Picture tells story of unity in action

ONE of the Pietermaritzburg connections to the 1946 Passive Resistance is shown in this picture from Komilla Narsoo’s collection of her grandmother, Mrs Narinamah Naidu’s pictures and papers.

Naidu is seated in the foreground clad in a white sari alongside Mrs Zainunnisa “Cissie” Gool (centre, in the hat and scarf) for whom she hosted a reception in Pietermaritzburg.

Naidu was president of the Indian Women’s League in the city. Her obituary, published in local papers in January 1949, lists condolences and messages of sympathy from, among others, the Natal Indian Congress and the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA).

Gool was a member of a prominent Cape Town political family. Her father was Dr Abdullah Abdurarahman, leader of the African People’s Organisation, which he helped found in 1902.

Gool was tutored by, among others, Olive Schreiner and MK Gandhi. During the 1940s she became president of the Non-European United Front.

She was arrested and charged for her involvement in the 1946 Passive Resistance Campaign.

Immediately behind Gool is the poet, HIE Dhlomo.

In the preface to his and Fatima Meer’s 1996 book that compiled documents of the Passive Resistance campaign, ES Reddy notes that Dhlomo remarked on the “tremendous effect” that the Passive Resistance had on African sentiment.

Reddy cites Dhlomo writing in the Indian Opinion (published by Manilal Gandhi) on July 12, 1946, that there had been two views among Africans, as among Indians, on concerted action:

“Some Africans felt that they had separate battles to fight and must do so independently, while others felt that the struggles of all oppressed peoples was one and that co-operation is necessary”.

Four Africans courted imprisonment as passive resisters in the 1946 campaign.

Directly behind Naidu is HA Naidoo, the secretary of the Sugar Workers’ Union, who was sent to Hungary by the CPSA. He is buried in London. The story of his activism is told by his wife Pauline Podbrey in her book, White Girl in Search of the Party.

Standing on the extreme right is the veteran trade unionist George Ponen. His great-granddaughter, Nadya Domingo, who lives in Canada, is busy with a book on her grandparents’ activist history. Seated to the left of Naidu is Dawood Seedat, who was among the 156 arrested on December 5, 1956, to face the Treason Trial alongside Chief Albert Luthuli and Nelson Mandela.

Seedat was banned from all political activity between 1941 and 1945 under the War Measures Act but nevertheless operated underground. Seedat located the grave of communist martyr Johannes Nkosi who was murdered on December 16, 1930, by municipal police near Cartwright Flats roughly where the Teacher’s Centre stands in Durban.

He built a gravestone and traced Nkosi’s 80-year-old mother, whom he brought to Durban for the unveiling in July 1953 in Stellawood Cemetery. Alice Street in Durban is now Johannes Nkosi Street.