Modest hero’s lifelong fight for our freedom
THE life of Kay Moonsamy, who died aged 91 this week, was dedicated to the struggle.
He was born in Overport, Durban, on July 5, 1926, a descendant of Indian indentured labourers shipped to the sugar plantations of colonial Natal between 1860 and 1911.
The oppression of indenture, and the material conditions he was born into, were to shape his outlook on life.
He was the eldest of seven children. Grinding poverty forced him to start work at the age of 14 at Rhodesian Timbers Limited, earning 15 shillings a week, which rose to one pound after a year.
Oppressive work conditions led him into trade unionism, first with the Natal Box, Broom and Brush Workers’ Union and later the Dairy Workers’, where he found a ready comradeship with another veteran activist, Billy Nair.
Agitation at Rhodesian Timbers forced the employers to concede to the workers’ demands and wages rose to two pounds and ten shillings a week.
In 1944, having reached his 18th birthday, he qualified for membership of the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA).
He threw himself into the communist movement, determined to break the back of capitalism. His familiar attire was a Lenin cap, which was a statement of his internationalist and socialist spirit.
It was in the CPSA that he also met a lifelong comrade, Swaminathan Gounden, with whom he shared a 73-year comradeship.
Both were detained in September 1964 in solitary confinement under the Suppression of Communism Act. Another close comrade in the CPSA was Eric Stalin Mtshali who, in spite of his own ailing health, recently travelled to Durban to rekindle their decadeslong friendship.
The ‘40s also saw him centrally involved in the 1946 Passive Resistance Campaign led by the National Indian Congress and the Transvaal Indian Congress.
Worldwide attention was drawn to racism and segregation in South Africa with the issue being tabled before the UN in 1946.
Moonsamy was sent to prison for three months on his 20th birthday, carted by train from Durban Central Station to Ixopo, dressed in hessian shorts in the biting winter cold.
The sentence meant being drafted as convict labour on white farms. He courageously bore the sentence to make the principled point along with 2 000 other resisters.
In the subsequent decade he was both an activist and an organiser for the Natal Indian Congress.
He worked on the 1952 Defiance Campaign and 1955 Freedom Charter. Attracting the attention of the apartheid authorities, he was held in a countrywide swoop and charged in the 1956 Treason Trial with Monty Naicker, Walter Sisulu, Ruth First and others.
In all, 156 leaders were put on trial even though the state’s case eventually collapsed.
With the banning of the SACP and ANC, he worked in the underground movement, often going into hiding to avoid arrest as in the 1960 State of Emergency.
In 1965, Moonsamy was instructed by the SACP to leave the country. His work in exile was in the South African Congress of Trade Unions (Sactu), the ANC and the SACP.
He was based variously in Bechuanaland, Zambia and Tanzania.
In 1968 he was deployed to Lusaka to work on the historic Morogoro Conference, at which membership of the ANC was opened to all races.
Moonsamy reflected on the intensity of the debates at Morogoro, including the scathing criticism the leadership received from delegates. He stressed all of that engagement was within the hallowed principles of discipline and organisational unity.
In exile he worked closely with legends such as ANC treasurergeneral JB Marks and presidentgeneral OR Tambo.
He was also involved in the establishment of the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Mazimbu, Tanzania, which was responsible for the education of youth fleeing the country after the 1976 Soweto Uprising.
Tambo deployed him as the ANC’S chief representative in New Delhi, but it was a short assignment as he preferred to work in Africa.
Between 1983 and 1987 he served as treasurer-general of Sactu and in 1989 was elected its last president.
In 1985 he was a delegate to another historic ANC conference convened at Kabwe in Zambia.
After 26 years in exile, he returned to South Africa in 1991 and went straight into organisational work. The ANC deployed him to Parliament in 1999, where he was active on various committees for 10 years.
Moonsamy was conferred a string of awards, many of which he tried, in modesty, to decline in favour of other comrades being recognised.
He did, however, accept President Jacob Zuma conferring on him the Order of Luthuli in December 2015 where his “outstanding contribution to the fight for democracy and freedom” was acknowledged.
He will be remembered as an internationalist and a non-racist of integrity and discipline who served the cause of freedom for all of his life.