Achmat was the second of nine children born to Juleigha (née Chothia and known as ‘Julie’) and Ebrahim (called ‘Brimey’) Dangor. Achmat grew up in a working-class family. His mother was a garment worker and his father a salesman and owned a shop when Achmat was a child. Brimey and Julie shared a modest house with Brimey’s parents, Ebrahim and Gadija Dangor (née Isaacs), in Newclare, west of Johannesburg.

In 1946 the couple’s first child Mohammed was born followed by Achmat (known in his childhood as ‘Effie’ because his younger brother Sully couldn’t pronounce Achmat but called him Effie) on 2 October 1948. Over the next eighteen years the other seven Dangor children were born: Suleiman (‘Sully’); Abdullay (‘Charlie’); Yasmin (‘Jessie’); Moosa; Igshaan (‘Shaan’); Abbas; and Zane. Newclare was a vibrant community and the Dangor family home an exciting place to visit. Coco Cachalia, daughter of Amina and Yusaf Cachalia, has fond memories of visiting the Dangor home accompanied by her grandmother, Fatima Asvat (née Isaacs). At the 2020 Nelson Mandela Commemoration of Achmat, Coco said in her tribute:

“Going to Newclare was always an adventure for us and we very much enjoyed visiting the Dangor house … It was great that we could visit Auntie Gadija, as she was fondly called … I loved the Dangor house lots of steep steps leading up to a spacious stoep beautifully maintained with red polish. You could sit on that stoep and watch the comings and goings of the neighbourhood there was always the hustle and the bustle of many children.”

Sophiatown, Martindale and Newclare were laid out in 1905 as areas for “Natives, Coloured and Asiatics” residing in peri-urban areas. Newclare was designated as a ‘freehold township’ for African residential occupation from 1912. Since African, Coloured and Indian people were denied property rights in most other areas of Johannesburg Newclare became a popular place to live. By the time Brimey and Julie made Newclare their home it was a cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic, multi-faith and multi-lingual community. There was quite a lot of conflict between groups whose hostility towards one another was made worse by apartheid’s creation of “artificial divisions”. Achmat was introduced to several languages as a child. Achmat recalled “My father spoke thirteen languages. I grew up bilingually. Until the age of seven I spoke my mother tongue, Afrikaans, and Sotho. But it was decided I’d receive my schooling in English.”

Achmat was only a little boy when from around the mid-1950s the National Party (NP) government moved swiftly to implement racial segregation based on the Population Registration Act of 1950. Achmat and his family were classified, in the racialising language of the time, as “coloured” (mixed race). Under the Group Areas Act also of 1950, (GAA) people classified as African, Indian, and Chinese were evicted from Newclare. Despite protests against the forced removals, thousands of families and individuals were relocated. Achmat, recalled the day when their neighbours were forced out of their home and that his grandmother was: “out in the streets screaming at the policemen and [she] was shouting at the cops in Tswana something like ‘one day I’m going to fix you buggers.’”

The trauma of witnessing forced removals was exacerbated when Achmat’s father’s shop was forced to close down: “my father had a business in Newclare that catered mostly for African people. And he had to shut his shop down … It had a huge impact on us and the absolute segregation that occurred was really, really terrible. Friends and family gone. Buildings gone. So that had an impact on us. Life was hard for the Dangor family and finances limited. It was up to Achmat’s mother to keep the family going. “A wonderfully strong matriarch Auntie Julie” Coco Cachalia maintains “held everything together while trying to make ends meet.”

Achmat was an imaginative and inquisitive child. “I was a difficult child” Achmat described himself in a 2004 interview. After “it was decided that I’d go and live with my grandmother”. Achmat went to live with his other granny Thea in Fordsburg which was about 7 kilometres away. Achmat is estimated to have been between the ages of seven or ten. Achmat’s older brother Mohammed remembers the reason for his being sent away differently: “one of the motivations [for Achmat’s move to Fordsburg] was that there were) too many of us living in the house in Newclare. b) is that my maternal grandmother was very fond of Achmat and so was Dija fond of him. We grew up in the slum. He was the gentleman. We were the slum-dwellers.” 

