Pravin Gordhan and Marlan Padayache.
MARLAN PADAYACHE
Who was Pravin Jamnadas Gordhan? South Africa’s foremost Durban-born political activist and government minister died, aged 75, as another victim of cancer that ended his illustrious role-playing in progressive politics.
I knew Gordhan as iconic activist. He had shaped and redefined the anti-apartheid political landscape since 1970s-80s, culminating in his extraordinary outreach in the 1990s to contributing enormously – often at great personal sacrifices, glory, success, humiliation and embarrassment when he was fired by Jacob Zuma.
And 30 years later, his untimely death was greeted by a tsunami of tributes. The grand old man of resistance and democratic politics will be remembered for his courageous legacy and legend of five decades. His state funeral took five years.
His firebrand activism had attracted a love-hate repertoire across his native homeland: to the nation’s previously disenfranchised black masses, he was a hero. To Durban Indians, he was a consummate cadre, comrade, commander, commissar and captain of government enterprises.
To the apartheid regime, he was public enemy number one. To the apartheid-era political opportunists – chiefly Amichand Rajbansi, Allan Hendrickse, Lucas Mangope and others who collaborated in racially pigeonholed systems, and among them the tricameral and homeland system stooges, he was a nemesis.
To the conservatives, who sat on the fence of segregationist politics, he was a thorn in their flesh. To the Broederbond-appointed heads of the Indian-classified universities on Salisbury Island and the University of Durban-Westville, today a cosmopolitan campus – UKZN – he was a trouble maker. However, it was in protests for an SRC that shaped his political resistance to apartheid.
The hotbed of resistance in Chiltern Hills was his battleground. His strident leadership style politicised students from conservative families.
Many new radicals were mentored by him. This took place in the 1960s. In the 1970s, his next port of call as a pharmacy graduate was the white-administered King Edward VIII Hospital.
He politicised doctors, nurses and social workers about the discriminatory health system and was shown the door. The Natal Indian Congress (NIC), founded here in 1894 by India’s peace guru, MK Gandhi, was his alma mater when Indian leaders were banned, exiled and house arrested.
Seriously ill, he penned a profound message to NIC’s 130th-year milestone. Schooled by his mother in virtues of the Bhagavad Gita (holy Hindu scriptures), he tiptoed on the footsteps of India’s revered mahatma (saint).
Jobless, he joined the outlawed ANC-SACP’s underground activities. His opened a private pharmacy at 116 Prince Edward Street, below his family apartment, in the heart of the Casbah’s Grey Street CBD, where his Gujarati clans thrived in trading alongside Muslims, became the nerve centre of liberation’s armed struggle against apartheid autocracy.
His eldest daughter recalled how security police agents raided their apartment, often searching for banned documents, and arrested her father, as she witnessed through her girlhood eyes.
His mobilising skills within the Indian community, leading housing protests and clamour for lower property rates, once telling municipal official Wilf Stone that as a “servant of the people” he should deliver services to underprivileged communities.
The deadly floods pushed him into the forefront of the housing crisis in Phoenix, the second dormitory township for Indians after the 1960s Chatsworth. He mentored a generation of activists. In the 1980s, he was to campaign in these townships with vigour and passion.
He campaigned voters to boycott the SA Indian Council, LAC and House of Delegates sham elections. He tied his progressive political mast to the Release Mandela Committee and the United Democratic Front (UDF), while operating in the underground trenches. He was detained for 160 days without trial in 1981. He slipped into the exile community in Swaziland for four years and his clandestine activism and activities became known to the exiled ANC in Lusaka, Zambia.
In the 1987–1988 watershed, he established safe houses, smuggled freed political prisoners across borders and facilitated safe passages for uMkhonto weSizwe (Spear of the Nation) cadres and guerrillas: “During the apartheid government’s attack on activists, I was informed about the assassination of some ANC cadres. Pravin Gordhan and Curnick Ndlovu were entrusted to relay the communiqué to the ANC in Zambia. That was the trust the ANC had in PG,” recalled Nelson Mandela’s attorney Krish Naidoo at a night vigil prayer at Constitutional Hill.
Coupled with ex-Robben Islander, Mac Maharaj, on the cusp of détente, Gordhan commanded and commandeered the ANC MK’s Operation Vula – aimed at smuggling senior leaders and consolidate the ANC’s stronghold inside the country ahead of Mandela’s release and negotiations between the National Party and the ANC. These operatives were arrested and released ahead of the momentous peace talks in the 1980s.
In the 1990s, Gordhan was part of the ANC intelligentsia who drafted the blue print at the Convention for a Democratic SA (Codesa) and the 1993 interim Constitution.
He had carved his credibility for higher office in the epoch-making Mandela Administration, elected as an MP in 1994, redeployed as the head honcho at the SA Revenue Service (Sars) for 14 years: “As a pharmacist, as a dedicated revolutionary, he may not have seemed the best choice to lead Sars. Yet, his intelligence, his enterprise and his diligence made him the perfect person to build one of the most important and effective institutions of our young democracy,” eulogised Ramaphosa, adding Gordhan was the quintessential activist, astute tactician and negotiator. He attributed these super skills that cracked Gordhan finance minister’s Cabinet post, twice, as Cogta minister and finally minister of public enterprises – his last portfolio before he called it a day before the 2024 election, marking a celebrated and colourful career that descended into a in a bitter-sweet saga after he became the lone wolf voice against the culture of corruption.
“Always the activist, he did the work that needs to be done.”
On the flip side, the head of state was scathing in his criticism of Gordhan’s detractors: ‘’During one of the most painful chapters of our democratic history, as the state was being looted by the powerful and connected, he chose to resist … he worked to thwart state capture … he refused to be silenced … endured vicious attacks. It was shameful attacks. Many were racist, directed at one of SA’s foremost champions of non-racialism.”
State capture commission judge Raymond Zondo vindicated Gordhan. A dozen speakers lauded the veteran politico, now belonging to the pantheon of political leaders in his Nirvana, a place of peace in Buddhism.
His epic politicking and government service earned him academic, doctorates accolades and awards – including two premier awards from the Indian government.
A towering giant of the country’s chequered journey – a giant oak tree – has fallen.
Seasoned activist-journalist Marlan Padayachee is a former Independent Newspapers’ political, foreign and diplomatic correspondent and his brand of journalism and media outreach was acknowledged by Pravin Gordhan.
Daily News
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