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Interviewee
: ELA GANDHI
Interviewer
: Vino Reddy
Date
: 18 May 2002
Transcript
(excerpt)
VR: Tell me, at that time, can you tell me
a little bit about women’s organizations then?
EG: Okay, for a long time the women were involved largely in
social organizations. In the early days, that’s before
the 60’s, when all the organizations got banned, women’s
organizations had become very strong. From, as you may know,
the African National Congress was a all male organization, at
the beginning. Women organized, and they fought for their rights
and eventually got recognition and were able to become full
members of the organization. In 1956 they proved their worth
by organizing this huge march, you know, to the union buildings
against the pass laws and their campaign was so big, and so
well run, that eventually the men got fed up and stopped them.
Had they not stopped them, the women would have continued, you
know, they had organized themselves to carry on this campaign
against the pass laws, but they were asked to put a halt to
it, and that’s why they actually stopped the campaign
for a while in the ‘50s, ’56, ‘57 period.
Then in the 1960 period, they, all organisations, all political
organizations were banned with the result that women’s
organizations had to now, you know, also disappear. But, as
you know, these organizations seldom disappear. They remain
because people are there, people’s minds are there, you
can’t kill their spirit. You can kill an organization;
you can’t kill the people and their spirit. So the ANC
was quite active, the women’s organizations were active
but not seen, not overtly active. Lots of women then had to
skip the country. They became, you know, leaders, they were
recognized as leaders, they became ambassadors of the ANC out
of the country, and took on positions and largely, I think,
it’s the women, themselves, who fought for these positions
and then some leaders like Oliver Tambo was a real champion
of the women and he, you know, insisted that some of the women
take on positions within the umKhonto, within the ANC, and so
on. Within the country itself a lot of organizations changed,
and became like, you know, changed, they ran crèches,
and they ran burials societies, and stokvels and, you know and
so there wasn’t real political organization until the
70’s when we had, you know, in 19.. I think it was what
year, the 25th anniversary of the march, then some of the women
got together, a large number were the Black Consciousness Group.
There was Shameem Meer and others, who collected – they
were mainly academics who collected photographs and things and
had a display of the 1956 struggle of the women and so on –
the 9th August was then observed as a day when they would have
these exhibitions That raised the consciousness of a lot of
women. Then, in the 60’s /70’s onwards, we had women
coming into civic organizations, into education committees,
and so on. The two sides of struggle were the civic area, and
the education and there was a lot of organizations amongst students,
that’s why in the ‘76 period, we saw the students
coming out. At the university, the students organized the SASO
you know, Tiro and these people started the struggle at Forte
Hare University and so the students’ movement grew, and
(from) within it came a lot of women, Nkosazana Zuma, for instance,
was part of that, you know, and there were many other women
who were part of the SASO group, the South African Students
Organization. A lot of women in the civic organizations, defied,
and you found that in the marches, in the defiance against the
rent struggles and so on, and these were largely Coloured and
Indian and African women, as well. Later, in the townships they
opposed educational problems in the schools and so on, but the
marches were led by women. They faced guns and they really were
very brave.
VR: Now you were banned during this time, weren’t you?
EG: I was banned for 8 and a half years and during this time
there was this increase in this civic organization. I had to
work underground, not overtly.
VR: What kind of harassment did you suffer during those years?
EG: We often saw them watching our houses you know, people would
come. There were lots of little things that we couldn’t
do and that was harassment, but we just carried on, you know,
where we felt that we just had to do what we could. We didn’t
feel that, at that stage, that defying the banning orders would
get us anywhere, so we needed to stay out of prison because
we were more useful out of prison than in prison. And so, whatever
we did, we took care. We broke the banning order many times,
house arrest orders, banning orders, but we took care to cover
our backs, you know, so that we wouldn’t be caught and
fortunately we weren’t, so neither my ex-husband nor I
were ever arrested for breaking the banning orders. There were
times when we forgot to sign on a Saturday, we quietly went
on a Monday and signed the book and nobody knew there was co-operation
even from the police, we made friends and there were police
who would give us the book to sign so there was a lot of people,
at least a lot of sympathy, amongst the people you know, unlike
in the white community. I think when white people got banned,
they really found it very difficult to survive because they
were totally isolated .
VR: So people rallied then.
EG: People rallied around us, yes, ya they would come, there
were lots of people, you would remember, you were one of them.
Okay, and so, we didn’t sort of feel, it was frustrating,
but we didn’t feel that bad about it.
VR: When you look back on those days, would you say you were
an activist?
EG: Absolutely, ya
VR: Yes, tell us about that.