Fordsburg is closer to the city centre than Newclare. It was laid out by private developers in 1888. In about twenty years, the people who were living there included poor Afrikaans-speakers from rural areas; mine workers; and Indian traders, Chinese merchants, and cabbies (horse-drawn vehicles for hire – olden day taxis) and their horses. In his 1998 article “Apartheid and the Death of South African Cities” Achmat wrote:

“I grew up in the 1950s, in a suburb called Fordsburg, located on the western edge of the city. From my grandmother’s corrugated-iron and wood house, which dated back to Fordsburg’s old mining days, I could walk to school, to the market, to the cinemas, the sport fields, the dairy, the shops, to the mosque or any number of Christian churches if I so wished. There were even safe places in which to play truant from school.”

The household comprised Achmat’s grandmother and two of her children still living at home, Achmat’s aunt Gadija (“Dija”) and uncle Abdullay (“Abe or Majee”). Achmat’s granny Thea was deeply religious and and ran a strict Muslim household. Achmat was compelled to attended madrassa in the afternoons. Achmat, speaking at the 2010 Casa África´s Letras Africanas (African Letters) programme, shared “I grew up with my grandmother, who converted to Islam when she married my grandfather, and she was more conservative than him. I grew up in a Muslim home.”

At the African Letters programme, Achmat also talked about his love of books and the trouble they sometimes got him into: “I went to a school where they introduced me to literature. At home, I read when no one was watching me. I would read until falling asleep or when everyone else was sleeping, and I would read everything from fairy tales to Camus or Hemingway. An Imam hit me when he discovered a copy of ‘The Stranger’ [by Camus who was an atheist] in my backpack… Literature helped me reach a much bigger world.”

Achmat called it a “a very feminine household. My grandmother’s was one of the last houses without electricity. So, at night all the women in the house would sit reading by the light of paraffin lamps.”

Achmat completed his primary schooling in Fordsburg, probably Fordsburg Primary (later known as Bree Street Indian Primary School) which had been established around 1913. Schools were already racially segregated by then, but learners classified as “coloured” were not separated from Indian learners. He went on to attend Johannesburg High School (later renamed the Johannesburg Indian High School) built in the 1940s a block away from the primary school on Bree Street. The schools were jointly administered between 1948 – 1988. Achmat, according to his family, “expressed the honour of being taught at the high school by great writers such as Can Themba.” Many Johannesburg High School teachers were also leading human rights activists such as Communist Party of South Africa member and later secretary of the Transvaal Indian Congress Mervyn Thandray. The high school also accommodated the Johannesburg Institute for Indian Teachers after it was established in 1954. Some alumni of the school and institute went on to become prominent leaders of the anti-apartheid movement including Ahmed Kathrada; Yusuf Dadoo; Amina Cachalia; Ahmed Timol; Essop Essak Jassat and Enver Saloojee. 

When segregation was enforced and the Group Areas Act (the GAA) was implemented in Fordsburg, residential and business rights of Indian people were restricted. The government also announced that the Johannesburg Indian High School in Fordsburg would close. The community opposed this and the Central Indian High School (also known as the Congress School) continued due to the efforts of the Transvaal Indian Congress. At some point, dates are unclear, the authorities announced that school would only be for learners classified as Indian. Coloured pupils were instructed to leave and this was when the school was renamed the Johannesburg Indian School (it officially closed in about 1967). Achmat was among those who were forced to leave and he moved to Roodepoort High School where he was taught by, amongst others, Ahmed Timol.

Achmat completed his schooling and engaged in part-time work. Before heading to Cape Town, Achmat stayed with his Uncle Abe and was inspired to write. In a 2019 interview he explained: 

“When my granny became ill and then I went to live with my Uncle Abe and his partner Bert, in [their] flat opposite Joubert Park. When I lived with them, I read the most unbelievable collection of books that Abe and Bert had in a case. And they found me once reading and warned me, ‘Be careful, this is going to mess up your life.’ But this is where my writing inspiration started.”