A life dedicated to uplifting her people
GADIJA and Albert Christopher were very much the upper crust of Durban society since the late 1920s. The difference was that they were grounded with the working people and the poor for the better part of a generation.
She remained a prominent social welfare activist long after her husband’s death in 1960.
He was a London-trained barrister called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn. That was no mean feat for the son of Indian indentured labours.
His father, Narrainsamy Paupiah, came from Chingleput in the Madras presidency in 1863 and his mother, Lutchmee Goorvadoo, arrived a year later from Chittoor.
Albert was born in 1885. He described himself as colonialborn and became president of the Colonial-born Indian Association in 1939.
Gadija Gool was born into a prosperous Cape political family in 1896. Her father, Yusuf, was a merchant who migrated from India.
He was among the founders of the All Africa Convention and the Non-european Unity Movement.
The family fortune was subsequently lost in a combination of the Great Depression and horses that fell short of the winning post.
Yusuf Gool Boulevard in Gatesville is named in his honour.
Her mother, Wagieda, came from the Cape Malay community of slave origins.
The Gools kept open house for activists, artists and the intelligentsia. One of those house guests was the dapper Albert, who had eyes for their second daughter.
They married in 1923. Neither faith nor geographic distance proved impediments to the union.
She was born Muslim and his family had adopted the Christian faith. They maintained a happy medium throughout their lives. The young couple left soon after marriage for England for Albert’s legal studies.
The mid-twenties was a time of great political ferment, especially within the Indian community. Visiting Indian National Congress leader, acclaimed poet and feminist Sarojini Naidu rattled the South African colonial establishment with sentiments describing British attitudes as “we conquer, we rule, we trample down, we make graveyards where there were gardens, we rule with the iron heel, we flash the sword and daze the eyes of those who would look us in the face”.
Radical thinkers fitted in with the Christophers’ outlook and the direction in which they wanted to take their country.
It is not clear whether the Christophers met Naidu during her 1924 visit but they were of South Africa tribute on her sister Minnie’s death in 2005.
Gadija left the relatively safe urban environment of Cape Town when she married Albert Christopher.
She followed him to Greenwood Park. an undeveloped suburb in Durban, where she had to contend with dense subtropical vegetation infested with deadly black mambas. She soon acquired the reputation of a fearless mamba killer, acting in defence of herself and those close to her against one of the few serpents that attack rather than simply defend itself.
Her contests with the mambas can also be read as a metaphor of her intense passion for social justice and changing the oppressive condition of the world in which she found herself.
In 1946 she was among the first women to go to prison in the Passive Resistance Campaign. She was sentenced to 30 days in the Durban Central.
Her daughter, Zulei, was detained two decades later and subjected to vicious torture from which she never recovered.
Many of those descended from the hardy working people of the Magazine Barracks might not be around were it not for communityspirited individuals such as Mrs Christopher, Dr Kesaveloo Goonum and Dr Monty Naicker.
Their sterling work in social welfare, health and political mobilisation had an impact on the lives and fortunes of the generations that have an emotional bond with ‘the barracks”.
Not long ago I interviewed a grandmother about life in the Indian municipal workers’ compound on Somtseu Road and asked why people knew about apartheid’s destruction of District Six, Sophiatown and Marabastad but not Magazine Barracks.
Her reply in the perfectly intelligible turn of phrase I grew up with was, “There was no-one to talk for us.”
In that same breath came the recollection of the valiant work of Mrs Christopher and her fellow activists. They did speak for the barracks people.
These were outsiders, a more comfortable class of people, considerably better educated and whose lives could have gone merrily on without concern for the wretched living conditions in the compound.
The oddly named and powerless Protector of Indian Immigrants had earlier reported of the barracks: “These are not huts or houses; they are not fit for human occupation.”
In her own manner, my informant told me Mrs Christopher took a keen and abiding interest in the precarious balancing beam that tipped in the direction of malnutrition, disease and death.
Author Devi Moodley Rajab also notes: “She would never forget the poor Magazine Barracks community where she first worked, and the sight of abandoned illegitimate babies.”
Voluntary social welfare work was her foremost priority.
Mrs Christopher worked closely with the able and organic leadership that rose from within the barracks. Among the leaders was Rangasamy Karuppa (RK) Gounden, one of the sons of the mahout who took care of Mitchell Park’s famous elephant, Nellie.
He emerged as a fighting force at the helm of the Durban Indian Municipal Employees Society (Dimes), the communist and congress movement.
Gounden was in the first batch of boys from the municipal barracks to enter Sastri College but had to leave around Standard Seven when his father died.
It is not too far-fetched to suggest Mrs Christopher’s towering political personality also defined the political posture of progressive people in the Greenwood-redhill area.
It produced several leading activists. A neighbour and activist of several generations later, Heather Robertson, takes up the story in a Facebook reflection: “My world view was shaped by a passion to break down the walls of apartheid . This passion was ignited by my parents. I was also deeply influenced by my parents’ closest friends, Uncle Dorrie and Aunty Haidee Pillay, who used to babysit me when I was in nappies.
“I was privileged to listen to stories of Aunty Haidee’s mom, Gadija Christopher, who we called Ouma (and) her daughter, Dr Zulie Christopher, who had to flee the country.
“We are part of a generation empowered by the knowledge that we were, are and can be instruments of positive change for the betterment of all, if we work together and put our minds to it.”
There can be no doubt that Gadija Christopher was a woman well ahead of her time whose entire life was to be an instrument of positive change for the betterment of all. She breathed her last breath in 2001.
Historian, Goolam Vahed tells us: “Her janaza prayer was performed at the Lodge Grove Mosque and she was buried in the Brown’s Avenue cemetery.”
This doyenne of the social welfare movement has left indelible footprints on the road to South African freedom.
• This is an edited excerpt from Kiru Naidoo’s forthcoming book Magazine Barracks – apartheid destruction of a community, commissioned by the Magazine Barracks Remembrance Association.