Life lessons learnt from Phyllis Naidoo
Every year the University of KwaZulu-Natal pays tribute to former anti-apartheid activist, teacher, lawyer and author, Dr Phyllis Naidoo, who left a legacy by writing and publishing numerous books that recorded the Struggle history and her respective contributions.
This yea's memorial lecture, which was held last week, was themed celebrating 30 years of democracy.
Commissioner Tshepo Madlingozi of the South African Human Rights Commission was the keynote speaker, tasked with the responsibility of educating others on Naidoo’s contribution to society with his delivery.
Madlingozi said the theme of 30 years of democracy was significant and fitting to emphasise the life of Naidoo and her views on freedom.
“Dr Naidoo serves as a lesson on where we are and where we need to go. We need to celebrate that we have come so far as a country in the past 30 years. Those who know Dr Naidoo, know that she will want us to not only celebrate but also commemorate and use the 30 years to reflect on where we are while asking the hard questions on how far we are in the journey of democracy.”
Madlingozi said that there were two problems post-apartheid South Africa faced presently; dehumanisation and social disharmony.
Madlingozi used Naidoo’s vision of togetherness as a structure to argue the two issues especially in respect of the 2021 July unrest that left 350 people dead. He emphasised that the conditions which lead to the 2021 unrest continued to remain or even a repeat of the violence, unless changes were made.
“As a country we have swept these two problems under the carpet, Dr Naidoo confronted many of these issues in her books. KwaZulu-Natal universities saw the greatest freedom movements of dehumanisation, that highlighted black consciousness, which at the time meant anyone of colour,” said Madlingozi.
He said there were many lessons South Africans could learn from the life of Naidoo, especially in the way she did politics.
“In 1928, at the peak of colonisation, Dr Naidoo prefigured in her work this notion of how do we build beloved communities and we saw this with her work with ex-prisoners in the context of her giving them jobs, including former president Jacob Zuma. This exposed her to great risk by welcoming everyone, just to create a beloved community.
“She was a social worker, a teacher, a lawyer and a true activist. She was a revolutionary and an activist scholar, set on activating consciousness. But above all, she was a mother activist, there was a quality of her being a mother that stands out for everyone,” said Madlingozi.
Naidoo was known for attempts to remedy the problems of the past, one of them being the dehumanising black people.
“The first thing she did was de-crediting the official colonial account of what happened and then engaging and dismantling those colonial and neo-colonial accounts,” said Madlingozi.
During the 1982 Maseru Massacre, Naidoo was known for narrating great details of what happened, right down to naming the family dog.
“She went on to show that this attack was not a success but if anything, a catastrophe and this shows us to discredit, ridicule and counter the colonisers’ account. She does not only refuse their concepts and epistemology held by the colonisers but she also sought to show that it was actually the colonists who are not human beings,” said Madlingozi.
He concluded with the three life lessons to learn from Naidoo, which were decolonisation, doing politics with ubuntu and that there should be no excuse to refrain from creating a beloved community.
Kiru Naidoo, who serves on the Advisory Board of the Gandhi-Luthuli Documentation Centre, said Naidoo’s legacy was extraordinary and her documentation of the Struggle serves as education to all.
“Phyllis Naidoo told the stories of ordinary people in the struggle for South African freedom. She carefully documented the most minute details preserving seemingly unimportant pieces of paper from Robben Island ferry tickets to receipts for peanuts and apples destined for political detainees.
“Cumulatively those items pieced together a jigsaw that enables present day researchers to connect the dots among vast historic occurrences. Her collection of documents, letters and artefacts is one of the most extraordinary assemblages at the Gandhi-Luthuli Documentation Centre at UKZN.
“The bulk of her thousands of books were sent off to libraries in Cuba during her lifetime - a task that I was deeply honoured to assist with even though those heavy boxes left me with a bad back. The annual lecture in her memory is a small way to cherish her legacy as an outstanding freedom fighter,” said Kiru Naidoo.
