GEORGE SEWPERSADH – ONE OF THE COMRADES WHO WORKED BEHIND THE SCENES FOR FREEDOM HIS 13TH DEATH ANNIVERSARY WAS ON MONDAY, MAY 18 (2020)

(George Sewpersadh seen with Winnie Mandela at her home in Brandfort in the free State when she was banished. With him are also Mewa Ramgobin and M J Naidoo. We travelled to Brandfort to visit Mrs Mandela after our banning orders were lifted in 1984.) By Subry Govender

On Monday, May 18 this year (2020) it was the 13th death anniversary of one of the activists who was involved in the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) and the United Democratic Front (UDF) for the freedom that we enjoy today.< He was involved with fellow activists such as Mewa Ramgobin, Paul David, M J Naidoo, Farooq Meer, Rabbi Bugwandeen, R Ramesar, Abdul Haq Randeree and Jerry Coovadia in the revival of the Natal Indian Congress in 1971.

Mr Sewpersadh graduated with a law degree from the University of Natal in 1960 and was elected president of the Natal Indian Congress in April 1972. About 18 months later he was served with a five-year banning order on October 29 1973. Reacting to Sewpersadh’s banning order, Professor Fatima Meer, who was a sociology lecturer at the University of Natal at this time, said: “The National Party Government is sowing the seeds of a future explosion in the surest terms by the banning of Mr Sewpersadh and other black leaders. “It has shut up some 30 or more Black voices in recent months and has now added to these that of Mr Sewpersadh. “While on the one hand the Government pleads for dialogue with the rest of the world, on the other hand it is prepared to speak only to its own appointed voice and to hear that voice alone. “Black South Africans in particular are driven into a position where they must recoil in silence. “Each spate of bannings aggravates Black hostility, already supposed to have reached its limit, and the speechless silence they compel breeds brands of racial hatred dooming South Africa to interminable strife.” After his banning order expired in 1978, Mr Sewpersadh returned to the political scene and played a major role in the preparations for establishment of the United Democratic Front. He was one of the leaders who was part of the Natal delegation at the launch of the UDF in Cape Town in August 1983. When the former apartheid regime had increased its repression of activists in the 1980s, George Sewpersadh was one of the leaders who sought refuge in the British Consulate in Durban in 1984. He had joined Ramgobin, M J Naidoo, Archie Gumede, Paul David and Billy Nair at the Consulate to highlight the repressive actions of the regime to the outside world. After they left the Consulate after a month, George Sewpersadh, Mewa Ramgobin, Archie Gumede and 13 others were charged with High Treason at the Pietermaritzburg High Court. All of them, however, were found not guilty and released. George Sewpersadh withdrew into the background after freedom was attained in April 1994. After the first five years of freedom, Mr Sewpersadh became disillusioned with some of the actions of some leaders. In one interview with me he said he was deeply disappointed with the political and social situation. When he passed on, on May 18 2007, I compiled this radio feature on his life and political involvement: