Sastri alumni and families to celebrate

THIS year Sastri College will celebrate its 85th anniversary and former pupils, staff and their families are invited to join in.

Alumni of the College will be honoured on August 1 at the school hall, commencing at 6pm.

“Special speakers such as Judge President Chiman Patel, retired judge Thumba Pillay and film producer Anant Singh, to name a few, will be present on the night,” said ViceChairman of the Sastri College Alumni Association, Habimun Singh. The event is titled The Heroes

Evening and will celebrate the significance of Sastri College in fighting the oppressive apartheid system, providing higher education and opening doors to thousands of Indians to enter politics, medicine and law.

Singh said the evening would also celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Rivonia Trial in which former President Nelson Mandela addressed the court in 1964.

“The address will be dramatised to capture the courage Madiba displayed, and is titled A Requiem to Mandela.

The history of Sastri is steeped in the struggle for survival and adversity, but also strength and courage.

“Sastri College was opened in early 1929 by Sir Srinivasa Sastri, despite the South African government’s insistence that Indian teachers be trained at Fort Hare or in the Cape,” said the President of Sastri College Alumni Association, Professor Jairam Reddy. Srinivasa Sastri was a member of the Paddison Deputation that visited the country on a fact-finding mission in 1925.

The Paddison Deputation arrived in the country to dispute a bill that labelled the Indian population as “aliens” and the intention to expatriate the “menace” (Indians).

“Srinivasa rallied the community and collected sufficient funds to build what was named Sastri College. The College went through intense marginalisation and criticism, with its closure in 1982 and its annexation to the ML Sultan Technikon.

“From 1936 to 1957, the College was the venue of the Non-European Section of the then University of Natal. It also became a hotbed for political ideas and debates by South African and African students,” said Reddy.

Ultimately Sastri was the training ground for Africa’s future leaders and contributed significantly to the struggle against colonialism.

However in 1980, as a consequence of the 1976 student activism in Soweto, Sastri College became the focus of police when pupils interacted with politically alert students from the University of Durban-Westville and neighbouring high schools.

“The Afrikaner rulers noticed this, and expelled 37 Sastri College senior students.

“The College opened it doors again in 1992, due to Gandhi Desai High School closing and 85 years later it continues to educate, inspire and transform its pupils,” said Singh.