It started with a curious sight, which bugged me for years. While studying at the University of Cape Town, and in a later period working there, I would see a rather intriguing memorial:

At the bottom of the Leslie Commerce building lay what appeared to be a gravestone, or a marker of sorts. As seen in the picture, Haji Ayesha Teladia died in 1981 – living to be 56 years old.

I wondered: Who was Ayesha Teladia? And surely she was not buried there…so why was the stone there? What was her link to UCT?

My early research referred me to one or more (seemingly) currently-living person/people of the same name, but this obviously wasn’t the Ayesha in question…she had been dead for decades already.

Close, but no cigar

In 2015, I posted it on Facebook and gathered a lot more info from family members and those who seem to have known her:

• She’s not buried at UCT. She is buried in a proper graveyard. This stone – maybe a replica of the one at her grave – has been at UCT since the 1980s.
• She was extremely active in fighting for equality in education with a vital focus on Islamic Education.
• She had an extraordinary and exceptional story of philanthropy and service to the Muslim community.
• In 1980, she converted the top floor of her house in Lotus River, Grassy Park to a mosque – because there was a need for that in the area at the time.

Those were the facts established in that round of discussion. They sketch out that she must have been an amazing person, and definitely a story that could inspire others.

I was supposed to be put in contact with an elder who knew her life story, but that fell through – so I never learned anything more at the time.

There were a number of other leads, too, but I didn’t have the time to speak to everyone, and I felt that it would be far better in the hands of proper journalists who could piece together an awesome story from all the info and the first hand sources. Two Muslim media organisations indicated that they would do a story on this, but nothing ever materialised from that, unfortunately.

The stone was removed from campus around 2013 or 2015, so any trace of her memory no longer remains there.

The case remained dormant thereafter, before I decided to make some further enquiries at the university. After contacting both current and retired staff members from a range of relevant departments, still no information emerged about her link to UCT. And so, I left it at that, possessing neither the time nor the journalistic skills to dig deeper and actually get to the bottom of the story.

Mystery solved (mostly)

In January 2024, I received an email from a woman who revealed the name of the person who had put the stone up. He worked at the university, and had erected the stone in memory of Ayesha – who he was related to by marriage.

She described Ayesha as an Islamic scholar and teacher, who visited Islamic holy sites annually, and settled in the Cape Town suburb of Grassy Park, where she ran a madressah.

She doesn’t believe that Ayesha was a saint, though this man’s high regard for Ayesha must have caused him to put the memorial up.

And so, after all those years of wondering about the origins of this memorial, the mystery was finally solved.

One outstanding question still remains, though: Ayesha seemed to have had no direct connection to the university, so why did the institution allow this memorial to remain there in the first place? And why did it stay there for decades?

A legacy undocumented?

I leave this as a challenge for any journalists – whether Muslim or not – who are looking for an intriguing legacy story from the Cape Muslim community. If you want to pursue the story, you may contact me so that I can put you in touch with the person who provided the last round of information.