Honouring contributions of two brave Indian women
The 1860 Heritage Centre will host an exhibition on Thursday to salute the role of women in the freedom struggle. Dr Juggie Pather, a director at the centre, reflects on two female activists
A WOMAN should never be independent. Her father has authority over her in childhood, her husband has authority over her in youth, and in her old age, her son has authority over her (Thapar: 1963, Laws of Manu). This extract from D Chetty’s paper sums up the Indian woman of yesteryear. But women have changed since the days of Manu.
In asserting themselves, they have played and continued to do so in all walks of community life and in the national and international socio-political arena.
What the South African vocal minority refuses to recognise is the role of South African Indians and especially the women – not only in the growth in this country but in the Struggle to fight for our freedom.
Generations that followed the pioneering indentured Indians benefited from the deferred dreams of their grandmothers. Any misconceptions will be cleared by visiting the exhibition titled WATHINT’ABAFAZI, WATHINT’IMBOKODO, an all-inclusive multi-media retrospective history from the 1900s to the dawn of the new democratic South Africa.
It will be held at the 1860 Heritage Centre in Derby Street tomorrow from 2pm. Moreover, a bonus will be the viewing of the historical multimedia in the centre.
South African women, in general, encountered and still encounter not a double jeopardy in seeking gender equality but face multiple challenges – patriarchy, a Teflon glass ceiling, poverty, spousal abuse, etc.
Despite these impediments, women of all colours have played a critical role in securing the freedom we enjoy today. Indian women have been active in South African politics since the Gandhian Passive Resistance Campaign of 1913. A number of them played crucial roles in organising resistance, recruiting and serving prison sentences. Among them were the well-known Mrs PK Naidoo, Valliamah and voluntary midwife Mrs Veerama Pather from Durban.
The two whom I knew in my younger days were Poomanie Moodley and Poorni Pather. Feisty Poomanie never wavered in her principles of human rights. Our conversations always centred around the politics of the day. In contrast, Poorni was a vibrant and animated personality whom my wife May and I visited for many years in Mobeni Heights. She spoke about everything else but her role in the Passive Resistance Movement. Let me tell you more about them.
POORNI PATHER
Poorni, who was married to Thirumeni, joined the Passive Resistance Movement in 1946. She was born in Vereeniging and politicised early in her life by attending rallies.
After relocating to Durban, she continued as a member of Natal Indian Congress (NIC). Here she played a significant role in Gandhi’s Passive Resistance Campaign.
The NIC, under the leadership of Dr Monty Naicker and others, occupied a site at the corner of Umbilo and Sidney roads in Durban. Poorni joined a group of five local women and other NIC protesters, who pitched camps on the corner site in an area reserved for whites.
White youths manhandled the protesters and tore down the camps. Monty Naicker, concerned about their safety, advised them to return home. They refused, resulting in the arrest of Poorni and her five friends, who were taken to Durban Central Prison. After a few hours, on this bitterly cold winter night, the group was given head scarves and marched to the Durban central railway station to board the Johannesburg train.
Fear of the unknown destination, the cold coach and secrecy of the journey conjured dark foreboding thoughts. Huddled, some cried but eventually, they resigned themselves to fate. Having lost count of time, they were bundled out of the coach in Estcourt and forced to walk to the local prison. They were given lice-infested brown prison garb and locked up.
In the morning, each was fined 30 pounds sterling that they refused to pay as a matter of principle. This meant four weeks of incarceration. Each was given two blankets and shown the ice cold concrete floor that was to be their bed for 27 days. For good behaviour, they were given three days remission. Here they spent 27 freezing days in filthy conditions.
Their hands and lips were chapped and bleeding. Everything was done by the warders to humiliate and dehumanise the group. Fortunately, a guard who pitied them, smuggled axle grease that they used as lip balm.
After they were released, they were not given assistance to return to Durban nor were their families informed about their predicament. It is assumed that friends assisted them to return. After the resistance campaign, many female participants continued to work in NGOs, religious and cultural organisations.
“There were a host of Indian women who did not fit into Manu’s mould. Rahima Moosa was an active member of the Food and Canning Workers’ Union. Mrs Veeramah Naidoo had spent three months in prison in the first Passive Resistance Campaign of 1913. The participation of women like Mrs Naidoo, who died in 1946, had considerable symbolic weight. It was a thread of continuity with the Gandhian legacy. Their participation was a legitimising gesture for the young leadership of the 1946 campaign.
