Morning Star.png Indres Naidoo 1936 - 2016 Dominic Tweedie, The Morning Star, London, 8 January 2016 Indres Naidoo, a hero of the South African liberation struggle, passed away on the evening of Sunday January 3, aged 79. Indres was a stalwart of the stalwarts. All sorts of comrades will tell you so. It's what you find when Indres is mentioned. He was loved. He was a reference point. People forget how long the freedom struggle took. They forget that most of the time, and for years at a time, supporters of "the movement" were isolated and burdened with the need to make a living, attend to children, and just generally get by in life. 05 Mac Maharj Indres Naidoo London.jpg Mac Maharaj and Indres Naidoo at the Morning Star building, Farringdon Road, London, 1977 Indres was not an ordinary comrade. He burned like a fire. He warmed other comrades. No matter how mundane life became, or how arrogantly the apartheid regime taunted us, there were a few comrades who you knew were relentless. Indres was one of them. These were the kind that kept the struggle alive. Indres was not the most brilliant "analyst." Others were better than him in that department. Indres was not the most talented orator, although you would not forget his sincerity in a hurry. But Indres was solid. If you would want to think of a completely reliable, unshakeable comrade, come rain or shine, Indres would be one of the first to come to mind, and we needed that. He served the movement from the 1950s onwards. Soon after his father Naran "Roy" Naidoo died in 1953, Indres was drawn in to the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress. In due course, he became the joint secretary of that body, together with Issy Dinat, who became Indres's brother-in-law. Issy married Indres's sister Ramnie. Sadly Dinat passed away less than a month before Indres, on December 8 2015. When Umkhonto we Sizwe (known as MK - it was the armed wing of the African National Congress) was formed on December 16 1961, these comrades were among the first to be recruited, forming one of the first two active units. Among others involved were the late Reggie Vandeyar, Shirish Nanabhai, Laloo Chiba, Paul Joseph and Abdulhay Jassat. Indres, Reggie and Shirish were caught in April 1963, tried and sentenced to 10 years on Robben Island. Shortly afterwards Jacob Zuma, sentenced to 10 years in a different MK case, found them there. They all served their sentence together in the same large cell, with many others. Indres, sometimes known as "Talker" to his friends, suffered in imprisonment. Of course, they all did, and too little is said about it. The punishment does not finish when incarceration ends. After he was released, Indres got a job and worked for a while, but eventually he had to leave the country. He had married Saeeda Vally and they were blessed with a son, Bram. Saeeda and Bram followed Indres to Mozambique where they met up again with Jacob Zuma among many other now-illustrious and well-known comrades. Indres's daughter Djanine is an architect in Maputo. Indres was sent to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to work in the ANC office there, and made a new lot of devoted friends. Indres was a communist, but like the all the best communists, he worked as easily with non-communists as he did with fellow party members. He loved people, and they responded. In the GDR, he met and later married Gabi Blankenberg, who looked after him for many years in Cape Town after he became ill. He was a good friend of Joe Slovo and after legalisation of the South African Communist Party (SACP) in 1990, worked in the SACP office in Rissik Street, Johannesburg, under the new young general secretary Chris Hani. After 1994 he became a senator, moved to Cape Town and was in parliament for a few years. Gone he may be, but his tireless struggle will echo down the generations. Dominic Tweedie is married to Indres's sister Shanthie. From: http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-9b6c-Indres-Naidoo-1936-2016#.Vo83yfl96 00 -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
