‘Jail was overflowing with resisters’
Kay Moonsamy spent his 20th birthday in prison for his part in the 1946 Passive Resistance Campaign waged against the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act. Seventy years on, the veteran unionist and activist recounts to the acts of defiance
YOU’RE a veteran of the ANC, SACP and Natal Indian Congress going back to 1944. Calling the community to meetings was a big part of your work. Where did you meet?
All our meetings used to be held at Red Square (now the site of the Nichol Square Parkade in Durban). Our platform was a big truck. Dr Monty Naicker was the main speaker. Debi Singh, the provincial secretary of the NIC, also addressed our meetings.
Inkosi Albert Luthuli, the president-general of the ANC, addressed us there, as did JB Marks, the general secretary of the African Mine Workers’ Union.
Tell me about the June 13, 1946 meeting that drew international attention to racial discrimination in South Africa.
Can you imagine meeting on a winter’s evening at 5.30. From there we marched, all 25 000 of us, men, women and children. You RIGHT:Veterans of the 1946 Passive Resistance Campaign, Kay Moonsamy, left, and Swaminathan Gounden have been comrades since 1944. Both were detained in solitary confinement under the 90-day law in 1964. will see that in the photographs. We marched right up to Gale (now Magwaza Maphalala) Street.
Umbilo Road is at the top, but people are mistaken as the camp was not pitched in Umbilo Road. It was set up in Gale Street.
I can still picture it, MD Naidoo, Zainab Asvat and others sitting there. There were some Africans, whites and coloureds who also went to prison but I cannot place them all now. I remember about 13 Africans being at the camp. That was important symbolically.
After that first march, how did you organise people?
Every evening, from the NIC office in Lakhani Chambers (Grey Street, now Dr Yusuf Dadoo Road, opposite West End Bar) people used to volunteer to defy. We would get to the resistance plot and be arrested. The next day you had to appear in court.
Passive Resistance organiser Karuppa Swaminathan Gounden said they would bring volunteers from different places like Magazine Barracks, Mayville and Clairwood to Peter’s Lounge at the corner of Grey and Pine (Monty Naicker Road) streets.
It had a large dance floor where Naicker would address the resisters. He would whip up animosity to the law by talking about sore issues like the sexual violence on women by the masters on the sugar plantations.
What were the charges?
At first infringement of the by-laws. Then they found that lots of people were coming and they wanted to put an end to it, so they wanted to make the assembly there an illegal gathering.
There was a law, I don’t know whether it is still on the statute books, the War Measures Act of 1914 or Riotous Assemblies Act.
Tell me about your arrest.
On the evening of July 4, I happened to be one of those marching from Red Square to Gale Street. That day the racist police gave a warning under the Riotous Assemblies Act: within three minutes if you don’t disperse you will be arrested.
So well, of course we defied it. We were not going to take their word. So all of us, 150 of us, were shoved in the vans and taken to the charge office, and the next day we appeared in court and we were sentenced to four months’ imprisonment. That happened to be July 5, which was my birthday.
What was prison like?
Durban Central jail was overflowing with the scores of passive resisters coming in daily. This was behind the old railway station where the ICC now stands.
I only stayed for about 10 or 12 days. All of those who were sentenced to more than four months were shunted to Ixopo Prison.
RA Pillay was with me. He was an old stalwart in the movement who went to prison more than once.
We marched from Durban Central Jail to the railway station. We were all handcuffed marching to the station and they put us on the third-class trains.
By the time we arrived in Ixopo, it was about 7pm. It was already dark. They gave us clothing. In Durban Central we were wearing shorts made out of hessian sacks. Of the 150, 18 of us were taken to Ixopo.
In all, 1 710 passive resisters were imprisoned. The majority were workers. Of those 1 476 were 18 to 30 years old.
While the majority were men, 279 women were imprisoned.
Ellapen Naicker served seven months. Monty Naicker and MD Naidoo served six months and seven days.
Five doctors, including Dr K Goonum, were imprisoned.
A total of 210 resisters were imprisoned twice, 21 three times and 31 four times.
To demonstrate the unity in diversity, 48 coloureds, 16 Africans and eight whites went to prison in solidarity.
On June 2, 1948, the Joint Passive Resistance suspended the campaign pending discussions with the National Party government that won the May election on the apartheid ticket.
Far from making concessions, the racist state intensified the oppression and passed the Group Areas Act in 1950.
• Moonsamy continued with his activism in the congress movement. He was active in all the major political campaigns after that first march. In 1956, he was among 156 leaders charged with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Oliver Tambo in what became known worldwide as the Treason Trial.
In 1964, he was arrested under the 90-day laws and was detained in solitary confinement. He then left the country clandestinely on June 29, 1965 to join the external mission of the ANC.
President Jacob Zuma this year conferred on him the Order of Luthuli in bronze for his contribution to the struggle for South African freedom. About the interviewer: Kiru Naidoo has held positions at the universities of Natal and Durban-Westville, Durban University of Technology, the National Research Foundation and in the public service. He writes extensively as a political analyst.