Ayesha Dawood: Tenacious activist and one of Treason Trial’s last survivors
1927-2014
AYESHA Dawood, who has died at the age of 87, was one of the last survivors of the marathon Treason Trial that began in 1956.
Born in the then small farming town of Worcester in the Western Cape on January 31 1927, she left school in Standard Eight (Grade 10) at the age of 15 and helped her father Achmat to run his shop, Tambe’s Restaurant, in the town.
One of her duties was to read him the newspapers every day. As a result, she became extremely well informed about politics and apartheid laws.
One day, she read that the National Party, which had come to power in 1948, was going to remove coloured people from the common voters’ roll and decided to become actively involved in resisting this. She helped to organise a one-day strike in opposition to the law, which was passed in 1951.
She began working for the Food and Canning Workers’ Union after she met and formed a close bond with its already famous leader, Ray Alexander, who enlisted Dawood’s help in unionising workers in industries beyond the food industry.
She and a friend, John Alwyn, formed the Worcester United Action Committee to take up problems relating to pass laws, housing and increasing rentals. Above all, though, they wanted to mobilise support for the 1952 Defiance Campaign.
Her home became the operational centre for the campaign in that region and her action committee signed up 800 supporters. She began making speeches, telling her audiences “we want nothing from the white man, only our rights” and “it does not matter which race you belong to, we all have to stand together”.
Late one night in June 1952, the security police barged into her COURAGE: Ayesha Dawood, left, receives flowers at the International Democratic Federation Conference for Women in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1953 house and placed her under arrest. She was charged under the Suppression of Communism Act. Her words, scribbled down by a security policeman in the audience, formed the basis of the indictment against her. They proved that she was inciting people to oppose the state, argued the prosecutor.
She was found guilty and sentenced to nine months, suspended.
The following year, she became one of the first non-black African members of the ANC. Soon thereafter she was sent by the Committee of Women, forerunner of the Federation of South African Women, to Denmark to attend the International Democratic Federation Conference for Women.
On her way back, she visited her paternal grandmother in India and while there met her future husband, Yusuf Mukadam.
After her return, Nelson Mandela spent a night at her family home while on a visit to Cape Town to organise the Freedom Charter, which would be adopted by the Congress of the People in Kliptown in June 1955.
Late one night, the security police again entered her home and, without offering any explanation, whisked her to Cape Town, where she and a group of other local activists, including Reg September, were put on a military Dakota and flown to Johannesburg.
She was held in solitary confinement at the Fort. Only after arriving in court at the Drill Hall, where she was herded into a cage with 155 other prisoners, including Mandela, who greeted her like a long-lost friend, did she learn that she was being charged with high treason.
After sitting in court practically every weekday for a year, she and 60 others had the charges against them dropped.
In April 1960, during the state of emergency that followed the Sharpeville massacre on March 21, she was arrested and kept in solitary for five months before being released without charge.
In 1961, Mukadam arrived from India and they were married. The police discovered years later — Dawood suspected someone must have informed on him — that he was in South Africa illegally.
He was held for six months, at which point the security police told her he was going to be deported. However, if she agreed to provide them with information about certain activists, he would be allowed to stay.
She refused and he was promptly served with a deportation or-
We want nothing from the white man, only our rights
der. She was denied the passport that would have allowed her and their two children to go with him. Instead, she was given an exit permit, meaning she would never be allowed back in South Africa.
For the next 22 years, she stayed with her husband’s family in the remote Indian village of Sarwa. She returned to South Africa with her husband and two children in 1991.
Dawood was a quiet, contained, “ordinary” person who showed extraordinary courage and tenacity when the situation required it. Apartheid was that situation. The injustice of the pass laws and Group Areas Act in particular aroused in her an anger and energy she never knew she was capable of.
She is survived by two children and six grandchildren. — Chris Barron