Unbowed by torture, banning
The Naidoo-Pillay family story is woven into the fabric of South African history with more than 130 years of activism in the struggle for a non-racial, democratic and prosperous society. The story of the family and their involvement in the struggle, titled Resistance in their Blood, has been brought to life in an exhibition of photographs and other items at the Apartheid Museum in Gold Reef City, Johannesburg. It will be shown until August 31. Descended from Thambi Naidoo, five generations kept alive the commitment to end the unjust laws and many were jailed for their efforts. The exhibition brings to life the persecution, detention and solitary confinement they suffered over the years. This excerpt, from a booklet compiled by E S REDDY, details the involvement of just one of them. POST will highlight the involvement of others in weeks to come.
INDRES worked as a clerk and became the mainstay for the family after Naran’s death. Active in the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress, he became its secretary and was elected an executive committee member of the congress in 1958. On the night of April 17, 1963, he was caught with two other Indians – Reggie Vandeyar and Shirish Nanabhai – after they had blown up a railway toolshed and tried to dynamite a signal relay case.
Indres and his friends were among the first to be caught in the Transvaal committing sabotage as members of Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), the ANC’s military wing. They had been betrayed by a spy. They were also among the first victims of policemen specially trained to torture freedom fighters.
Indres was shot in the shoulder before his capture and kicked when he fell. He was taken to a hospital to remove the bullet and then to his home for a search, his shirt saturated with blood. He was beaten and tortured over the next few days.
He says in his account: “I felt a punch, and before I realised what was happening all the police had made a ring around me and were kicking and pushing me, saying ‘now we’re playing rugby’ – one policeman would dive on to me, hitting me in the side, then another would come up and kick me as though I was the ball...
“The next thing I felt a wet, cold canvas bag being pulled over my head. They started squeezing a knot in it and choking me. I gasped for air and every time I breathed in, the canvas hit me in the face. I was choking, my nostrils and mouth blocked by the wet canvas; the harder I tried to get air into my lungs, the tighter the bag clamped over me, cutting off the air. ‘Coolie, today you’re going to die’. Laughter. ‘We’ve got the bastards.’
“I was struggling, thrashing around, almost unconscious.
“Laughter and talking among themselves. The bag was released and I swallowed air desperately, but then the canvas slapped back into my mouth and once more I started to choke, panicking.
“‘Coolie, you’re going to talk.’ More laughter.
“I lashed out, feeling my head go dizzy. The bag opened. I was finished. I could hardly stand.
“They pushed me into a chair. My shoes were taken off and two policemen held my hands behind the back of the chair. One started hitting the soles of my feet with a rubber baton and a terrible pain shot up my leg.
“Next I felt wires being attached to me. My arms were stretched out at my sides and I was held down from behind. I saw the main lead running to a dry cell battery. As they attached the lead to the battery, I felt a dreadful shock.
“Again the shock travelled through my whole body, convulsing every particle, going on and on, absolute pain from top to toe.”
When Indres and his friends were brought to trial, they told the court they had agreed to commit sabotage “as a form of protest against oppression and government policy”, after persuasion by a Gamat Jardine and on the assurance no one would be hurt.
The only person who could have tipped off the police, Jardine, disappeared afterwards. An enterprising newspaperman found him in Cape Town a month later, but he was never arrested.
Indres and his colleagues were sentenced on May 13, 1963 to 10 years’ imprisonment. As they left the dock, they smiled, waved to relatives and friends and gave the clenched fist salute. About 200 people waited outside the court in a demonstration of solidarity.
Before his release in May 1973, after 10 years on Robben Island, Indres was served with banning orders. Confined to his home from dusk to dawn, he could not attend gatherings or receive visitors, nor could he leave the magisterial district of Johannesburg. He had to report to the police once a week and could not even “communicate” with his brother, Murthie, who was also restricted.
When Indres married soon after his release, he needed special permission to enter the Magistrate’s Court for the wedding and to be with three witnesses. He was allowed, as a special favour, to go to Cape Town for a brief honeymoon.
He found a job with Frank and Hirsch, South African distributors for the Polaroid Corporation of America, and rose to a senior position as chief storeman. But in 1976 the company asked its black employees to take a lie detector test. Indres refused, considering that an affront to dignity, and was fired. He left South Africa in January 1977 to work for the ANC abroad.
Because of public pressure in the US, Polaroid had undertaken not to sell its products to the military and repressive agencies in South Africa. It claimed Frank and Hirsch, was following liberal employment policies and assisting blacks.
Indres produced proof that Frank and Hirsch was secretly supplying products to the South African regime. There were protests in the US and Polaroid had to close its operations in South Africa.
In Mozambique, Indres was a key member of Umkhonto we Sizwe. He was transferred to the ANC office in Lusaka in 1987 and a year later sent to Berlin as a deputy representative. The South African regime tried to assassinate him in Mozambique and in the German Democratic Republic.
He returned to South Africa in 1991 after the ANC was unbanned. In the democratic elections of 1994, he was elected a senator and served until 1999. He lived in Cape Town with his wife, Gabriele Blankenburg from Germany. In 1982 Penguin published
Island in Chains, about his experiences on Robben Island. The second edition in 2003 contains an epilogue describing his activities in Mozambique, Lusaka and Berlin.
The Order of Mendi, awarded to him in 2014, was one of many accolades he received for his years of sacrifice and struggle in the pursuit of a non-racial, free South Africa.
“Indres” Elatchininathan Naidoo died on January 3 last year at 2 Military Hospital in Cape Town.