SACP Announces the Death of Chairman Yusuf Dadoo

SACP Announces the Death of Chairman Yusuf Dadoo

On the morning of 20 September 1983, the South African Communist Party (SACP) announced the passing on of its Chairman and political activist, Dr Yusuf Mohomed Dadoo, who died on 19 September 1983, after having lapsed into a coma. The African National Congress (ANC) and SACP held a short ceremony where the ANC President, Oliver Tambo spoke. Dadoo was laid to rest according to Muslim rights at Highgate Cemetery, a few metres away from the grave of Karl Marx. He and others, like P.S. Joshi, were inspired by the growing nationalist movement in India, and in particular the growing resistance to the British in Gujarat State.

In June 1955, at the historic Congress of the People, Dadoo, Inkosi Albert Luthuli and Father Trevor Huddleston were awarded the traditional African decoration of Isitwalandwe/Seaparankoe. As a result of their banning orders only Huddleston was able to attend the award ceremony, and Dadoo’s award was accepted on his behalf by his mother. The word “Isitwalandwe” means “the one who wears the plumes of the rare bird”, and the honour was traditionally bestowed on those brave warriors who had distinguished themselves in the eyes of all the people for exceptional qualities of leadership and heroism.

Following this, in 1957, Dadoo was banned from attending gatherings for a further five years, and in 1959 he was arrested at Howick, Natal, under outdated immigration laws which banned the movement of Indians from province to province without official permission. Dr Dadoo played an outstanding role in the South African liberation movement for over half a century – in persuading the Indian community to link its destiny with that of the African majority; in building the unity of all the oppressed people and democratic whites of that country in a common struggle against racism; in promoting fearless and militant resistance to the oppressors; and in developing the international outlook of the movement and international solidarity with it.

He led the non-violent Indian passive resistance movement – uniting Hindu, Muslim, Tamil and Gujerati speaking people, as well as Gandhians, Marxists and others in the fight for the rights of the Indian people in South Africa. He was a founder and leader of the Non-European United Front and of the Communist Party when it was revived as a clandestine organisation. And since going into exile in 1960, he played a key role in promoting the underground, the armed struggle and a world-wide anti-apartheid movement.

Dadoo had dedicated his adult life to the struggle for the liberation of the nationally oppressed Blacks in South Africa. Since 1937, when he came back to South Africa from studying in Britain, he was involved in all the struggles of the South African people. He gave form and content to the politics of the then reformist Transvaal Indian Congress (TIC) and later became the President of the South African Indian Congress (SAIC). He also joined the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA) and functioned in its leading organs. After the death of Uncle J.B. Marks, he became the SACP’s National Chairman.

One of his greatest merits, was the role he played in bringing the Indian community closer to the Africans – no easy task those days – and this found expression in the Xuma-Naicker-Dadoo Pact of 1947 (a pact of the ANC President-General, Natal and Transvaal Indian Congress Presidents), colloquially known as the “Doctors’ Pact”. This was not just a pact of the leaders but unity in action of the oppressed which found expression in the joint struggles of the 1950s (African, Coloured and Indian), especially the 1952 Defiance Campaign, and the adoption by all oppressed and by the democratic Whites of the Freedom Charter.

The climax of these early endeavours was the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK – the armed wing of the ANC) in 1961 and the Morogoro Conference which cemented on a higher level the unity of the oppressed. The Morogoro Conference which declared that all South Africans – irrespective of their “racial” origin can join the ANC – symbolised the far-sightedness of all genuine South African revolutionaries. Dadoo had as Vice-Chairman of the Revolutionary Council (RC) for fourteen years and was at the time of his death one of the Vice-Chairmen of the Politico-Military Council (PMC). During these fourteen years he had also been serving as Chairman of the SACP.

As a high office-bearer in both the ANC and the SACP, Dadoo exemplified the close and long-standing alliance between these two entities. Moreover, his character, and the story of his life and the political role he played symbolised, in the widest sense, the unity of aims and ideals among progressive forces both within South Africa and across the borders of nations throughout the world. Dadoo saw the need for the widest possible unity in the struggle for liberation of the oppressed people, and was convinced that, in their struggle, the Indian people should work in close co-operation with the organisations of other national groups.

“And so”, according to ANC President Oliver Tambo in his funeral address, “he worked tirelessly to get the Indian people to see the solution to their own problems within the context of a broader national struggle, involving Africans, so-called Coloured, and progressive Whites”. In Yusuf Dadoo’s vision of the struggle for freedom, all oppressed and progressive people were united, not only in South Africa, but throughout the world. “As a true patriot,” Tambo averred, “Dadoo understood already in the thirties that the struggle in South Africa is part of a much wider struggle against capitalism, colonialism and for national liberation, peace and social progress”. Proletarian internationalism was the cornerstone of Dadoo’s political life.

