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Educator and lifelong learner, Mymona Galant, passed away on Wednesday May 13, 2026. She was one of the teachers at the Claremont Main Road Mosque Saturday Morning Madrasah. She dedicated decades to Qur’an education, madrasah teacher training and empowering communities through knowledge.
The following tribute, by FAHMI GAMIELDIEN, is extracted from his book, The History of the Claremont Main Road Mosque, Its People and Their Contribution to Islam in South Africa, published in 2004 to mark the 150 Year Commemoration of the mosque.
Mymona Galant was born on October 27, 1939, in the city of Durban. Her father, M. Rashaad Domingo, was originally from Cape Town where he served as an imam’s assistant at the Awwal Mosque. He was very well read and instilled in Aunty Mymona a great love for books and reading. Aunty Mymona’s mother, Kubrah, was from Durban where her father was an imam. They were wonderful community people and served the community as toekamandies, persons responsible for washing and shrouding the deceased.
Whilst on holiday in Cape Town, Aunty Mymona met her future husband, Sedick Galant, a teacher who lived in Draper Street, Claremont. They married in 1964 and stayed in Lansdowne before moving to Vanguard Estate. Boeta Sedick, a very sociable person, was a member of the Claremont Muslim Youth Association (YCMYA) and very active at the Stegmann Road Mosque [Masjid Al Jaamia, Claremont]. Aunty Mymona offered to work in the library at the Stegmann Road Mosque where she catalogued the books. She donated many of her personal books, inherited from her father, to the library. Aunty Mymona loved to read Shakespeare’s works and her favourite novel was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.
She completed her standard eight and then attended evening school to try and obtain her matric certificate, but her father became ill and she decided to look after him. She learnt how to recite the Qur’an from her parents. Her love for the Qur’an inspired her to want to know more about it, and she desperately wanted to understand what she was reciting.
There were no structured classes to attend and, eager to learn the Arabic language, she joined the Arabic Study Circle in Durban as one of its first students.
In 1973, she started volunteering at the Vanguard Madrasah near her home. With no formal teaching experience, she was ‘thrown in at the deep end’. However, two experiences led her to want to learn how to teach.
The first was her interest in an Arabic prayer which the learners at the madrasah were reciting every day. Not being able to do the Arabic calligraphy, she transcribed the prayer in Roman script and had someone write it in Arabic. This enabled her to practise the Arabic calligraphy, resulting in her creating a wall chart of the prayer.
The second was when she noticed that her students were learning English at their schools via the phonetic method. This led her to the idea of trying to synchronise the way children were already learning in school with their afternoon madrasah education. She began taking the names of each of her learners and linking the sounds they made to the Arabic alphabet.
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Greatly encouraged by the response she received, she went on to develop the phonetic method of learning how to read the Qur’an. In the late 1970s, she discovered an audio tape from Egypt that also used this method, but by this time she had developed her own home-grown techniques of teaching the phonetic method.
Keen to empower herself and improve her skills, she attended tajwid classes – the science of reading the Qur’an correctly – with Shaykh Yusuf Booley. In 1995, she completed a course in child psychology and, in 1996, an advanced course in child psychology focusing on cognitive skills development. These courses were run under the auspices of Vista University, and she passed them with distinction.
In 1997, after having been granted an age exemption, she began studies for her Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of the Western Cape. In her final year of studies, she obtained 73 per cent. For this achievement, she was rewarded with membership to the Golden Key International Honour Society, a non-profit academic honours organisation founded in the US in 1977, ‘in recognition of outstanding scholastic achievement and excellence’. In 2002, she completed her honours degree majoring in linguistics and Arabic.
This was the pinnacle of her desire to learn the Arabic language and to be able to understand the Qur’an she so dearly loves. It opened up a whole new world for her. She explains: ‘One day I attended Jumu’ah, the Friday congregational prayers, where a guest speaker from Malaysia was delivering the sermon in Arabic. I wanted to jump up and clap my hands because I could understand perfectly what he was saying.’
Aunty Mymona taught at Vanguard Madrasah for ten years before becoming principal for the next ten years. Since 1987, she has devoted her life to madrasah teacher training. She has developed a comprehensive madrasah teaching syllabus accompanied by colourful wall charts, flash cards and other visual aids. She has conducted teacher-training workshops in George in the Southern Cape and as far afield as Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.
Aunty Mymona’s life personifies lifelong learning and teaching. She keeps an open mind and is always willing to empower and improve herself. She is also prepared to learn from anyone. She is often invited to give lectures during the month of Ramadan and regularly presents practical training workshops on how to perform funeral rites and pilgrimage.
She is also deeply spiritual and can often be found during the last ten days of Ramadan performing devotional seclusion at the Claremont Main Road Mosque.
She treasures the three phases of her family life: the one with her parents, the one with her husband and children, and the one now alone.
She is a professional dressmaker and her hobbies include embroidery, candle-wicking and gardening. She loves to bake and cook. In addition, she has an aviary and aquarium that keep her fairly busy.
When her husband, Boeta Sedick, became ill, she learnt how to drive a car while in her fifties.
Her motto: ‘It is important for retired persons to find an interest or a hobby in order to keep occupied.’
Editorial note: The tenses and spelling have been kept intact in order to preserve the integrity of the original.
