‘Chota’ Motala captured in print
A man of many parts, he’s best known for his activism
DR MAHOMED Moosa “Chota” Motala lived out over eight decades of his life in South Africa in communities that preceded and ultimately succeeded the hegemony of formal apartheid, the legal system underlying racial separation from 1948 to 1994.
Motala was a man of many parts – medical doctor, family man and lover of music. But it was as a political activist that he was to make a lasting impression on South African history.
His home was in Pietermaritzburg, a city named after two Boer leaders who, escaping British rule at the Cape, established it after defeating the Zulus in 1838.
Pietermaritzburg is, like most cities in South Africa, a place of many histories. The British annexed the short-lived Republic of Natalia in 1843 and made the city the capital of the Colony of Natal.
It was a place that many Zulus, forced off their ancestral lands, and indentured labourers from South Asia came to call home.
Home is, of course, a highly-charged word. In Pietermaritzburg, segregation and racial discrimination were the centre piece of urban planning.
It was in this tightening of apartheid’s geography that Motala crossed racial boundaries and became integral to the fight against apartheid.
Nelson Mandela used the Motala home at 433 Boom Street as his base in the Midlands, while Walter Sisulu occasionally sat through the night absorbed in political discussion with eager activists.
It was also here that planning for some of the major protest campaigns in the Midlands took place. Despite his standing as a doctor, Motala was a committed everyday activist.
He was a charismatic speaker at rallies and a sometimes dogmatic defender of political ideologies as much as he could not stand sectarianism.
He was the most compassionate of doctors whose surgery witnessed a stream of the poor and indigent, but once out on the streets he exuded a steely determination in confrontations with the police.
There is a road named after Motala in Pietermaritzburg that is a link to many parts of the city. In a way this fits his life story: a man who ranged far beyond the confines of his surgery, playing a major role in linking struggles in racially segregated townships into a powerful and ultimately victorious movement.
Post-apartheid South Africa has seen the biography of places reconfigured through the renaming of streets, buildings and towns after anti-apartheid and anti-colonial figures.
This is both to honour them and ensure that South African cities reflect the new political dispensation. Old Greytown Road, the main arterial route to suburbs to the north of the Pietermaritzburg central business district, is now Dr Chota Motala Road.
A multimillion-rand flyover passes through the intersection of Dr Chota Motala Road and the N3 national road, officially opened as the Dr Chota Motala Interchange in February 2014.
At the opening ceremony, national Minister of Transport Dipuo Peters described it as a fitting tribute to Motala in the light of his “history and his love and care for the people of South Africa, and especially this part of the country”.
Shireen, Motala’s daughter, considered it “appropriate that the bridge linked the various communities of Pietermaritzburg, since her father had always strived to build a non-racial, democratic society”.
Rob Haswell, the Msunduzi municipal manager, noted in 2008 that Pietermaritzburg, “a city with strong links to Gandhi, Mandela, Paton and Luthuli does not have a historical treatise which details these links…”.
“No other South African city has such a rich tapestry of imposed rule which cuts across racial, cultural, and religious differences. How was this flame of moral and political justice kindled and kept alive in our city? How did it endure all that colonialism and apartheid could unleash? Many now despair, as if rainbow coalitions are just a myth of the 1990s. If our city cannot produce the new flag bearers, which South African city can?”
Motala’s life in Pietermaritzburg spanned virtually the entire apartheid era. He arrived in the city a year after the National Party (NP) came to power in 1948, and was an important figure in the city’s history as a medical doctor, activist, family man, and friend and foe to many until his death in 2005.
He became synonymous with Pietermaritzburg due to his immense contribution to the life of the city. Yusuf Bhamjee and Yunus Carrim wrote in an obituary that Motala’s death marked the passing of an institution rather than an individual: “Just as this country will never have another Nelson Mandela, Pietermaritzburg will never have another Chota Motala.” Bhamjee and Carrim’s words underscore Motala’s drive to transcend self-concern and dedicate himself to a life of public service.
