Sunday Times
*Phyllis Naidoo: fiery struggle activist* *Chris Barron, The Sunday Times, Johannesburg, 17 February 2013*Phyllis Naidoo, who has died at the age of 85, was the irrepressible, gutsy activist who was at the heart of the anti-apartheid struggle in Durban.
She was born on January 5 1928 and studied at the non-European section of Natal University in Durban. In 1957 she went to see Chief Albert Luthuli for permission to start an ANC branch on campus. He told her that the constitution only allowed for black African members. Instead, she formed a human rights committee to feed ANC activists who were banished to remote rural areas of Natal. Her friend Helen Joseph would send her names and her committee would track them down.
Her Durban flat was a regular meeting place for leaders of the struggle, most of whom she counted as friends. When Luthuli won the Nobel Peace prize in 1961, Moses Kotane, Duma Nokwe and Govan Mbeki gathered there to draft his acceptance speech.
She was teaching English at Durban Indian Girls High School at the time and when she asked whether they knew that a South African had been awarded this great honour "a deathlike silence" greeted her, she recalled. She was later fired for discussing politics with the girls.
She qualified as an attorney in 1973 but was banned and placed under house arrest. She did not have the money to set up her own practice and could not attend court because of her banning order. So she approached ANC activist Archie Gumede, also a lawyer, and they set up a partnership. He paid her R300 a month to run the office while he did the court work.
One day she got a call from PAC leader Robert Sobukwe, who wanted help with a case in the Durban courts. He was banned at the time. When she told him she was too, which meant the security police were almost certainly listening in, he dropped the phone like a hot coal.
Their partnership gave articles to a young Jeff Radebe, among other activists, and supported released prisoners from Robben Island, including Jacob Zuma, whom she employed as a messenger.
In 1976 she was one of the attorneys who represented Harry Gwala and nine others in the Pietermaritzburg treason trial.
Although Gumede was deeply religious and she an atheist, it was a successful partnership that ended in 1977 when she went into exile in Lesotho.
Natal University political scientist Rick Turner mapped her escape route. He sent her to a point where the Caledon River was at its narrowest and, he assured her, would be easy to cross. When she got there she found the banks were 5m high. She lost her footing and plunged into the icy water.
Her husband was imprisoned on Robben Island and she went over on a ferry to visit him. Once she was so angry at the way the white woman pilot flung the boat around -- trying to make them seasick -- that, when they reached the island, she grabbed the gangplank and would not relinquish it until she had established her identity and lodged a complaint with her commanding officer.
Naidoo returned from exile in Lesotho and Zimbabwe in 1990.She is survived by her daughter Sukhthi. Her son Sahdan was assassinated in 1989 and another son, Sha, died in 1995.
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