Yusuf Dadoo

Yusuf Mohamed Dadoo OMSG (5 September 1909 – 19 September 1983) was a South African Communist and an anti-apartheid activist. During his life, he was chair of both the South African Indian Congress and the South African Communist Party, as well as being a major proponent of co-operation between those organisations and the African National Congress. He was a leader of the Defiance Campaign and a defendant at the Treason Trial in 1956. His last days were spent in exile in London, where he is buried at Highgate Cemetery; a few metres away from the Tomb of Karl Marx.

Early life Yusuf was born on 5 September 1909 in Krugersdorp, in the West Rand, near Johannesburg. His parents, Mohammed and Fatima Dadoo, were Gujarati Muslim immigrants from Surat in Western India. As a young child, he had the formative experience of being scolded by his mother for climbing a tree in his neighbourhood park, which was reserved for White people only. Aged ten, the Krugersdorp Municipality attempted to evict his father from his shop on racial grounds, but he was successfully defended in court by Mohandas Gandhi. At high school, Yusuf attended meetings by former stalwarts of Gandhi, and along with Ismail Cachalia and other schoolmates, raised funds and awareness for the All India National Congress. In 1938, Yusuf became a founding member and the secretary of the Non-European United Front (NEUF).

Apartheid and resistance In 1948, the National Party (NP) was elected as the ruling party of the country in the racially restricted general election. The NP immediately began implementing a formal policy of racial segregation and restriction of the rights of non-white South Africans, known as Apartheid. In 1949, they also introduced the Suppression of Communism Bill to ban the South African Communist Party, causing the CPSA to pre-emptively disband and go underground. In Nelson Mandela's message to the celebrations, he called Dadoo "one of the giants of our country's struggle for freedom", and "[one of] the founders of a democratic South Africa".