{UAH} SOMEBODY HAS GOT TO STOP THIS 'MANDELA RECONCILIATION' NONSENSE!
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Remembering Apartheid
Two Generations Tell Their Story
The house was set in the midst of a huge property, which carried both a residential and a commercial license. The Moolla family planted mealies (maize) and a wide variety of fruit next to the river that ran alongside their home. Come `Eid time, they would congregate in the garden around a palm tree, decorating it with hundreds of presents that members of the family would later exchange with each other.
It was a happy and boisterous home, one that often hosted visitors from near and far, treating them to scrumptious meals enthusiastically prepared by the womenfolk. Life as they knew it went on until one day officials from the apartheid government's Group Areas Department arrived, bearing harsh news.
"They came to give us a notice to leave the white area," says Suliman Ismail Moolla, now 77 years old. "My father said, 'My policy is that I'm not going to move out.'" In spite of the warning that he would be imprisoned, Ismail Moolla refused to budge, even as neighboring Indian families vacated their homes, making the heart-wrenching move into an area especially set aside for their racial group.
| Two coloreds, one black, and one Indian could be admitted into medical college at the time. |
The authorities were not impressed. Inspectors from Pretoria would often make the long journey to Heidelberg to knock at the door of the Moolla home in the early hours of the morning, telling them to leave the house within a month or else they would face forced removal. "They would wake us up at 5:30 or 6:00 a.m. and tell us in Afrikaans to clear out, saying that if we didn't do so, they would eject us," says Suliman Moolla. "My father told them to do what they thought was right - he didn't move out."
Three weeks and several warnings later the Moollas were served with a summons ordering them to appear in court.
"The magistrate decided that we had to move within a certain period of time, but that whilst we were there, we were guilty of illegal occupation for which we were fined. We had bought the house. It was ours but we were considered illegal occupiers." The Moollas finally realized that they were fighting a losing battle. Eight months later, in 1971, they moved into their newly built home, in Heidelberg's "Indian" area.
They had to privately sell the house in Voortrekker Street and, like thousands of other non-white South Africans, they received no compensation from the government.
Post-apartheid South Africa meant that individuals and their descendants who had been dispossessed of their rights to land by racially discriminatory laws or practices now had the right to claim restitution against the state. The Moollas submitted a claim to the Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights about 5 years ago and have yet to learn howthey will be recompensed.
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| Suliman Moolla plays with his niece's grand-son, Amr Dukandar. Unlike Suliman, Amr will enjoy many exciting options in terms of his future. |
But the damage done by apartheid is largely irrevocable, says Haroun, 52, Suliman Moolla's son. "The house was demolished and the land lay empty for a while, until it was commercially developed. Today that land is prime property, situated near the local taxi rank," he says. "The property had a commercial license, but because we were not white, we were not allowed to develop it.
"The house had sentimental value. We grew up there," he adds
Apartheid also meant that both Suliman and Haroun struggled to gain access to basic education.
"There were only white high schools in Heidelberg, so when I reached standard six [at approximately 13 years of age], I had to go and live with friends in Johannesburg [approximately an hour away]," remembers Suliman. "We often had to walk 3 kilometers to school in the morning, and I would sometimes be robbed on the way there. Whilst walking to school, the white kids would often come and hit us for no reason other than the color of our skin. If we were alone, we wouldn't fight back, but if there were three or four of us, we would hit them back."
This coupled with the fact that his father could no longer afford his fees, as well as the knowledge that, by law, opportunities for Indians to further their studies at tertiary level were few and far between (for example, only two Coloreds, one black, and one Indian could be admitted into medical college at the time), and the fact that Indians were not allowed to work for whites meant that he soon had to leave school without having completed his secondary education.
Haroun also had to travel 35 kilometers to and from high school on a daily basis, paying a teacher for transport.
But today, his teenage son Asif attends the local Afrikaans school that was previously whites only but which was forced to open its doors to all races in post-apartheid South Africa.
| When the newly elected State President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, hosted a luncheon in honor of the veterans of the struggle for freedom, an invitation was sent to "Comrade Moollabhai." |
And while Asif can freely visit the coastal city of Durban, which is a 5-hour drive away from Heidelberg, and choose to holiday at any one of hundreds of beachfront hotels and holiday flats, in the days of apartheid, special permission from the authorities was required before traveling to other areas. And the choices at the destination were limited. "Most people wanted to stay near the beach, but there was only one hotel which was open to Indians, and it used to get full. We could also only swim at Indian beaches, and nowhere else," says Haroun.
"Asif's life is very different, very easy," he adds. "It was difficult to live under apartheid - we had no rights."
It is not surprising, then, that the Moolla family gave their full support to the struggle for freedom and often actively voiced their protest against the status quo. Ismail Moolla was an active member of the Transvaal Indian Congress and a supporter of the African National Congress.
"One night Yusuf Dadoo, the leader of the Transvaal Indian Congress, called my father and told him that he should go and fetch him and some other people and take them to Benoni, where my father owned another shop that my uncle ran," narrates Suliman. "My father asked us what to do, and we told him that since the leader had spoken, he should go. He went to pick them up. They were all prominent activists, and one of them was Nelson Mandela. My father drove them to Benoni, taking only the back roads, for fear of check points. He took them to Benoni, and they stayed at my uncle's house for two days, holding a very important meeting. He went to fetch them when they were finished."
Suliman's elder brother, Muhammad Amin, was part of a group of activists who were jailed for three months when they erected tents and camped out in a whites-only area as a form of protest.
As a result, thousands of people gathered outside the Union Building to protest the dompas (literally "stupid pass") the name given by black South Africans to the document that they had to carry with them at all times; otherwise they would face punishment. Ismail Moolla made sure that his wife could baby-sit their grandchildren so that all five of his daughters-in-law could participate in the event.
The Moollas' contribution to the struggle against apartheid did not go unnoticed.
In 1994, when the newly elected State President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, hosted a luncheon in honor of the veterans of the struggle for freedom, an invitation was sent to "Comrade Moollabhai" (literally "brother"; the suffix bhai is often used by Indians as means of conveying affection or respect for each other), Ismail Moolla, then age 95, and his son Suliman. (Ismail passed away in 2001, at the age of 102.)
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Rehema
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