The title of the first Egyptian minister is not enough to describe her, as the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser called her "the merciful heart of the revolution." Journalists called her "the ghost minister" for her tireless activity. She may be the first minister whose country's authorities refrain from issuing her passport;

It is Dr. Hikmat Abu Zeid, Minister of Social Affairs, who passed away on July 30, 2011.

early struggle

Abu Zeid's life is full of tumultuous events accompanying historical milestones. During her high school studies in Helwan, south of Cairo in the thirties - where demonstrations against the English occupation were raging - she led the students' revolution inside the school, which angered the authorities at the time, so they separated her, and she was forced to complete her education at Princess Faiza School in Alexandria .

When the French, Anglo-Israeli alliance launched an aggression against Egypt in 1956;

Abu Zeid joined the popular resistance groups, trained in carrying weapons, and traveled to Port Said with Ingy Aflatoun, the Egyptian artist who belongs to the pioneers of the fine art movement in Egypt and the Arab world. Siza Nabarawy was the first to lead a women’s demonstration in 1919 and had a reputation in the national movement before July 1952.

Women holding a gun

Abu Zaid said - about that period - "We were participating in the popular resistance, and it was part of our formation. Some girls nurse and some carry guns and learn to use them in preparation for battle."

She emphasized that women were diligent, distinguished, enthusiastic and patriotic, who loved science and work, and they all worked to serve society, according to an interview with her in the Egyptian Hawa magazine.

Hikmat Abu Zeid was born in one of the villages of the Dayrut Center in the Assiut Governorate in Upper Egypt in 1916, to a father who owns in his home a library that includes the speeches of the famous leader Mustafa Kamel, the works of the French fighter Juliette Adam, and the writings of Mustafa Sadiq Al-Rafa’i, one of the poles of modern Arabic literature.

After completing her secondary studies, she joined Fouad I University (currently Cairo University) in 1940, and chose the History Department at the Faculty of Arts, whose dean was headed by Dr. Taha Hussein, who predicted her a brilliant future, trying to convince her to join the French Department because of her proficiency in this language and her studies in foreign schools in Alexandria. However, she preferred the social sciences because of her fondness for human society, according to her.

Then, after graduation, she joined a teacher at Helwan Secondary School;

She was her previous school from which she was dismissed, and she was not satisfied with that, but she traveled to the English countries to obtain a master’s degree from Scotland in 1950 and a doctorate in psychology from the University of London in 1955, then she returned to Egypt in the same year and was immediately appointed to the Women’s College at Ain Shams University.

Abdel Nasser's violation on the air

In 1962, she was on a date with her appointment to the "Committee of the Hundred" to prepare the national conference and discuss the national charter to be issued. Strongly on Abdel Nasser’s personal rejection of what he called the intellectual adolescence based on enthusiasm, which you see as an essential partner in the construction, and it was a television dialogue transmitted on the air, and here she grabbed the attention and admiration of the president himself, to choose her in the same year as Minister of Social Affairs, according to the journalist writer Omar Taher in his book. Egyptian industrial.

Pilot projects

Abu Zeid succeeded in transferring the ministry’s interests and activities to all villages and hamlets in the Republic by establishing branches, and established several important projects, including the Productive Families Project, the Rural Women Pioneers Project and the Rural Women Advancement Project. By assuming the position of the Ministry, she also included the Ministry's duties with the care of the Juvenile Institution.

Taher mentioned in his book that when the Nuba people were drowned after the height of the Aswan reservoir, they had to be displaced to save them, so Abu Zayd took responsibility, and prepared training courses for the Nubians on how to arrange their things before migration, even cats and birds.

She helped them in lengthy sessions to psychologically accept immigration, and supervised that the new place preserved the entity and structure of the Nubian society, in addition to the school and the hospital, and it was a successful experience to the point that Nasser said that Abu Zeid succeeded in mobilizing an entire community politically and economically;

According to him.

missile on the front

Taher - who was visiting her many years ago in her home - tells that he caught his eye a metal object present as a piece of decoration, so she told him that during Nasser's visit to the front and during his dialogue with a soldier, he felt upset and asked him why. He said that his mother was sick and he was worried about her.

Nasser recorded the soldier’s mother’s data and sent it to Abu Zaid to follow up on her condition. She said, “I will not follow up on this case.” An empty missile was fired at her and her colleagues while they were in a jeep carrying them to the front, so I decided to keep it as a memory.

accusations of treason

After all this dedication to work, the minister did not expect that fate would hide accusations of treason and coercion for her, and that she would be called in some press articles a terrorist, then confiscate her property and be prevented from issuing a new Egyptian passport, which implied - according to Taher's words - the withdrawal of the Egyptian nationality from her after she Opposed the approach of the late President Anwar Sadat for peace with Israel.

Abu Zeid lived for a long time as a political refugee, until former President Hosni Mubarak allowed her in the early 1990s to return to Egypt and the Minister of Interior ordered her to receive her at the airport and she entered from the VIP lounge.

A model for any minister

Dr. Ashraf Yassin, professor of political science, stressed that Hikmat Abu Zaid is not only a model for influential women ministers, but is also a model for any minister in terms of her activity, dedication to work, and her always fervent mentality to serve citizens and invent solutions to their problems.

Women ministers - like Abu Zeid and Aisha Ratib, who took over the same ministry years later - were the best example of what any minister should have to take initiative and not wait for orders, or move according to what they always declare without shame and anticipate any decision for them;

"In implementation of the instructions of the President," according to Yassin's words to Al-Jazeera Net.

Yassin pointed to the increase in the number of women ministers in Egyptian governments until it recently reached 8, and this is a good thing, of course, in the way of involving women in government and politics. Try to think outside the box, he said.