EG: Well, I think activism is working at grassroots level. I
think it also trains you in democracy, trains you to consult,
to value opinions of the people, you know, not to have a judgement,
not to make up your mind in a drawing room or something, to
go out there in the community, experience what the community
is experiencing and work with them and listen to what they are
saying rather than, you know saying that they are having a bad
time so we need to do something about it and you know go and
sort of impose our views on the people. So I think activism,
because activism is organizing at grassroots level, speaking
to the community, interacting with them, organizing them, helping
them, you know, to come together and to identify and to interpret
the, you know, difficulties that they were experiencing.
VR: What was your goal as an activist?
EG: Well, the main goal was to bring an awareness amongst the
people, as I said, people can get comfortable with apartheid
and sad, sadly to say the very fact that a lot of Indian people
voted for and Coloured people voted for the National Party,
you know, indicates that many of the people became comfortable
in their townships. Prior to the ‘70’s and the ‘80’s,
there were no Indian townships, there were no Coloured townships.
There were African townships, you had Kwa Mashu and you had
Umlazi and so on, but Indians were staying all over, and lived
with African communities in Cato Manor and Inanda and other
places. A lot of the poor Indians lived in Magazine Barracks
in Durban, lived in wood and iron, you know, huts all over Malagazi,
Inanda. So they knew what it was to live as African people were
- are living, even today. It was in the ‘70’s and
‘80’s that things changed, they felt we needed to
co-opt these people and they started building houses, removed
all the shack settlements, brought Indian people into the built
up houses, built schools for them, gave them water, electricity
which they never had in the shacks, and so on, and so people
became comfortable with that, yet those schools would not compare
with the white schools, Michael House and others, you know.
Those schools had sports facilities; they had everything, you
know, that a school should have. A lot of the Indian schools
hardly had good playing grounds, you know, good sport facilities.
They didn’t have all those things but they were comfortable
with it because it was better than what they had and then they
had a slightly higher status than the African community had,
so today when things have changed they are unable to see, you
know, what, and also the fact that they put them in this ghetto
together, with restricting their movement into African areas,
so many Indians have no idea how African people live. They don’t
know and they don’t know what African people suffer. We
had that experience because we worked in Inanda, I went to African
homes, I sat with them, I even lived there in African, you know,
wood and iron houses at times when, you know, we had to go,
so we slept in those houses, and that is what activism means,
that you know exactly what people are suffering and that is
the reason why we fought against the tri-cameral system because
it was dividing us, it wasn’t uniting the community and
the result of that is the fact that the people voted for the
National Party, that’s my, you know, what does one say,
assessment of the situation, and the way people elect, ya. And
it’s moving, slowly people are beginning to realize that
this is not the right way.
VR: So at that stage, tell me, how did you banning orders affect
you activism?
EG: Well I moved in, because I was a social worker, and I went
in the child welfare car, so I was able to go many places which
other people wouldn’t have been able to go to. As a social
worker, I visited the rural areas of Inanda and so on. I worked
there, I changed, you know, at that time social work was also
segregated but at Verulam Child Welfare, where I was working
and I had a lot of co-operation from the Child Welfare itself
as well. I was able to reach out to the African community to
work in Amoutana, in Amouti, I visited the places, I worked
with the people there, and we reached out from the Child Welfare
and did work there, you know, so we said that this is not an
Indian child welfare. In those days, so we laid the foundation
for transformation unlike other agencies, you know, so I think
I had that, you know, experience. So the banning orders in themselves
didn’t prevent me from going there. Fortunately, my banning
was in the district of Inanda and Inanda had a large African
population and a large Indian population, so I was able to work
in those areas. When the Indian people were moved from Springfield
flats to Phoenix, I was the first social worker in that area
and I worked with all those people there.
VR: So inadvertently they did you a favour, didn’t they?
EG: No, they didn’t do me a favour (laughs), because if
they hadn’t banned me I would have been able to go throughout
the country which would have been better because then I would
have been able to do more work.
VR: You made the transition from the overt work you were doing
to underground work, and were you involved in the underground?
EG: Well, no I wasn’t involved directly in the underground,
in the sense that I didn’t actually distribute anything,
get anything or contact people outside or anything like that,
but I worked closely with people who were in the underground
so I would, you know, simple things like, there were a whole
lot of people who had come into the country and looking for
accommodation, just for the night. I put them up at home and
then they went, you know, in those days we didn’t ask
names or anything because it was safer not to know, but they
came, they stayed, and then they went on their way. Little things
like that, you know, we used to get a lot of leaflets from overseas,
we used to get the Sechaba and documents and so on, we read
them, we passed them on and those kinds of things.
VR: How did all this impact on your family life and the children?
