26)26 November 1993 (age 32) |
| Citizenship | South Africa |
| Party | African National Congress |
| Spouse | |
| Alma mater | University of the Witwatersrand |
Fasiha Hassan (born 26 November 1993) is a South African politician and former student activist. She has represented theAfrican National Congress (ANC) in theNational Assembly since June 2024 and formerly represented the party in theGauteng Provincial Legislature between 2019 and 2024. She rose to national prominence as a student at theUniversity of the Witwatersrand, where she was secretary general of the student representative council during the#FeesMustFall student protests of 2016.
Born on 26 November 1993,[1] Hassan became politically active as a student activist at theUniversity of the Witwatersrand (Wits), initially through thePalestinian solidarity movement.[2] She was the first female president of the university's Muslim Students' Association in 2013,[3][2] and she went on to join the provincial leadership of theSouth African Students Congress inGauteng.[4]
Most prominently, Hassan served two terms as a member of the Witsstudent representative council. Representing the Progressive Youth Alliance, she was elected as the council's academic officer in September 2014, under council presidentMcebo Dlamini,[5] and the following year she ascended to the position of secretary general, under presidentNompendulo Mkhatshwa.[6][7] In 2016 she gained national media attention as a leader in the ongoing#FeesMustFall student protests.[8]
When her year-long term as secretary general ended, Hassan remained active in student politics as deputy president of the South African Union of Students.[2] She graduated at the end of 2017 with aBachelor of Laws and aBachelor of Commerce in law, marketing and finance.[2] She later received the NorwegianStudent Peace Prize for her "nonviolent efforts towards gaining equal access to higher education".[9]
After her graduation, Hassan joinedENSafrica as a candidateattorney,[4] but she did not complete herarticles of clerkship.[10] Instead, in August 2018, theAfrican National Congress (ANC) announced that Hassan would join the party's communications unit ahead of theMay 2019 general election.[11] Confronted with criticism from elements of the FMF movement, she said that she shared the ANC's commitment to "social justice and a pro-poor agenda" and that, notwithstanding FMF's deliberately non-partisan character, "We were all ANC members before FMF, we were ANC members during FMF and we remain ANC members now."[12]
Hassan stood as an ANC candidate in the May 2019 election and was elected to a seat in theGauteng Provincial Legislature.[13] TheSunday Times reported that, aged 25, she became the youngest everMPL in South Africa.[3] She was appointed as head of political education in the ANC caucus in the legislature.[14] She also sat on the legislature's education committee and later chaired its economic development committee and then its cooperative governance committee.[10]
She also . In 2022, she was appointed to the ANC's Renewal Commission.[15] In March 2023, she was appointed to the National Youth Task Team, the interim body tasked with leading theANC Youth League while it organised its overdue elective conference; she deputisedXola Nqola as deputy convener of the task team.[16][17] She was also viewed as a possible candidate to stand for the league's presidency,[18] butCollen Malatji was elected unopposed when the elective conference was held in July 2023. Instead, Hassan was elected as an ordinary member of the ANC Youth League's National Executive Committee; she was the most popular ordinary member by number of votes received.[19] As deputy convenor she also delivered a political report to the elective conference: in her speech, she argued that the league should lobby for aPan-African Youth Union boycott of Morocco, in protest of theWestern Sahara occupation, and that it should lobby for the establishment of aBRICS youth secretariat.[20] She also spoke in support of the South Africa'snon-aligned stance in theRussia–Ukraine war.[20]
In theMay 2024 general election, Hassan was elected to a seat in theNational Assembly, the lower house of theSouth African Parliament. She was ranked 65th on the ANC's national party list in the election.[21] Upon her election she said that her policy priorities would be education,youth unemployment, andclimate justice.[10]
In Parliament, she serves as awhip in the ANC caucus and sits on thePortfolio Committee on Mineral and Petroleum Resources andPortfolio Committee on Electricity and Energy.[4] The ANC also nominated her to represent Parliament as a member of theJudicial Service Commission.[22]
Hassan isMuslim.[21] She identifies asblack andIndian.[10]