Revolutionary Patriot and Internationalist MP Naicker Passes On
On 29 April 1977, Marimuthu Pragalathan Naicker, fondly known as “MP”, passed on at the age of 56 from a suspected heart failure en route on a flight from London to Berlin. MP Naicker was a journalist, an anti-apartheid revolutionary patriot, an organiser, a devout internationalist, and Director of Publicity of the African National Congress (ANC) External Mission. At the time of his death Naicker was also a journalist and editor for the ANC’s official journal, ‘Sechaba’, and he died while on a mission on behalf of the liberation struggle abroad.
MP Naicker was born on 28 July 1920 in Durban into a working-class family of Indian descent and had to leave primary school to work in a factory, and although his family was poor he managed to complete high school. He began working as a truck driver then was employed as a full-time union organiser in Natal, organising among sugar plantation workers. He rose to become secretary of the Natal Sugar Workers’ Union and was a member of the Natal Indian Congress (NIC). At age 18, Naicker joined the South African Communist Party (SACP), after being exposed to the Marxist classics.
In 1944, Naicker joined the Anti-Segregation Council, which was founded to pursue mass mobilisation against Indian segregation, with his cousin, Monty Naicker, being the founding chairperson. In 1945, Naicker was among those in the Anti-Segregation Council who succeeded in ousting t