EG: Earlier you asked me if they did us a favour by banning
us, the one thing that did happen, is that you know a lot of
people spend a lot of time socializing, we had no social life
whatsoever, so we spent all our time in politics or in organising
in activism and so my children grew in that, they participated,
for them there was no social life besides the life that we had
in the political activism. We used to run camps, as you may
remember yourself, you were one of those who came to our work
camps at Phoenix, where we sat and we discussed various issues,
Black Consciousness, amongst other things, the Freedom Charter
and our education system and many other very important topics,
we had discussions on those, but at the same time we also worked.
There was a flood, I am not sure whether you were there at that
time, in the neighbouring community and we helped people rebuild
their houses and that gave us an opportunity of, you know, interacting
with the neighboring communities in Phoenix and my children
were a part of it all. They also associated with the students,
played with them, everyone came in, they had meals together
and so on. So the children became politicized, became activists,
themselves. My daughter, when the schools went out, my daughter
was in primary school; and it was the only primary school that
also went out with all the high schools in the area. She went
around from class to class and told the children why it was
important for them to come out of the classrooms, so at an early
age she had already learnt about, you know, what was happening
in the country, what actions were being taken, why they were
being taken. But during the time when we were banned, what we
missed out on were the activist forums, we had a lot of activist
forums where people came and had discussions, they would go
out, they would visit communities, they would do a little survey
on how people felt about the move from Springfield Flats to
Phoenix, for instance, or if there was a rent hike or something,
how did they feel about it, they would do a survey of that and
then they would all meet together and analyse and discuss, what
do you think, you know, how do you think we could take this
forward, what action would you feel would be justified, would
be supported by the people and would get, you know, the reaction
from the authorities and so on and what gains would we make
on a political level? So these were discussions that were held
after the surveys were taken and they were very important discussions
because you then begin to analyse, actually learn politics in
that way, how to apply political principles to these real issues
you know of the people, and that we missed out on, because we
couldn’t attend many of those activist forums, but people
came and reported back to us you know and that was a really
good thing because we really valued the fact that people came
and the fact that people discussed the issues with us, they
didn’t leave us out of things. We didn’t, we never
felt isolated because of that.
VR: At that time, and after that, who were your role models
in terms of the struggle against apartheid?
EG: In the early days Chief Luthuli was a very strong role model
for me; he was, and of course, my grandfather Gandhi was a strong
role model as well. Also, you know Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu,
Govan Mbeki, were strong role models. My father himself was
a model for me, a role model. Monty Naicker, Yusaf Dadoo.
VR: What was the atmosphere like then? Was there a sense of
hope? How did you feel at that time, in those very dark years?
EG: The really dark years when we felt complete disillusionment
were the 60’s, soon after the bannings, you know. The
bannings took place in 63, the arrests took place within 3 years,
they had, you know, uncovered this, and there was a deep sort
of gloom and unhappiness. There was a lot of fear in the community,
people, people you know sort of began to be afraid of people
like for instance Ismail Meer, or you know Dr Randeree and other
people, MD Naidoo because they felt that you know there was
this whole scare for communism and it was a very orchestrated
thing from the government , so you found this you know fear
in the community that, you know, we will be implicated, we won’t
be allowed to continue to study, we wouldn’t, as other
people were for banning orders because, you see, why people
were so afraid was because they never gave reasons. They could
detain you without any reason, they could ban you without any
reason, so people were afraid, they didn’t know what was
legal and what was illegal but that fear of being banned or
being arrested was there because of the uncertainty and so there
was a lot of gloom in those days, until I think the student
movement started you know and I remember that there were meetings
at…
VR: This was when, Ela?
EG: This was in the ‘60’s, late sixties, ‘68,
‘69, period ’70, when the students decided, there
was this breakaway between NUSAS and the South African Students
Organisation. The NUSAS students were active in their own way.
The South African Students Organisation was active in its own
way, and those were the meetings that were active you know,
that brought some spirit into the people, that there was something
going on. In the community you didn’t see that, you know
there was fear in the community, there was apathy in the community,
our old leaders were all listed or house arrested or in detention,
so they didn’t come out and we were like a community without
leaders, until you know the revival of NIC, the revival of the
Black Consciousness Movement, BC, BPC, I think it was and that
brought people back into the organisation, the release Mandela
committees, but even then, you know, the action wasn’t
and then the trade union work, you know, that people were doing.
There were little bits of things, pockets of work carrying on
all over the show, but nothing co-ordinated until the UDF, you
know. The UDF brought all these bodies together, and that was
really a show of what we really were you know, because we had
our organisations all over and they were able to come together
so quickly, within the UDF. If we didn’t have those little
organisations we wouldn’t have been able to mobilize the
UDF.
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