DailyNews.gif SACP, TIC, Umkhonto we Sizwe and ANC veteran Shirish Nanabhai 1 March 1938 – 2 April 2016 Daily News, Durban, 6 April 2016 Shirish Nanabhai was born one of eight siblings on March 1, 1938, in Fordsburg. Jasmath Nanabhai, Shirish’s father, was from a village in Gujarat, India, and immigrated to South Africa after the turn of the last century. In a way, it was inevitable that Shirish would get involved in politics because Jasmath was active during his youth in the Indian National Congress, which had fought against British rule in India. Jasmath inculcated the spirit of revolution in his children. “I remember my father telling me how they would use empty coconut shells to create petrol bombs," Shirish recalled. "Not only did the shells make excellent receptacles, they were easily camouflaged because coconuts are widely used by Hindus for religious rituals.” Upon arrival in South Africa, Jasmath settled in Boksburg and was employed as a “duster boy” by a silk merchant. While his duties were merely to ensure the silk was kept clean and dusted, his business acumen led him to learn the trade and become a buyer for the company. By the time Shirish was born, the family had moved to a flat in Fordsburg, near to the famous “Red Square”– the site on which the Oriental Plaza was later built. This was an open space that served as a venue for public meetings and an important rallying point for the movement. Red Square Red Square was also the site of Shirish’s first arrest in 1955 at the age of 17, for chalking a political symbol on a wall in the square. “I was kept for two hours, given a smack and told to go home,” he said. While a lenient punishment, this first experience of the state’s response to dissent would make real his father's refrain that political activism, however noble and just, carried consequences one should be prepared to bear. Shirish joined the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress (TIYC) when he was a teenager in the mid-1950s. He remembers a social trip to Cape Town in 1955 with Moosa “Mosie” Moolla, Suliman “Solly” Essakjee, Farid Adams, Indres Naidoo, and Peter Joseph. He also remembered with great fondness serving soup with his comrades to delegates to the Congress of the People in 1955. He was elected to the executive of the TIYC in 1956. In 1957, he spent a year in London studying at the College of Aeronautical Engineering and returned a year later. He then immersed himself in political work, distributing leaflets and putting up posters for political campaigns. His task was to be short-lived as he was detained at the Fort, where the Constitutional Court is now, a month after a State of Emergency was declared in 1960. He would spend several months in isolation, confined to a cell where the screams of prisoners being whipped were his only companionship. Joe Matthews Shirish remembered driving Joe Matthews – a leading member of the ANC and SACP at the time – with Suliman “Babla” Saloojee to the Bechuanaland border to help get Matthews out of the country in the early 1960s. Reggie Vandeyar approached Shirish in December 1962 to become a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). He received basic training in explosives and was instructed to scout for potential targets. During this same period, he held a job as a clerk at a clothing and general merchandise store in Joburg. During lunchtimes, he would engage in political activity to plan operations with members of his unit. “One afternoon, I returned to the shop after a protest was held on the City Hall steps. During a confrontation, I managed to get a blue eye. When I returned to work, the owner of the company noticed it and brought me a piece of steak to reduce the swelling.” Vandeyar, Naidoo and Nanabhai Just five months after he joined MK, he was arrested with his unit leader Vandeyar and comrade Naidoo. They were caught in the act of planting and detonating explosives at a railway signal box in Riverlea – the fourth in a string of targets. They appeared in court within 48 hours, were advised to plead guilty by their legal representative, Dr George Lowen QC, and then each sentenced to 10 years in prison. These were the first three members of Indian origin to be arrested for MK activities in the Transvaal. The men were first moved to Leeuwkop Prison on the outskirts of Joburg. On arrival, a wing of the prison had been emptied and dedicated to this small group of “dangerous terrorists”. Shirish would later comment with amusement on a massive show of force that the worried prison authorities used to cow the three young men on arrival and the surprise expressed when the “terrorists” turned out to be so human and ordinary. Prisoners were never