Tribute by Oliver Tambo, President of ANC, at funeral of M.P. Naicker, London, May 8, 1977
We are gathered here to pay our last respects to a man who because of his belief in the freedom of the people of his country was robbed of the citizenship of the land of his birth - South Africa...
He died whilst on a mission on behalf of our movement. Like those forces that advanced onto Berlin thirty years ago to liberate Germany, he was advancing onto Berlin in the service of our struggle to liberate South Africa and fell in battle just like any member of Umkhonto we Sizwe...
We pay our respects on behalf of the African National Congress to members of his family and assure them that the loss sustained by them is not theirs alone but equally felt by our movement in whose services he was fully dedicated. This will go down in the annals of our history...
Tribute by Dr. Yusuf M. Dadoo, Chairman of SACP, at the funeral of M.P. Naicker, London, May 8, 1977
We are gathered here to bid our last farewell to our dear Comrade M. P. - a great freedom-fighter, a dedi-cated revolutionary, a staunch internationalist, and a truly outstanding leader and organiser of the people of our country, South Africa.
The loss of M. P. will be sorely felt throughout the movement. There is no campaign in the South African struggle since the 1940's which does not bear the imprint of his valuable contribution.
Born into an Indian working class family in the harsh economic conditions of the 1920's, he was forced to leave school at an early age with a limited formal education. He worked in a factory, he drove a baker's van, he quickly learned the nature of national and class oppression. He joined the Communist Party at the age of 18, and from then on, his entire life - for the next 40 years - was to be spent in the service of the people, without regard to personal sacrifice or cost.
M. P. was responsible, together with his comrades, particularly George Ponen and the late H. A. Naidoo, for organising the Indian workers into trade unions and leading them into militant strikes. At the same time he worked assiduously to bring about cooperation and unity among all the Black workers. He was elected Secretary of Natal Sugar Workers' Union and energetically plunged into the difficult task of contacting workers in the sugar-fields.
M. P. was a key figure in the Anti-Segregation Council of the Natal Indian Congress which helped to transform the Congress into a mass organisation with a militant policy of struggle and of unity in action of all Black people.
In the 1946 Indian Passive Resistance Campaign, M. P. distinguished himself as an able and first class orga-niser and was appointed Secretary of the Passive Resist-ance Council - and subsequently became secretary of the Natal Indian Congress.
M. P.`s immense contributions and leading role in all the major campaigns and trials, such as the National Day of Protest, 1950, the Defiance Campaign, 1952, Congress of the People, 1955, the Treason Trial, 1956, the May 1961 Strike, are too numerous to enumerate here.
During his long political career he was arrested countless times and during the 1960's he was detained under the 90- and 180-day Acts.
In exile since 1966 he threw himself unflinchingly into the work of the External Mission of the African National Congress. As Director of Publicity and Editor of Sechaba, he fulfilled his duties with distinction and served the cause nobly to the end.
We remember, and history will record, his total commitment to the struggle for national liberation and socialism in South Africa. As a son of the working class, he remained loyal throughout his life to his class and its Party, the Communist Party, an uncompromising enemy of apartheid, capitalist exploitation and oppression - a South African patriot and revolutionary whose life's work was to consolidate the unity of the Black people and all revolutionaries in the freedom struggle. By his overpowering energy, clarity of thought and magnetic personality, he endeared himself to the people as a leader, guide and friend.
As an internationalist, friend of the Soviet Union and the other Socialist countries, he well understood that the unity of the Socialist world, the working class of the capitalist countries and the liberation move-ments of Africa, Asia and Latin America was the decisive revolutionary force of our times against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism and racism and for peace, national independence and socialism.
Allow me, on behalf of all of us, to extend to Ayah, Saro and the family our deepest condolences in their and our great loss. We assure you that you are not alone and never will be - the South African people and progres-sive peoples of the world are with you. We know that you will bear the loss with courage, confident in the knowl-edge that M. P. lives with us in the struggle at this crucial hour when the courageous youth and working people of our country, under the leadership of the liberation forces headed by the African National Congress, are storming the citadel of racist fascist tyran-ny.
Hamba Kahle M. P. - the struggle continues. We mourn not, we mobilise
- we fight. Your life work continues - Victory is certain!
Amandla Ngawethu!
Matla ke a Rona!
Power to the People!
Obituary in Sechaba, fourth quarter 1977
M.P. was snatched from us brutally and suddenly. Our hearts go out to the members of his family, the Naickers, who stood by his side during all his sufferings and his joys, and supported him in his efforts to achieve the South Africa that he was working for. M.P. was a warm and loving person who belonged to all of us. If he were able to look back on his life he would have little cause for regret. From his early teens he made up his mind that there was only one course for him to follow - to serve the cause of his people for liberation. In the face of every obstacle and discouragement, he never shifted from that path, and he died still fighting for the South Africa that we all believe in, as outlined in the Freedom Charter.
