Kathrada remembers Passive Resistance
Struggle stalwart Ahmed Kathrada visited Resistance Park in Durban to mark the 70th anniversary of the 1946 Passive Resistance Campaign.
|||Durban - Struggle stalwart Ahmed Kathrada visited Resistance Park, in Umbilo Road, Durban, on Friday morning to mark the 70th anniversary of the 1946 Passive Resistance Campaign.
The park was where leaders of the Natal Indian Congress, Dr Monty Naicker and Dr Yusuf Dadoo, launched the campaign against the Ghetto Act of 1946, which restricted Indian ownership of property.
Later on Friday, Kathrada was expected to receive an honorary doctorate from the Durban University of Technology.
At the park, eThekwini’s Eric Apelgren told Kathrada that the park, which has fallen into a state of disrepair, would be upgraded.
Apelgren, head of the municipality’s international and governance relations unit, said the city planned to raise R5 million for this, with the community involved in the project. A “storyteller” would be introduced at the park and it would be made into a tourist stop, he said.
Apelgren promised this would be done by the time Kathrada next visited. Kathrada laughed when someone told him to “watch his step and hold his nose”.
He told media what mattered was the story, not the aesthetics.
“Whether it is a stone or open ground, what matters is the story.” He recounted the events surrounding the campaign in detail.
In February, the Daily News reported that the historic Durban anti-apartheid site - opened by Nelson Mandela in 2002 - had fallen into a shocking state of disrepair, with fingers being pointed at the eThekwini Municipality for allowing it to be overrun by drug addicts and vandals.
It was recently earmarked to be part of the South African National Heritage Council’s “liberation heritage route” in Durban to honour the people and places in the city that paved the way for democracy.
More than a month later, the city had done nothing to improve the conditions there.
Nicole Graham, the DA ward councillor for the area, said she had been battling with the city for years to maintain the park.
bernadette.wolhuter@inl.co.za
Daily News