After the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, when the ANC had been banned and the racist regime had declared a state of emergency in South Africa, the Communist Party sent Dadoo overseas, alongside the ANC’s Oliver Tambo, to organise and external apparatus and solidarity work. This was when his international work began in earnest. During the rest of his life, he led many delegations of the SACP to different parts of the world, and on his seventieth birthday his work was recognised in the honours given to him – the Order of Dimitrov by Bulgaria, the Order of Karl Marx by the German Democratic Republic, the Order of the Friendship of the Peoples by the Soviet Union, the Gold Medal of the Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Organisation, the Scroll of Honour of the World Peace Council, the Decoration of the Hungarian Peace Movement, and the Wielki Proletariat from Poland.

Dadoo was a theorist, clear-thinking and incisive; a far-sighted planner and an organiser in the freedom struggle, but he was also a participant in that struggle, and a brave fighter. He was one of the first to be imprisoned in the Passive Resistance Campaign against the anti-Indian laws of the Smuts government in 1946. In the same year he was arrested, together with Bram Fischer and other leaders of the Communist Party, on a charge of sedition for organising the strike of African mine workers. In the Defiance Campaign of 1952, which he helped to plan, he was once again one of the first to be arrested and imprisoned, when he attended a public meeting, thereby defying the ban the regime had imposed on him.

During the last months of his debilitating illness, his courage did not fail, and he did not give up. ANC comrades in London remembered his presence at the day-long annual general meeting of the London branch early in 1983; those who were at the demonstration in Trafalgar Square at the time of the hanging of the three soldiers of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) will remember Dadoo standing among the comrades with his wife, Winnie, who was also in poor health at the time. One morning, he angrily telephoned BBC radio’s Today programme in Britain, expressing his indignation at Richard Attenborough’s plan to show the film, “Gandhi”, to white audiences in South Africa.

On his deathbed, Dadoo said to the comrades gathered around him, “You must never give up. You must fight to the end.” Accordingly, at his funeral, President Tambo said of him, “He died spear in hand, like a true warrior. … Loved and admired throughout our movement, Doc – as he was popularly known – combined the best qualities of a revolutionary patriot and dynamic leader … He was one of the foremost national leaders of our country, of the stature of Chief Luthuli, Moses Kotane, JB Marks, Bram Fischer, Nelson Mandela and others … it would be wrong to see him only in the context of political giants, for Doc was at home with the younger generation … This accessibility flowed from his friendly nature and simple disposition …”

“At this moment” Tambo continued, “when the regime seeks to divide our people with its ploy of a tripartite parliament, it is fitting to recall Comrade Dadoo’s precious legacy of his own words: ‘the lesson of our history is that the key to freedom is a united people, fighting for a single common goal – people’s power over every inch of indivisible South Africa. While deriving inspiration from the deeds and traditions of the past resistance, we must deepen the unifying national consciousness of all our people … which is a prerequisite for a nationwide uprising and victory along the lines of the Freedom Charter.’ We assure you, Comrade Yusuf, the struggle will go on. Victory shall be ours. This grievous occasion brings us together less to mourn your tragic departure than to close ranks and advance, united, to the completion of your unfinished task.”

Moses Mabhida, General Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP), in his address, said, “He never relented in the fight for the alliance of the oppressed people … He was a man who never lived above any other person. He never defied the word of his organisation … In his humility, Dr Dadoo was a real servant of the people … Yusuf was the man of his people. He was the man of the world. Yusuf was living in the future of a united people, of a struggle against capitalism … Our Party, our people, would like to say in this last minute with our brother: He has travelled seventy-four years, but that is not what we are counting. He is leaving that glorious legacy, the legacy of revolutionaries the legacy of fighters.”

For Mabhida, Dadoo “did not die with his strength, maybe like all old fighters. He said his strength, his spear, must be left with those who are still continuing to fight. And for us, for everyone of us, we must take up his challenge.” It is these qualities that should be celebrated about Dadoo, his fearlessness, courage, determination, non-racialism, unity in action and internationalism. These are qualities that had come to characterise the National Liberation Movement as led by the ANC and should inspire the younger generations. The racist regime feared him, even in death, as an opponent, for it banned a commemorative meeting in Lenasia, that had been planned in his honour.

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South African History Online (SAHO).
Editorial, “Hamba Kahle, Comrade Yusuf!”, Sechaba, November 1983.
Editorial Notes, “Death of Dr Yusuf Mohamed Dadoo, National Chairman of the South African Communist Party”, The African Communist, No. 96, First Quarter 1984.
Vladimir Shubin, “ANC: A View from Moscow”, Jacana, 2008.
Luli Callinicos, “Oliver Tambo: Beyond the Engeli Mountains”, David Philip, 2004.

Castro Khwela
Good day fellow Compatriots!