Obituary: AC Naicker — He was just who he was
Of course, we’re all multi-layered, contradictory, complex beings. Even the best of us.
But some people, you can strip to the core. And whatever else they are, they are mainly just that. So it is with 84-year-old Arunajalam Coopsamy Naicker — Niney or “Uncle AC”, as he was popularly known — who died on April 13. He was just who he was.
Straightforward, consistent, direct. Driven by his empathy for the poor and the need to improve their lot. Mainly through trade unionism, but also community and political activism. And he never gave up. In recent years, he was increasingly less around, even in a supportive, symbolic role.
But he remained committed, even through the disappointments of the ANC and municipality’s performance.
What choice did he have? That’s where he had devoted his life. And he couldn’t, like so many of his generation, see any alternative.
Veteran activist Ajen Bookhan, who took him to vote in a recent by-election, says that Uncle AC told him that if he bleeds, it’s green, black and gold.
The Naickers were, in fact, one of the pioneering families to move to Northdale in 1956 in terms of the Group Areas Act. Not just Uncle AC, but his six brothers were also very community-oriented.
They organised religious, cultural, sport and other activities. And formed the Northdale Sports Club before the municipality offered recreational services.
Coming from a poor family, Uncle AC dropped out of school in Standard 6, and like so many Indians at that time, found work in the leather industry which was very significant in Pietermaritzburg then.
He worked at Austin Shoe Factory, soon took up the issues of the workers and was elected as a shop steward of the National Leather Workers Union (NULW) branch.
The NULW was part of the white-dominated conservative Trade Union Council of South Africa (TUCSA). Africans were excluded from many of its affiliates.
Following the 1973 Durban strikes and the emergence of radical, non-racial trade unions, the 1976 Soweto uprising and the formation of the Federation of South
African Trade Unions (Fosatu) in 1979, the trade union and political landscape changed fundamentally. The conservative trade unions were being challenged.
The Pietermaritzburg branch of NULW came under huge pressure over control of the workers benefit fund, the need for greater internal democracy and the inclusion of African workers in leadership.
Uncle AC was very involved as part of a “clean-up committee” within the union. They waged a two-year battle and on November29, 1980, at a packed mass meeting of workers at the Royal Show grounds, the committee succeeded in overthrowing the old leadership and democratising the union.
Jay Naidoo, later to become the first general secretary of the Congress of South African Unions (Cosatu), was at the time based in Pietermaritzburg as an organiser of the Sweet, Food and Allied Workers’ Union and became close to Uncle AC.
I first met him through Feizel Ismail, a United Democratic Fund (UDF) activist, in the early 1980s. Naidoo and later Ismail and others persuaded the NULW through Uncle AC to move towards the progressive trade unions.
I used to assist the unions to mobilise Indian workers to become members. And at times this and a research project on unionism brought me into contact with Uncle AC. Initially, he treated me with caution but over time his attitude eased.
He remained fundamentally a trade unionist. Although he’d attend UDF, Natal Indian Congress, ratepayers and other community meetings, he didn’t play a leading role in them. Initially, because his union members had different or no political leanings and he felt it would divide them. But there was also something more fundamental, more elusive, about his attitude.
If he was never in the forefront of political and community struggles, he was certainly supportive. He had a strong sense of what was right and could be rigid, temperamental and blunt.
I wasn’t particularly close to him — but in recent years he took to ringing me at times to express his frustration at the ANC going astray and the failure of new ANC leaders to emerge in the northern areas — quite a constant theme of his.
He lived a simple life within his means. He stayed at 500 Bombay Road — the long, main road of Northdale. Who could forget that address?
He had no car. It wasn’t so much that he couldn’t afford an old one as much as it seemed to be a luxury to him.
“His integrity was unwavering, his honesty unquestionable, and his sense of honour unmatched,” said his grandson Kyrios.
Basically, Uncle AC was who he was. Who he came across as. In a world where so many of us are less than who we present ourselves to be, that’s certainly a major strength.
• This is an edited version of a tribute paid at AC Naicker’s funeral on Tuesday.
•Yunus Carrim is an ANC MP and SACP Central Committee and Politburo member.