allowed to wear shoes, even when working in the quarry, and were made to run around a courtyard to dry off after brief, cold showers. Here they would later meet up with ANC leader Joe Gqabi and other political prisoners, which gave them a sense of solidarity and comradeship. In December 1963, Shirish and 70 other prisoners were transferred by truck to Robben Island. This 1 600km drive crammed in the back of a truck was an extreme experience but Shirish, with his ever-twinkling eye, would also speak of overnighting at the police station in the small town of Richmond. Here, the police had rushed to accommodate the large numbers of prisoners in their tiny jail, having local people bake bread for them and fashion extra coffee mugs out of oil cans from a nearby garage. Robben Island At Robben Island, the prisoners were housed in communal cells, essentially a hall with blankets and reed mats on the floor. Here they would share cold showers, a single toilet and zero privacy. The pointless and brutal manual labour from Leeuwkop intensified there. Life on the island was occupied by efforts to subvert the status quo, not least to gather information. Trips to the quarry were opportunities to try to steal away for a short time to send messages and collect or distribute goods. Efforts were even made to plan an escape and a trench was dug for the purpose (though it was abandoned due to the difficulties posed by the ocean itself). After a long struggle with the authorities, the prisoners started sports clubs in the prison. This was something that was particularly important to Shirish’s memories of the place and he served on the prisoners’ football committee from then on. They cleared and prepared an area for a football pitch and tricked the authorities into providing resources needed for the work. Shirish was eventually released in 1973. He was immediately banned and put under house arrest in Fordsburg, compelled to report once a week at the Fordsburg police station. He took every opportunity to flout this banning order with great pride, getting local children to warn him when the police were coming to check on him. He would even arrange to meet comrades under the auspices of visiting a particular Hindu temple and then simply sneaking out. It was during this period that he met and began courting Rajula, a childhood friend, for whom he would also gladly break his house arrest conditions. They married in 1978 and moved to Lenasia. After the expiry of his first banning order and house arrest, he was banned for a further two years without house arrest. During this time, he was expected to report regularly to the John Vorster Square police station in the centre of town, near to his place of work. Jenkins, Lee and Moumbaris At the end of 1979, activists Tim Jenkins, Steven Lee and Alex Moumbaris escaped from Pretoria Central Prison in a daring operation. Immediately on release, Shirish was called upon to provide a hiding place for Lee, while arrangements were made to get him out of the country. He stashed him in an unused upstairs room of the shop where he had worked, overlooked, just a few hundred metres away, by John Vorster Square and the security police. Lee escaped the country days later. Later, again detained, Shirish was brutally beaten and tortured with electric shocks, but had the presence of mind and consciousness to carefully hide the burn marks from his police guards. They allowed him access to the police doctor once his bruises had healed, thinking there was no evidence of his torture. Shirish immediately showed the doctor, and subsequently his lawyers, the marks, and they in turn used this to have part of the charges against him dropped. This left him with a shortened sentence of one year for his second stint in prison. Rajula was not political, but became active in the Detainees Parents Support Committee during this period. In recognition of his sacrifices and his immense contribution to the creation of a democratic South Africa, Shirish was awarded the National Order of Mendi in Silver for Bravery 2014. Shirish and Rajula’s child – a son, Kamal – was born in 1980. Rajula tragically died in a car accident in 1985. After that, Shirish and Kamal lived together in Lenasia. Shirish looked after Kamal and brought him up. Shirish Nanabhai passed away on Saturday, 2 April 2016 in 1 Military Hospital, Pretoria. From: <http://mini.iol.co.za/dailynews/opinion/brave-freedom-fighter-s-example-no-less-inspiring-today-2005530?page=1> http://mini.iol.co.za/dailynews/opinion/brave-freedom-fighter-s-example-no-less-inspiring-today-2005530?page=1 -- -- 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]. 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