Born into an Indian working class family in the harsh conditions of the 1920s, he was forced to leave school at an early age. He worked in a factory, he drove a baker's van - and he quickly learned the nature of national and class oppression. From the age of 18 his entire life, for the next forty years, was to be spent in the service of the people, without regard to personal sacrifice.
M.P. was responsible, together with his comrades, particularly George Ponen and the late H.A. Naidoo, in organising the Indian workers into trade unions and leading them in militant strikes. At the same time he worked assiduously to bring about cooperation and unity among all black workers. He was elected Secretary of the Natal Sugar Workers Union and energetically plunged into the difficult task of contacting the workers in the sugar fields. M.P. was a key figure in the Anti-Segregation Council of the Natal Indian Congress, and he helped to transform the Congress into a mass organisation with a militant policy of struggle and of unity of action of all the black people. In the 1946 Indian Passive Resistance Campaign M.P. distinguished himself as an able and first class organiser. He was appointed Secretary of the Passive Resistance Council and subsequently became Secretary of the Natal Indian Congress.
M.P.'s immense contributions and leading role in the major campaigns and trials of the 1950s and 1960s are too numerous to list here. During his long political career he was arrested countless times, and during the 1960s he was detained under the 90-day and 180-day laws. In exile from 1965, he threw himself unflinchingly into the work of the External Mission of the African National Congress.
As Director of Publicity and Editor of Sechaba, he fulfilled his duties with distinction. For M.P., his work as trade unionist, Congressman, politician and journalist were not different occupations. Journalism, for example, was simply another front on which to fight the enemy. When he was editor/manager of the New Age office in Durban it became a recruiting ground and a battlefield, with people from all walks of life and from all over the country pouring into the office. The special triumphs of his political career flowed directly from his political contacts. For instance his exposure of the kidnapping of Anderson Ganyile in Basutoland was possible because the note smuggled out by Ganyile was taken to him. The expose was responsible for the outcry that led to Ganyile's release. Similarly, during the Pondoland campaign of the 1960s, the people involved sought out M.P. and the New Age office to tell their story, and it was his pioneering work in building up contacts that stirred the publicity which was given to the campaign.
In 1961 he was awarded the International Organisation of Journalists" gold pin, for his contribution to journalism at home and abroad; and Sechaba was awarded the IOJ gold medal. At the Eighth Congress of the IOJ at Helsinki last September, M.P. was awarded the prestigious Julius Fucik medal, and he was elected to the Executive of the IOJ. He accepted all these honours not as personal tribute, but as a tribute to the work of the ANC and the Congress Movement as a whole.
M.P. was a man who did not tolerate snobs, snobbery and affectation. He was always direct, straightforward and hard-hitting. Above all, he had an endless love of life, which has now been extinguished. But his example will continue to inspire. His comrades have taken up the pen and the sword that he dropped, and are carrying on the fight to achieve the new South Africa for which he fought so long, side by side with all of us.
Leaders and militants, friends and family came together from all parts of the world at the Golders Green Crematorium in London on May 8 to say a last farewell to Comrade M.P. Naicker, Director of Publicity of the ANC External Mission, who died on April 29, at the age of 56. The crowd, which overflowed from the building into the courtyard, heard tributes from the Acting President of the ANC, Oliver Tambo, the Chairman of the South African Communist Party, Dr. Yusuf Dadoo, and Comrade Brian Bunting. The ANC choir sang the national anthem, Nkosi Sikelel'i Afrika, over M.P.'s flag-draped coffin.
Article in Sechaba, May 1987
M.P. NAICKER: FIRST EDITOR OF SECHABA
The first editor of Sechaba was Marimuthu Pragalathan Naicker, popularly known as `M.P.', an outstanding political leader and a gifted journalist. The story of his life spans an important period in the development of our movement, from the first mass actions to the beginnings of mass international solidarity with our fight for liberation.
M.P. was born in Durban in 1920s. As a very young man, he identified himself with the struggle against national and class oppression, joining the Natal Indian Congress and the Communist Party, and becoming active in the trade union movement. While still in his early twenties, he left his job to work as a full-time political and trade union organiser.
Militant Policies in the NIC
His strong political stand and his organising ability soon showed themselves in the Natal Indian Congress. He was an activist in the Anti-Segregation Council which, arising from what was called the "Nationalist Bloc" within the NIC, campaigned for mass membership and militant policies, and laid the foundations for the subsequent Passive Resistance Campaign of 1946. He also became full-time secretary of the Sugar Field Workers' Union in Natal, and began to make contact with the workers in the cane fields, among the most oppressed and exploited of the South African people.
In 1946, he became secretary of the Passive Resistance Council, planning mass protest against Smuts' "Ghetto Act", which sought to segregate Indians by forbidding them to buy land outside areas they already occupied. As a result of the protest, he spent four months in gaol.
He then became secretary of the NIC.
