OUR RICH HISTORY - MINISTER PRAVIN GORDHAN – HIS DETENTION AND BANNING IN EARLY 1982 RECALLED ON HIS 72ND BIRTHDAY

 

 

HIS SACRIFICES RECALLED WHILE THE CAMPAIGNS TO TARNISH HIS IMAGE CONTINUES IN APRIL 2021

 

The campaigns to tarnish the image of struggle stalwart and current Minister in the Government of President Cyril Ramaphosa – Pravin Gordhan – show no signs of ending.

In the latest development – at the time when Minister Gordhan has turned 72 – this campaign has been demonstrated at the Judicial Services Commission hearing now taking place to appoint two nominees to the Constitutional Court and other courts of the country.

The Chief Justice – Mogoeng Mogoeng – when interviewing Judge Daya Pillay for a position in the Constitutional Court indicated that Minister Gordhan had requested to see him some years ago. In a broadcast on SAFM radio, he was heard saying that this had surprised him because he was not a friend of Gordhan and and that he had only known Gordhan via television. When the meeting was arranged Minister Gordhan during the conversation that followed on the specified date had asked him: “How my friend Judge Daya Pillay was performing?" This was at a time when Judge Pillay had applied for a senior position in the judiciary.

Judge Pillay responded by saying that Minister Gordhan was her friend she had known for a long time. In a broadcast on SAFM radio, she was heard saying:

“We are both activists from Durban and it’s hard not to know him.”

The leader of the EFF, Julius Malema, who is one of six MPs on the JSC, showed his vengeance for for Minister Gordhan, when he implied that she was part of “Gordhan’s faction”. He also alleged the Minister had captured the judiciary.

Judge Pillay responded to Malema by saying “we are friends” but this did not affect her work as a judge.

This latest continued attempts by Julius Malema to smear the image of Minister Gordhan only demonstrates that he has a personal grudge against the Minister. He has no knowledge whatsoever of the sacrifices that Minister Gordhan had made during the 1970s and 1980s when involved in the struggles for a free, non-racial and democratic South Africa.

Since the early 1970s Mr Gordhan was involved with the Natal Indian Congress, South African Communist Party(SACP), the ANC, community organisations in Durban, Chatsworth, Phoenix; and other progressive movements. He also played a major role in the establishment of the United Democratic Front in 1983 and was elected as one of the executive officials.

After Nelson Mandela was released and the ANC was unbanned in February 1990, Mr Gordhan was fully involved in, among other things,  as a member of the NIC/TIC/ANC in the negotiations process, in the establishment of the Interim Government, and the drawing up of the new non-racial and democratic constitution.

While researching through my files, I came across an article that we had written about his detention for 161 days since late 1981 and early 1982 and the banning order imposed on him in May 1982.

 

 

DURBAN INDIAN LEADER UNDER HOUSE ARREST

We wrote an article about the harassment meted out to Gordhan at a time when the apartheid regime had heightened its suppression of anti-apartheid activists. Gordhan at this time was a top leader of the Natal Indian Congress and an underground activist of the banned African National Congress at that time.

This article was submitted to the Press Trust of India (PTI) for publication in newspapers in India and to news outlets around the world.

The Indian Express published this story under the headline: “Durban Indian leader under house arrest” on May 19 1982.

The story read:

Durban, May 19 (PTI): A 33-year-old executive member of the Indian Congress, Mr Pravin Gordhan, has been banned and placed under house arrest for two years immediately after being released from detention without trial for 161 days.

Mr Gordhan and another Congress executive member, Mr Yunus Mahomed, were arrested in November 1981 along with more than 150 political activists, trade unionists and students in a massive crackdown by the South African security police.

Just before his release Mr Gordhan had spent more than a week in the psychiatric ward of a Durban hospital.

As a banned person, reports the Press Trust of South Africa (PTSA), Mr Gordhan is not allowed to leave his house from 7pm to 6am every weekday and during weekends and holidays.

He is also not allowed to communicate with more than one person at a time and he may not enter any residential area set aside for Africans, coloured people and Indians. He is also prohibited from entering any industrial complex, educational institution and publishing or broadcasting house.

At the time of his arrest, Mr Gordhan played a leading role in the anti-SAIC Committee, which was established by the Natal Indian Congress and other progressive organisations throughout the country to persuade the Indian people not to vote in the “sham” elections of the government-created South African Indian Council.

The campaign was a major success with the majority of the Indian people boycotting the elections and rejected discrimination and apartheid in all its forms.

Mr Gordhan’s wife, Pravina, told PTSA that she was very bitter about the banning and detention of people without trial.

Mrs Gordhan, daughter of Mr Natu Babenia who was imprisoned on Robben Island for 16 years for his anti-racist stand against the Pretoria Government, said that her husband’s release did not make her totally happy.

“How can I be happy when many other people are still in detention?”, she asked.

Mr Gordhan joins a number of other Indians who have been banned and placed under house arrest. Among them are Mrs Fatima Meer, a sociology lecturer at the University of Natal and a close friend of Mrs Indira Gandhi; Mr Mewa Ramgobin, former president of the Natal Indian Congress; Mr George Sewpersadh, president of the NIC; and Mr Marimuthu Subramoney, a Durban journalist who founded the PTSA News Agency.

There are altogether about 150 persons of this category in South Africa, including Mrs Winnie Mandela, wife of the leader of the African National Congress, Mr Nelson Mandela, who is serving life imprisonment. Ends – Press Trust of SA News Agency May 19 1982