Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi is a South African politician who has been the leader of the Minority Front since 2012.
20 Facts About Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi
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Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi has represented the party in the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature since 1999.
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Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi was born on 17 November 1964 in Durban in the former Natal Province.
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Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi's parents were Devjeith Thakur, a teacher, and Betty Thakur, a housewife.
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Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi's paternal grandfather was an indentured mineworker of Indian origin.
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Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi was raised and educated in Newcastle in northwest Natal; an avid competitive debater, she was head girl at St Oswald's High School in 1982, the year she matriculated.
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Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi's father referred to his six daughters as his "sons" and encouraged them to pursue further education.
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Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi graduated in 1987 with a Bachelor of Pharmacy and moved to Ladysmith to complete her pharmaceutical traineeship at Ladysmith Provincial Hospital.
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In 1990, Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi opened a retail pharmacy, Eastbury Pharmacy, in Easterly in Phoenix, a majority-Indian settlement outside Durban.
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Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi practiced as a pharmacist for two decades, including during her early political career, until she sold the pharmacy in 2010 to pursue politics full-time.
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Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi joined the Minority Front in 1998 after expressing an interest in politics to Amichand Rajbansi, the party's founder, who later became her husband.
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Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi was elected as chairperson of the MF Women's League.
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Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi was appointed as interim leader of the MF in 2011 when Rajbansi fell ill.
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Shortly after his death, on 19 January 2012, the MF announced that its leadership had appointed Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi to succeed her husband as party president.
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Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi said that she would seek to continue Rajbansi's legacy, particularly by maintaining the party's staunch support for the protection of minority rights.
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Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi said that he and his mother, Amichand Rajbansi's first wife Asha Devi, would avail themselves "to step in and save the party".
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Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi did not attend the conference and denied that it was a legitimate election.
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Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi was formerly married to a school teacher, who died in 1993.
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Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi remarried to Amichand Rajbansi on 30 March 2001 in Durban at a traditional Hindu ceremony that included speeches by politicians Faith Gasa and Margaret Rajbally.
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Shameen Thakur-Rajbansi thus became stepmother to Rajbansi's four children from his first marriage.