As a political thinker, he saw beyond the liberation of his own national group and fought for an end to the oppression of all black people in his country. In 1952, the Defiance Campaign against Unjust Laws gave expression to an alliance that had been growing between the national organisations. The Natal Indian Congress, the Transvaal Indian Congress and, in the Cape, the South African Coloured People's Organisation joined with the ANC in this campaign. Together with Comrade M.B. Yengwa of the ANC, M.P. was joint secretary of the Natal Joint Action Committee. Thousands of volunteers throughout the country defied the laws; M.P. was one of them, and was twice arrested and gaoled.
Banned by the Regime
Banned under the Suppression of Communism Act in 1952, he was forced to resign from office in the NIC. He worked in Durban as local editor and manager of the paper New Age, which was at that time the voice of the Congress movement.
He continued to organise and in 1956, he was one of the 156 activists arrested on a charge of treason, a charge connected with the Congress of the People at Kliptown in 1955, where the Freedom Charter was adopted. All the accused spent two weeks in the Fort in Johannesburg before being released on bail, and after that, while on trial in Johannesburg, he supervised the staff of helpers in the New Age office when he visited Durban during adjournments.
Gaoled Repeatedly
When the charges against him were dropped, he returned to full-time work, but he was arrested again, at the beginning of the state of emergency that followed the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, and imprisoned for four months. In gaol he attended a Zulu language class run by Comrade M.B. Yengwa, and learned to speak Zulu well. "He was truly an African," Comrade Yengwa says today. "He understood Zulu culture and understood Zulu jokes."
On his release, M.P. returned to full-time work again, but the paper he worked on was soon to come to an end. Over the years, it had survived many bannings and changes of name. As the Communist Party paper, The Guardian, it had been banned under the Suppression of Communism Act and another paper, The Clarion, had risen in its place. People's World succeeded The Clarion, after that came Advance, and then New Age; the paper appeared again, under the name of Spark, but Spark was extinguished when all its key workers were served with banning orders that prevented them from taking part in the preparation of anything for publication and even from entering premises where publication was carried on.
Those were dark days for our movement. M.P. was one of the activists who continued to work illegally. In 1963, he was detained under the 90-day detention law and charged, together with 24 Africans, with furthering the aims of the underground ANC. Seven people were convicted in that trial.
M.P. was acquitted, but arrested and detained again in 1964, this time under the 180-day detention law. The time had come for him to work elsewhere. After his release, he left the country and went to London, where he was later joined by his wife, Saro, and their children.
International Work
The ANC appointed him External Director of Information and Publicity, and he went to work once more, setting up Sechaba and editing it almost single-handed. The scope of his work had broadened yet again; he was concerned with building connections between the ANC and progressive forces throughout the world.
He became a member of the Executive of the International Organisation of Journalists, based in Prague. In 1971, the IOJ awarded him its pin in gold, and in 1976 - a high honour for his services to journalism - the Julius Fucik award, named after a brave journalist who was captured, tortured and killed by the Nazis during the occupation of Czechoslovakia in World War II.
In the course of his work for Sechaba, M.P. travelled often between London and the German Democratic Republic, and it was on the plane to Berlin that he died of a heart attack, in April 1977.
He was given a hero's funeral in London, and messages came from fraternal organisations in many parts of the world. In his speech, Dr. Yusuf Dadoo, Chairman of the South African Communist Party and former President of the South African Indian Congress, said M.P. had been "a South African patriot and revolutionary whose life's work was to consolidate the unity of the black people and all revolutionaries in the freedom struggle."
M.P. was a tireless worker, a political activist of ability, dedication and integrity. He played an important part in making our movement what it is now, and was the kind of cadre whose memory remains to inspire us today, ten years after his death.
FAREWELL TO M.P.
by A.N.C. Kumalo
It was as natural and sweet as mountain water
to call him qabane and mfowetu
as natural as it was for him
to place a friendly arm around our shoulders
and join in our joyous rounds of song.
We the youth:
for us he will always be M.P.-bhai
and for him we will always sing `amajoni'
and `hamba kahle umkhonto' -
M.P.-bhai
one whom the Cubans would call
companero muchacho
amiable comrade-in-arms
staunch companion of Freedom's road...
Indlela yenkululeko:
`no easy walk' that path
more demanding than any mountain ascent
knife-like twists and turns
awesome gradients endless trudge
not for weak of will with enemy ambush
and ambush of inner-senses
frightening beauty and beautiful promise
the summit seemingly a mirage
a dream a distant haze
crystallised by his clear and relentless lesson
lesson of him and his companeros
J.B., Mick, Mini
Chief, Looksmart, Bram:
Not how to avoid becoming captive
Not how to avoid becoming casualty
But how to avoid surrender.
We say to you
their loved ones
with great effort
with boundless respect:
their absence on Freedom day
signals no defeat
for them the journey counted
not the arrival.
Rest well M.P.-bhai
rest well qabane, mfowethu, radiant companero
your sons and daughters
your Umkhonto
your traditions march on
and when Freedom's sun rises out of the Indian Ocean
when Freedom's dawn breaks over the vast Maluti's
showering gold over the forests of sweet green cane
over the land so gold and green and ebony
your heirs will secure that final prize
with firm grip and steady gaze.
London
May 8, 1977
Articles by M.P. Naicker