Judge Thumba Pillay … successes and setbacks
| Published date | 30 August 2023 |
| Publication title | Post |
I was born in 1936, three years before the declaration of World War II. So, for starters, I know all about black-outs, though not as a result of load shedding; purely for security from air attacks.
I remember as my father bade goodbye before he volunteered to serve up north, and his arrival back to South Africa aboard the Cape Town Castle (then converted into a troopship) as it docked at the Durban harbour.
From 1945, barely 10 years old, I followed the war effort, remembering to this day the names of the famous and the infamous over the BBC. But for the restraints of space, I could recite, word for word, the introductory announcement of “This is London calling” over the overseas service of the BBC.
As a family, we would, ears glued to the table top wood-encased radio, listen to the news of the war effort, the successes and the setbacks.
Smuts, Eisenhower, Churchill, Rommel, Montgomery, Mussolini, and, of course, Hitler, were among the many familiar names that come to mind.
The year after Armistice followed our very own 1946 Passive Resistance Campaign, bringing home to me all the evils of racial discrimination to be eventually labelled “apartheid”.
Born and bred in Clairwood, the names of Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru and Subhas Chander Bose were all too familiar, with many a home featuring pictures of Gandhi at his spinning wheel in a conversation with Nehru. And with that, one associated the names of doctors Monty Naicker, Yusuf Dadoo and the volatile Kesaveloo Goonam.
The “Indian Question” (the treatment of people of Indian origin in South Africa) debated in the UN for the first time readily comes to mind, with names familiar to families who courted arrest and imprisonment.
Visits into the city centre by bus from Clairwood drew my curiosity to the Passive Resistance camp in Gale Street, which today is cited as a historical site, and which I visited not so long ago with the late Kesval Moonsamy and Swaminathan Gounden.
These events and names in all probability mark my initiation into activism (more appropriately, curiosity) for a 10 year old.
It led me to follow the progress of the 1948 general election, which saw the demise of Jan Smuts (the perceived good guy) and his United Party to National Party rule under DF Malan (the bad guy).
I can put this particular event down to my beginning in the world of activism, following over the wireless radio the election results constituency by constituency countrywide – I was just 12!
The year 1947 saw India’s Independence, making Gandhi, Nehru, Rajagopal Archary, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Subhas Chander Bose and others names to follow and digest in adult conversation.
It led to my first clash with authority; being part of a leadership advocating a stay-away from school to celebrate India’s Independence the following year. It earned me, for the first and only time in my life, six of the best from my disciplinarian principal, the revered Mr HS Done.
The 1949 Durban African/Indian Riots provided food for thought, being in the thick of things. This included hiding in a backyard mealie field and not long after looking forward to high school with the accompanying stress of where to. Sastri College was the only option in Durban and surrounding areas.
The selection criteria for Sastri College were onerous. Rejection meant Umzinto, Pietermaritzburg, Ladysmith, and, possibly Newcastle, if memory serves me.
I recall standing with hundreds of other aspirants before the iconic four pillars, waiting for the names of the successful candidates to be called out name by name, the first 30 into Standard 7 (a) and so on, about an annual intake of 120.
Good fortune got me into 7 (a) at Sastri College in 1951. The principal was the genial Scotsman, William Anderson, followed later by AD Lazarus. He was the first man of colour to occupy the post of...
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