Dr Kreesan Naicker, from left, Mthetheli Xuma (the grandson of Dr Alfred Bitini "AB" Xuma), and Roshan Dadoo (daughter of Dr Yusuf Dadoo) re-enact the signing of the 1947 Three Doctors Pact, 2017.
Image: Kiru Naidoo
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Passive Resistance Campaign, a landmark protest against racial injustice led by the Natal Indian Congress. Dr Kreesen Naicker, the son of Dr Monty Naicker, reflects on the inspiring legacy of his dad and the enduring fight for equality in South Africa, as we remember the courage of those who resisted oppression.
THIS year marks the 80th anniversary of the passive resistance campaign that took place in 1946. The Natal Indian Congress (NIC) launched its campaign of passive resistance as a protest against the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act, which excluded Asiatics from occupation of controlled areas in and around Durban.
Before this act, the main areas that Indians occupied were beyond the Umgeni River, in Riverside and Prospect Hall and further inland at Duikerfontein and Sea Cow Lake. Springfield and Sydenham were also predominantly Indian. Indians also settled in areas such as Mayville, Cato Manor, Clairwood, Magazine Barracks, and the Bluff.
Even though informal segregation existed at this time, it was not until 1922 that the first major restriction was enacted, when the municipality reserved the right to exclude Indians from purchasing municipal land.
The Slums Act was passed in 1934 in order to improve conditions and to facilitate "slum clearance" within the city. Behind this veil, the Slums Act factually meant the expropriation of Indian property. The municipality’s rationale for this expropriation was cleverly masked as the city cleanup and industrial expansion.
Ironically, as late as the 1970s, Indians, in places like Tin Town in Springfield, still lived in shacks without basic services. By 1936, only 20% of Indians owned houses in Durban made of brick, stone, or concrete; the rest lived in wooden and iron structures. The colonial government did not provide electricity to these residents, as they did not trust that the Indians could handle it.
Volunteers waiting to be arrested at the resisters’ site, Gale Street. Standing third from left is Monty Naicker, and fourth from the left is MD Naidoo, June 1946.
Image: 1860 Heritage Centre
In January,1946, the then South African Government under the leadership of Prime Minister JC Smuts made it known that it intended to replace the Pegging Act with new legislation, *the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act of 1946, *prohibiting local Indians from purchasing land from non-Indians.
In addition, Indians would be allowed to elect eight whites to the existing government structures (only whites) on a communal franchise with educational and property qualifications. This infuriated the Indians and provoked much dissatisfaction in the Indian community.
The NIC, meanwhile, had sent a cable to the government of India requesting it to make an urgent appeal to the United Nations on behalf of the Indians in South Africa. A mass meeting was advocated to object with effective mass resistance against the intended Bill, proposing an immediate round table conference in South Africa with representations from India.
A conference was convened by the Indians in Cape Town in early February 1946 to organise all Indians in South Africa to protest the legislation. It was decided to first send a delegation to consult with the government officials on the matter, but this was unsuccessful.
June 13, 1946, was declared Hartal Day when 20 Indians began the passive resistance campaign on Thursday night by pitching five tents on vacant land in a controlled area at the junction of Gale Street and Umbilo Road and camping there. This group of 20 men, under the command of Dr GM Naicker, chairman of the Natal Indian Congress, kept the strictest discipline. Dr Naicker remarked, “If and when he and his men were arrested or removed from their camp, another 20 would move in to take their places.”
1946 NIC led a protest on Victoria Street, Durban.
Image: 1860 Heritage Centre
The NIC, led by Dr Morgamberry (Monty) Naicker, organised a mass meeting at Curries Fountain Stadium on February 20, 1946, as a day of prayer, on which Indians were asked not to go to work and for the traders to shut their businesses. In March 1946, the NIC announced its decision to launch a Passive Resistance Campaign and mechanisms were put into place.
The Passive Resistance Campaign, the first after Mahatma Gandhi had left South Africa, began with a mass meeting of more than 15 000 people at Red Square (now Nichols Square in Pine Street, Durban) on June 13, 1946, followed by a march to a site at the intersection of Gale Street and Umbilo Road, Durban.
The first batch of resisters, including 17 women led by the leaders of the NIC, Dr Monty Naicker, Mr MD Naidoo and Dr Yusuf Dadoo, pitched five tents on this vacant piece of land. Their abiding slogan was “To Hell with the Ghetto Act,” which, as the Pegging Act, was the forerunner of the Group Areas Act of 1950, restricting Indian ownership of property and implementing forced removals.
“We Shall Resist!” was the battle cry of the 1946 passive resistance campaign spearheaded by the Natal and Transvaal Indian Congresses.
Professor of sociology and biographer of Nelson Mandela, Fatima Meer, joined the campaign as a teenager. In recounting the milestone struggle, she said: “We were following the footsteps of the great Mahatma… I remember I led my batch to occupy the resistance plot… We were arrested on occupying the plot and taken to the Umbilo police cells where we spent the night. We appeared before the Magistrate at the Durban Court the next morning. We re-iterated our opposition to the discriminatory laws in court and were sentenced to imprisonment with hard labour. No resistor paid the alternative of a fine. We were then removed to the Durban Central Prison.”
In recalling the life of my father, President Nelson Mandela wrote: “Monty, as we all referred to him affectionately, was a generous, jovial man with sufficient political foresight to realise that the problems of South Africa's disenfranchised cut across ethnicity and had to be fought on a broad united front.
"He gave the formidable Natal Indian Congress, founded by Mahatma Gandhi in 1894, a new lease of life when he assumed its presidency in 1945 and galvanised the Indian people into militant passive resistance against General Smuts's racist laws. He struggled relentlessly for the rights of all South Africans to the end of his life and remains entrenched in our history as an eminent contributor to our freedom struggle."
For Monty Naicker, the years from 1960 to 1974 were years of continuous banning orders, restricting his life and effectively cutting him off from any political activity. Failing in health, he nevertheless became, from 1977, the head of the anti-South African Indian Council Campaign to mobilise the Indian people once more to reject the dummy Indian Council and the fraudulent three-tier Parliament for whites, coloureds and Indians.
Almost his last sentiments when visited by his close friend Yusuf Dadoo and Dr Goonam, who related what Monty Naicker had said on his deathbed.
"Monty,"
"Hello", he replied.
"How are you?"
"Well," he said, "getting on - but things in this country - they are moving too slow - too slow for change."
His hand went up in the clenched fist salute and stayed there.
"Amandla!", he said. The clenched fist grew firmer...
My father died as he lived, defiantly and unwavering in his commitment to freedom and the ideology of the Congress movement.
He believed that we are put on this Earth for a purpose and his purpose was to serve.
In this 80th Anniversary of Passive Resistance Campaign, let us draw on the courage, determination and resistance of all those who chose to resist. Let us be inspired by their commitments to build a better life for all the peoples of South Africa.
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