Lifetime of struggle
In our series on our Struggle heroes and heroines, veteran journalist Subry Govender remembers Kay Moonsamy who, like Nelson Mandela, sacrificed 67 years of his life, including his family, in the fight for our new non-racial and democratic South Africa. M
BORN in Overport in 1926, Kay Moonsamy became involved in political struggle at the tender age of 16 when he joined the Natal Box, Broom and Bush Workers Union while working as a labourer at a factory called Rhodesian Timbers Limited in Durban North.
His parents were working class and poor. He had to leave school early because of the economic conditions at home and he had to work to assist his family.
“I joined the trade union movement in order to improve our working conditions and get higher wages,” he said during a 2009 interview at his Chatsworth home.
He had just retired from active politics after serving 10 years in Parliament as a member of the ruling ANC. He had earlier spent 27 in exile, working for the ANC in Botswana, Swaziland, Zambia, India and the Soviet Union.
Speaking of his trade union days, he said: “The wage at that time was a miserable 15 shillings (R1.50) a week. My involvement in the trade union led me to joining the Communist Party and the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) in 1944 at the young age of 18.”
At this time there was a struggle between conservative and progressive forces in the NIC and Moonsamy became actively involved in the campaign to overthrow the conservative element, known as the Kajee-Pather group – businessmen and cultural leaders, AI Kajee and PR Pather.
“In 1943 the NIC was in the hands of the Kajee-Pather group. Progressives like Dr Monty Naicker, MD Naidoo, Debi Singh and others formed what was called the Anti-Segregation Council in order to bring about a change in the leadership because of the reactionary stances of the Kajee-Pather group, who did not want to have any collaboration with other national groups. They said they will go it alone in so far as the struggles against the government at that time,” said Moonsamy.
“That campaign drew me into the struggles of the NIC and we removed the Kajee-Pather group way back in 1945. We attended a meeting at Currie’s Fountain on October 21, 1945, when we kicked out the Kajee-Pather group lock, stock and barrel.”
For the next 10 years, he was caught up in a number of trade union and anti-government struggles. During one of the campaigns against racial oppression, Moonsamy, still only 20, was arrested, charged and convicted under the Riotous Assemblies Act.
He was sentenced to his first term in jail for four months, serving his imprisonment at Durban Central Prison and on a farm at Ixopo.
When he was about to become the full-time organising secretary of the NIC, he was arrested with 155 others in 1956 and charged with high treason. This was the first time he met activists who would later become the leading lights of the Struggle.
“For the first time, we had an opportunity to meet the leaders from all the different provinces. We knew most of our members by name but did not meet them personally. The treason arrests gave us an opportunity to meet all of them at the Fort Prison in Johannesburg. They included comrades such as Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu.”
In 1961 at the age of 36, Moonsamy found himself fully involved in the underground activities of the Communist Party in Durban. At this time the Communist Party, with the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), had been banned by the apartheid regime. But underground work was dangerous and he was arrested along with other members of his underground cell.On June 29, 1965, while out on bail, he was asked by the ANC to go into exile. He first went to Botswana for three years.
“Then the movement asked me to come over to Zambia where I joined the External Mission. “We had external missions in different countries but not very many. We had an office in London, some offices in Africa, with one in Zambia and our headquarters in Tanzania.”
Wife, children
When Moonsamy went into exile in 1965 he had to leave behind his wife and four children, including the youngest, his son Rajan, who was not even a year old.
He met them again for the first time 15 years later in Swaziland.
This was the most traumatic period in his life.
“After leaving my wife and children in 1965, we met again for the first time in Manzini, in Swaziland. When I joined the ANC in exile, our eldest child, Tammy, was 9, Ragini was 6, Saroj was 2-and-a-half and our youngest Rajan was only 9 months old.
“Rajan was born when I was in detention in 1964. When I met them again, Tammy was already married and Rajan was 15 .”
In exile, Moonsamy served the ANC, the SACP and the South African Congress of Trade Unions (Sactu) in several capacities.
He was also the ANC’s representative in India for a brief period in 1978 and worked for some time in the ANC treasurer’s department.
“Working in the treas-urer-general's office I was involved in fundraising and seeing to the maintenance and upkeep of those who had fled the country.
“In 1976 we had large numbers coming into exile, especially after the Soweto uprisings.
“Large numbers of students came into exile and my activities included working with the late Thomas Nkobi for the upkeep and maintenance of our people. Now we had thousands to provide food, clothing and shelter. ”He also underwent military training in the Soviet Union and was one of the activists in exile involved in the formulation and development of the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Tanzania. This was his last assignment before returning home in 1991.
“At the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College, we also constructed houses. When we took over that place, there were about six ramshackle buildings. But when we left Tanzania in 1992, the ANC handed over to the Tanzanian government 300 conventional buildings with running water, fully-furnished and tarred roads. We were also self-sufficient. We had a tailor’s shop, shoe-making shop, agricultural sector and a furniture factory that furnished the 300 houses. The surplus we used to sell on the market and that is how we used to raise funds for the movement.”
After his return, Moonsamy was active in the SACP, serving at ANC headquarters in Johannesburg.
He was deployed as an MP in 1999, serving two terms until April 2009. He found parliamentary work just as rewarding as his freedom work.
“Parliament was another terrain and it was interesting. As legislators, we had to enact laws in keeping with our founding document and a constitution which stands for a united, democratic, non-sexist, non-racial South Africa.
“I think we participated fully, strengthened the parliamentary structures and today I think we can be proud that we have a strong democratic system in our country and I think the constitution is paramount,” he said.