Op-eds

Pravin Gordhan was filled with compassion and took on the pain of the oppressed as his own (Part One)

16 Sep 2024

Gordhan was a formidable analyst. I learnt from his political understanding and gained a better appreciation of what was entailed in building structures on the ground, which I would be involved in during the UDF period.

Part One of a two-part series.

This article is a contribution to the understanding of Pravin Gordhan. It also attempts, albeit in a limited way, to locate him in the context of the struggles from the 1970s onwards. My hope is that this will encourage others to read about, study and recover parts of that history well beyond what I relate or know.

Makhudu Sefara captures some of the characteristics of Gordhan that have been inadequately covered in the tributes that I have read, even though many have been fine works. During a lengthy water outage in 2015, Gordhan as the minister for local government “descended on the city. He told… the political leadership… it was not enough to simply issue statements explaining the challenges.

“Gordhan said they should be on the ground when the sun rises, helping the elderly and the infirm struggling to carry water from tankers. They should be checking, at sunset, that the tankers arrive on time and in good condition for those who need water on their return from the office. The people on the ground must feel their presence. The media must find the politicians already connecting with affected communities.

“His talk was tough… He was quite clear that even as the engineers were working to ensure water reached the people, ANC leaders and the government it led must be on the ground, interacting, sharing information, commiserating and clearing confusion. His passion to help distressed ordinary people was unquestionable.”

Remembering Gordhan in diverse ways

As I write, there is an outpouring of grief over the death of Gordhan. That is not to say that this sentiment is unanimous. Some of those who attacked him in life are also attacking him in death, mainly on social media.

I first met Gordhan when I emerged from prison in May 1983. Very shortly after my release I travelled, with about 15 others, to somewhere more or less halfway between Johannesburg and Durban to a meeting of about 30 people. All were Africans and Indians, apart from me.

I had already met some other comrades on the day of my release or shortly thereafter — Ismail Momoniat, Secretary of the Transvaal Indian Congress; Tiego Moseneke (who died tragically in a car accident a few months ago), then chairperson of the Wits Black Student Society; and Firoz Cachalia, then in the Transvaal Indian Congress and now an academic. They came to the women’s residence, Jubilee Hall, where my mother, Sheila Suttner, who had been active in support of me and other prisoners, was then the dean.

In this Transvaal/Natal meeting, I started to become acquainted with what had been happening in the period that I had been in jail.

I had never worked with any people illegally. I had gone straight from being a liberal to working underground, primarily on my own in Durban and Pietermaritzburg. This was my first meeting with comrades in illegal or semi-legal activities.

Ambiguous legality and organisation in African areas

There was always an ambiguity in the politics of this period, where we professed to pursue legal activities, but had a range of links with people who were probably working for the underground or carried messages from the “outside” (the ANC/SACP in Lusaka or London) or wanted to join Umkhonto weSizwe. One had to be careful with many of these approaches not to fall into a trap and go straight back to jail.

The main theme of the gathering was the strength of the Indian congresses, especially the Natal Indian Congress and the weakness of political organisation and activities in the African areas. The word “structures” was used a lot, something that had not arisen in my illegal activities, mostly alone, or what I had done as a liberal.

A constant refrain was the necessity to ensure the recovery of the African areas (that had, of course borne the brunt of apartheid repression) and the leadership that Africans had to give in the Struggle, which was for the liberation of all oppressed people, but primarily that of the most oppressed, the African people.

I think this is very important, a very important memory that the meeting referred to the strength of the Indian Congresses as not being right insofar as the African areas remained organisationally weak. This seemed to be why the meeting had been called — its core business.

It goes to the heart of the falsity of the slandering of Pravin Gordhan, Yunus Mohamed (“YM”, who was inseparable from Pravin and at the forefront of building structures while being a “Struggle lawyer”) and other Indian Congress comrades who were building organisation in several different sites and were as concerned as African comrades about rebuilding the structures or building them afresh.

In the African townships in the period that unfolded between 1983 and 1990 these areas where organisation was revived or developed provided the leadership of the United Democratic Front.

Tricameral boycott and Bantustans

The key basis for developing this resistance and unity between all black people (Africans, coloureds and Indians) was the apartheid regime’s constitutional developments that intended to entrench Bantustan “states” for Africans and separate legislatures for Indians and coloured people.

The birth of the United Democratic Front made defeating these initiatives foundational, and the Natal Indian Congress and Transvaal Indian Congress were heavily involved in ensuring that the poll for the tricameral legislatures and African local government was miniscule, despite heavy violence being unleashed against their activists.

It wasn’t very long after this meeting, about a year later, that the Vaal and other areas exploded. This warfare between the regime and the people continued in different places — despite arrests, trials and assassinations right up to 1990, passing through levels of “ungovernability”, people’s power and insurrection.

Erasure and revival of the Congress movement

When I engaged initially with Gordhan in the 1980s (together with people like Billy Nair, one of the great revolutionaries of our time, YM and the Transvaal Indian Congress) it was, as indicated, the period of the United Democratic Front. The apartheid regime had done everything it could to erase any evidence of the existence of the ANC and its allies. A generation emerged, many of whom had no memory of the ANC and SACP that had been banned in 1960 and 1950 respectively.

That initiation of the United Democratic Front was the moment of rebirth, the recovery of the Congress movement — of its symbolic character, but also the teachings of the period, the documents that were revered secretly, like the Freedom Charter, which was never actually banned, but was treated as a subversive document by the state.

Gordhan as an analyst from whom I learnt

When we talked, what impressed me with Gordhan was his analytical powers. He was primarily seen as a person who was especially skilled in building structures, building organisation, preparing and training people, and that was something that I would have to do when I became the ANC’s head of political education in 1990.

But Gordhan was a formidable analyst, although my sense is that when I spoke to him he did not, in that period, have an interest in, or time for, writing. What I gained from our interactions is that Gordhan would stimulate my thinking, and the ideas that came out of our engagement would become my articles (not his), and he may not have even noticed this happening despite my acknowledging — to him — my debt.

I learnt from his political understanding and gained a better appreciation of what was entailed in building the structures on the ground that I would be involved in during the United Democratic Front period, one of the reasons given for my detention during the states of emergency.

But it was something that was subordinate to my ideological role, although the two had to be connected. It would again be the teachings of Gordhan, insofar as I absorbed them in a comradely, friendly way, that became important for my activities in the periods that followed. DM

This article first appeared on Creamer Media’s polity.org.za

Raymond Suttner is an Emeritus Professor at the University of South Africa and a Research Associate in the English Department at the University of the Witwatersrand. He served lengthy periods as a political prisoner. His writings cover contemporary politics, history, and social questions. His X (twitter) handle is @raymondsuttner.

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