Father of the trade union movement
In this feature, in our series on Struggle heroes and heroines, veteran journalist SUBRY GOVENDER recalls the life of George Gangen Ponnen, the son of indentured labourers, who concentrated on improving the working conditions of the labour class and who m
DURING the course of my compilation of the profiles of Struggle heroes and heroines, the veteran activists that I had interacted with came forward with the names of a string of people who played their roles in the liberation Struggles.
One of those activists is George Gangen Ponnen who, despite his poor and povertystricken family background, immersed himself fully from an early age in the trade union movement and the political struggles of the SACP, the Natal Indian Congress and the ANC.
During his involvement in the Struggles, which began at a knitting mill factory in Umbilo Road in Durban in the late 1920s, Ponnen was instrumental in the establishment of 27 trades unions from 1936 to 1945.
Who is this little known stalwart who made an indelible contribution in the Struggles for a non-racial and democratic South Africa?
According to the information I had obtained from his close comrade, Swaminathan Gounden, and others such as Judge Thumba Pillay, Ponnen was a “salt-of-the-earth” person whose work at grass-root level consolidated and promoted the work of his leaders in the different trade unions and political movements.
Ponnen was born on June 1, 1913, to parents who had settled in an area called Rooikopjes, near Westville, west of Durban, after completing their five-year indentureship at nearby sugar estates.
His father, Ponnen, and his mother, Gangamma, had been recruited from the Madras Presidency in South India in the 1890s.
He was the seventh child in a large family of seven brothers and one sister.
He started school at the age of 7 in 1920 at the St Thomas Government-aided Indian School and his social and political awareness began at this time, whenever he and his siblings used to visit the nearby areas of Westville and Durban.
He found that the restaurants and cinemas were restricted for whites only and “Indian, coloured and Africans” were not allowed to use the best and safe parts of Durban’s beaches.
In 1921, his schooling was disrupted when his father died and his mother was forced to move the family to an area in Durban called Manning Place. He had to leave school and started work at the tender age of 10 at a cigar company in Alice Street, Durban, to help his family.
Although he was in and out of school whenever conditions improved in the family, Ponnen only managed to complete Standard 4 in 1928.
He worked at several knitting and clothing factories in the Umbilo Road area where he came face to face with the exploitation of Indian, African and coloured workers.
It was during this period that he befriended another worker, HA Naidoo, and both of them joined together to promote the interests of the exploited workers.
It wasnot much later that Ponnen, with Naidoo, were drawn into the SACP.
They were the first South Africans of Indian-origin to be accepted into the SACP as full members in 1930.
At this time he also became interested and attended meetings of the Anti-Fascist League that was established to counter the right-wing and reactionary organisation called the Grey Shirts.
This organisation was affiliated to Hitler’s Nazi Organisation, that was busy holding rallies all over South Africa.
Because of his activities, life for Ponnen was made very difficult by his employers in the clothing, knitting, iron and steel and other factories.
At every turn he was dismissed when his employers found that he was involved in establishing trades unions and promoting the rights of the workers.
He also had to put up with reactionary elements in the Garment Workers Union, which was started by a British immigrant, JC Bolton, to cater mainly for white and some Indian and coloured workers.
Ponnen clashed openly with Bolton when he called for African workers to be also registered as members of the GWU.
He also clashed with another trade union leader who wanted to separate African workers from their fellow Indian colleagues.
The African workers were told that “Indians were only shop-keepers and exploiters”.
But when Ponnen told the workers that the “Indian workers” were also part of the exploited working class and the only one, who owned a shop was the “reactionary calling himself a leader”, the African workers confronted the “opportunist” and made him run for his life.
During this period, Ponnen and his friend, HA Naidoo, attended evening classes at the Indian Technical Institute in the former Cross Street, Durban, to further their studies.
But he and HA Naidoo had to abandon their studies after they were overwhelmed by their trade union and political work.
Between 1936 and 1945, Ponnen with Naidoo, helped to establish 27 unions that included the Iron and Steel Workers’ Union, Sugar Workers’ Union, Dundee Glass Workers’ Union, SA Railways and Harbour Workers Union, Natal Coal Miners Union, and the Cigarette and Tobacco Workers’ Union.
When organising the various unions, Ponnen recruited and trained hundreds of workers who became trade union officials in a number of unions.
They included PM Harry in the Iron and Steel Workers Union, AP Pillay in the Sugar Workers Union, L Ramsunder in the Laundry, Cleaning and Dyeing Workers Union; PT Cooppen in the Sugar Workers Union and SV Reddy in the SA Tin Workers Union.
At the same time, Ponnen organised the workers to participate in the political struggles of the Natal Indian Congress, the ANC and other progressive movements.
The struggles he became involved in, included the Passive Resistance Campaign led by the NIC and the Defiance Campaign and the Anti-Pass campaign led by the Congress Alliance that comprised the ANC, NIC, TIC, Congress of Democrats and the Coloured Peoples’ Congress.
Ponnen also organised the formation of the Natal Indian Youth League with HA Naidoo and Sooboo Rajah in order to counter the reactionary political leadership that captured the Natal Indian Congress at this time. Rajah in the 1970s was associated with the non-racial Southern Natal Soccer Board that became fully involved in the struggles against apartheid sport.
Rajah was involved with sports activists of the calibre of MN Govender, RK Naidoo, Ramhori Lutchman, SK Chetty and Dharam Ramlall at that time.