Motala enjoyed certain social privileges. He was able to complete high school and study in India, where he was part of a diaspora that benefited from the exchange of ideas with others from across the globe, and was ensconced in the euphoria of the Indian anti-colonial struggle.
He operated in several worlds, as an activist, doctor and family man. As a medical man, he enjoyed a social standing in a community where the majority of people were poor and uneducated.
With a consistency that is hard to overstate, he used these advantages to try to improve the conditions of those around him. He was seen as an intellectual by his contemporaries, but he saw that politics was “on the ground” and joined with ordinary working-class people. This perhaps characterises his holistic social contribution as at once political, spiritual and intellectual.
From the time of Motala’s arrival in Pietermaritzburg, the NIC branch grew its membership as it expanded its support base and forged alliances with local ANC, Communist Party, Liberal Party and trade union branches.
Motala had a firm belief in non-racialism and worked hard to build unity across various divides. His political allies also cut across the racial and political boundaries.
They included Archie Gumede, Moses Mabhida, Peter Brown, AS Chetty and Harry Gwala. These close working alliances were part of an inclusive, overtly non-racial project that contributed to an excellent “racial atmosphere” in Pietermaritzburg, as Motala’s son Irshad described it.
While these political leaders were mostly middle-class individuals, as a medical doctor Motala had close encounters with his working-class African and Indian patients. It helped that the designated residential racial areas in Pietermaritzburg were within a short drive of one another. Building bridges between Hindus and Muslims, Africans and Indians, professionals and workers was, according to Irshad, “if not a defining characteristic then at least a key focus in (Motala’s) life”. One of the ironies of apartheid’s ghettoes was that common experiences propelled solidarity.
HISTORIAN and author Goolam Vahed has kept the legacy of political stalwart Chota Motala alive for future generations with the launch of his latest book.
Titled Chota Motala – A Biography of Political Activism in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, Vahed’s work provides insight into this giant South African activist and icon with the aim of preserving history.
Five years of research began yet another labour of love for Vahed, who authored Monty Naicker: Between Reason and Treason and Inside Indian Indenture: A South African Story, 1860-1914. He is currently working on A History of the Present: A Biography of Indian South Africans 1990 – 2018 with Ashwin Desai.
“A biography of Dr Motala had been started in Pietermaritzburg by a group comprising his family and former colleagues. They were unable to complete the project and asked if I could write the biography.
“I agreed mainly because it was clear to me that there had been excessive focus on the Natal Indian Congress in Durban but too little on Pietermaritzburg, so I saw this as a means of filling this void in the historiography,” said Vahed, who sifted through old newspapers, consulted the archives, and examined Motala’s collection of articles, photographs and writings.
“One cannot rush this process and I hope that the final product reflects what was involved in writing this book.”
He described Motala as a “critical thinker” who put many of his thoughts on paper and these, Vahed added, revealed a man who disapproved of such things as the commercialisation of medicine, racism, the neo-liberal agenda of the post-apartheid period and corruption and nepotism.
“My hope is that these core human values, this determination to confront power-mongering and gratuitous capitalist accumulation, will be what is remembered – Chota Motala and others of his ilk deserve not to become embattled in current party politics.”
Vahed said that in writing the book, he learnt a great deal about Pietermaritzburg and its rich history.
“I was privileged to meet some outstanding individuals, such as CD Moodley, Babu Baijoo, Yunus Carrim, Yusuf Bhamjee, Dr Krish Moodley, Dr B Harryparsad, Dr Papoo Cassimjee, and many others, and would like to thank them for giving of their time, sharing their experiences, and enriching my life in various ways.”
He also thanked Rabia Motala, also known as Choti, for asking him “to complete the biography of a very remarkable man, Dr Chota Motala”.
Published by UKZN Press, it is available at, among others, Exclusive Books and Adams Books or www.loot.co.za