“Furthermore, their status as older and respected women enabled other women to cross into public life more readily. They added a stamp of public approval to political action by women. Her daughter-in-law, Mrs Amah Naidoo, also volunteered as a resistor in 1946 and participated in marches and protests (Chetty, 1991).”
Other Indian stalwarts of the Struggle included Dr Goonam, Cissy Gool, Mary Moodley, Aysha Abdul, Feroza Adam, Zainap Asvat, Z Badat, Phyllis Naidoo, Judge Navi Pillay.
POOMANIE MOODLEY
One of Clairwood’s earliest political activists was feisty and indefatigable Poomanie Moodley of Sirdar Road. Her family home was next to Kismet Bakery, and she was the eldest in a family of seven. Poomanie played a major role as breadwinner. She was born on June 28, 1926, in Mooi River, Natal, and died in Durban after an illustrious political career 56 years later.
Her family moved to Clairwood when she was two. Throughout her career, Nurse Poomanie, as she was popularly known, worked in TB hospitals such as FOSA in Newlands, Durban, and King George V Hospital. During her selfless service and at an early age she contracted tuberculosis that led to a loss of a lung.
Despite this handicap, she soldiered on as a nurse and as member of the NIC. She dedicated herself in defiance and Passive Resistance and Anti-pass campaigns during the ’50s and ’60s. Despite her physical handicap, she persevered, challenging the apartheid state until her death.
Her mother used to sell vegetables to the whites in the Umbilo area.
On her return, she brought in the laundry. The girls in the family used to assist with the washing and ironing. Her dad served in the African Corps in North Africa during World War II. On his return, he worked in a factory in the Jacobs industrial complex, earning a pittance.
The daily back-breaking work took a toll on her life. After the death of her dad, the central figure in the family, irreconcilable differences arose, resulting in relocating the Indian casbah area of Durban where she interacted with other communist party and NIC members.
She was a leading activist at the time of the Kliptown Convention where the Freedom Charter was adopted and was instrumental in the organisation of this epoch-making event.
In 1963, Poomanie was one of the first women to be detained under South Africa’s 90 Day Detention Laws (Sunday Times Extra: Death of Congress Worker, August 15 1982).
The law prevented access to lawyers, friends or family. She was denied sanitary pads in order to humiliate her. In solitary confinement, the security branch strived to break her spirit but failed. She explained how she remained sane: “Cockroaches were my friends whom I spoke to from time to time.”
A year later, she was detained under the security laws without being charged but was released. Twenty-two others, who were arrested with her, were not fortunate as they were convicted and sentenced to between eight and 20 years imprisonment. This was recorded as one of Natal’s first sabotage trials.
Leela Naidoo of the Sunday Tribune (August 8, 1982, Remember Tomorrow – anniversary of the day women had their say) writes: “Her introduction to repression came at an early age, when she, with her father, attended meetings at the Durban’s famous ‘Red Square’. In this way, the Pegging Act of 1946 (the forerunner of the inhuman Group Areas Act) introduced Poomanie to the discrimination faced by Black people in South Africa. Thereby, an interest in this country’s politics was born, and an increasing concern for the human and political needs of her fellows emerged.”
On August 9, 1956, Poomanie was part of a “Great Uprising” when 20 000 women from all parts of South Africa assembled in Pretoria to protest against the deeply detested Pass Laws.
The march was led by Lilian Ngoyi, Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa and Sophie de Bruyn.
Carrying petitions bearing thousands of signatures rejecting the pass laws, the women set out boldly to demand from the then prime minister, JG Strydom, the repealing of all discriminatory laws. Strydom, overwhelmed by the sheer force of numbers, shut himself in his office.
In response, the women held a silent protest after which they sang “Strydom you have struck a rock and dislodged a boulder. Soon you will be crushed.”
She was 56 years old when she succumbed to illness. In defiance of the state, the NIC draped her coffin with the ANC flag. A huge crowd gathered in Statesman Drive in Havenside, Chatsworth, to give her a rousing farewell. Mourners who came to bid farewell at the Clairwood Tamil Institute spilled over on to the streets. The hall reverberated with Struggle songs.
The eulogies brought tears to many.