Unsung struggle icon
Reflecting on the absurdities and tragedies of the apartheid era: a tribute to MP Naicker
A SUNDAY paper features two mini columns weekly: “This day 50 years ago” and “This day 25 years ago”.
On June 6, 1965, the weekly reminds us of an amendment to the Suppression of Communism Act which extended the prohibition on quoting “banned persons”, even if living elsewhere than in South Africa.
The amendment resonates, as by that date, I had already served 18 months of a five-year banning order, served on me with characteristic cynicism on New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1963. The Apartheid State, consumed by the paranoia of majority rule, imposed restrictions on activists resulting in absurdities, even amusement, if it were not so tragic in its implication.
There were instances where husband and wife were prohibited by law from communicating with each other. There were many such politically active couples who were both banned. Those that come to mind are Rowley and Jacqui Arenstein, Vera and George Ponen, MD and Phyllis Naidoo, Ismail and Fatima Meer.
Banned persons suffered various restrictions, many ludicrous. Affected couples had to obtain ministerial dispensation to communicate with each other. The impact on family life was destructive. Accompanying this article is a reproduction of a letter, under the hand of the chief magistrate of Durban, granting me permission to attend my own wedding ceremony!
Using the Promotion of Access to Information Act passed by the present government, I was able to retrieve from the National Archives notes of exchanges between the local security police and security branch headquarters in Pretoria on my application to attend my wedding. It is evident from this exchange that the security establishment entertained fears that the wedding would be attended by friends and colleagues like JN Singh, Ismail and Fatima Meer, Hassen Mall and other known “Communists” and “listed” persons.
The security police attended the wedding to ensure that the restrictions were complied with and that I left the venue in the allocated one hour.
Some 35 years on, the same paranoia gripped the government on June 6, 1980, when students took to the streets. Readers will remember the baton charges on students and the detention of largely NIC leadership. A number of us were held in “solitary” for 14 days and then for a further period under what was then euphemistically called “preventive detention” in the Modder Bee prison in Benoni.
Forward 50 years to June 2015. Those of us who survived the repression and absurdities of the apartheid years recall not only the many who suffered torture and death, but the many forced into isolation brought about by exile. One among many largely forgotten was struggle icon MP Naicker (MP), who died in exile on April 29, 1977, at the age of 56.
He was an exceptional man with the kind of charisma that attracted young people. His unflagging commitment to the liberation struggle, and his engaging and infectious smile will remain etched in my memory.
In the years just before I qualified as an attorney in 1961, though he was very much my senior, a very special bond of mutual respect, trust and admiration developed between us. So much so that during Mandela’s brief and much documented underground sojourn in Natal in July and early August of 1962, he had entrusted the late MJ Naidoo and I with an onerous and highly secretive mission, to convey Mandela to Stanger for one of his meetings with Chief Luthuli.
Hosted by Dr Prenaven Naicker, son of MP and Sao Naicker, veteran struggle stalwarts Kay Moonsamy, Swami Gounden and I had a get-together a week or so ago with Saro Naicker, the widow of MP, who is on a visit to South Africa from the UK.
She is still as charming and convivial as in years gone by, and we reminisced at length on the sterling work done by MP, a much admired trade union leader, executive member of the NIC and of the Communist Party of South Africa, distinguished journalist and political guru, and founder member of Umkhonto we Sizwe. MP had the kind of personality that attracted young activists to him. Ebrahim Ebrahim and Sunny Singh, among those convicted in the 1964 Natal Sabotage Trial (the Natal Command of MK) will bear testimony to this.
MP, the first cousin of Dr Monty Naicker, was born in 1920 into a working class family and died on April 29, 1977, in the plane carrying him to Berlin to have some publicity material printed for Sechaba, the official organ of the ANC in exile.
To survive the devastation to family life following MP’s shock passing on, Saro (married to MP in 1943 when only 16), with admirable resolve assisted by a bursary negotiated by a sympathetic Enuga Reddy, then assistant secretary general of the UN, went back to school as it were, to improve on her secretarial skills – not only to keep home fires burning, but to carry on the work to which MP dedicated his life.
She worked firstly for the Communist Party publication The Morning Star, and later Sechaba. It is not possible to cover in this article the entire spectrum of MP’s considerable contribution to the struggle, the fruits of which sadly eluded him.
Saro, who now lives in Edinburgh near her daughter Suganya, recalls proudly some key moments in his remarkable life. In 1944, MP gave up his bakery van driver’s job to become a full-time trade union organiser, and in the same year joined Monty Naicker in the Anti-Segregations Council. In 1946, with Debi Singh, he led a band of passive resisters and ended up serving a month in prison. He was a major player in the Defiance Campaign in which Saro also participated, and served a month in prison with hard labour.
It was at about this time that MP started working for New Age, which ceased publication in 1963 due to government pressure. It was early in 1955 that I met MP for the first time, when as students we were roped in to popularise the Kliptown meeting which gave us the Freedom Charter. In 1956 MP was one of 156 arrested on charges of high treason together with the likes of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Monty Naicker, who left their mark in liberation history.
He was detained in solitary confinement during various states of emergency, tried for carrying on the activities of a banned organisation, the ANC, in 1964, acquitted, and ordered by the movement into exile in 1965. In London he took up the post of director of information and publicity for the ANC, eventually to become the editor of Sechaba in 1967, when Saro left South Africa to join him in London. MP travelled widely, representing the ANC in exile, visiting the GDR, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and various states in Africa.
In 1971, the International Organisation Of Journalists (IOJ) awarded a gold medal to Sechaba, and in 1976 MP was elected to the executive of the IOJ. In the same year he was personally awarded the prestigious Julius Fucik medal, acclaiming his gift of oratory, militancy, wealth of ideas, hard work and modesty.
Enuga Reddy considered MP as the best source of information on the history of the liberation movement and its ideology. Vladimir Shubin, of the Africa Centre Moscow, in a tribute to MP, says of him: “It was difficult to find a more warm hearted person than Comrade MP and at the same time he was a person who was always abreast with new developments in his beloved country… terribly homesick in exile, he was eager to go to Natal and resume his underground work there… It was Comrade MP who was the first to draw my attention to the Black Consciousness Movement, assessing it more positively than most of his colleagues did at the time.”
And finally, speaking at his funeral, Oliver Tambo said: “He died while on a mission on behalf of our movement. Like those forces that advanced on to Berlin 30 years ago to liberate Germany, he was advancing on to Berlin in the service of our struggle to liberate South Africa and fell in battle just like any member of Umkhonto we Sizwe.”
Long live the memory of MP Naicker and all praise to Saro Naicker.
I sourced some of the information for this article from a document prepared by Dasrath Chetty (UKZN ), authenticated by Saro Naicker.
Thumba Pillay is a retired judge and former political and human rights activist.