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Apartheid victim honoured with prestigious award
Two years ago, Parmanathan 'Prema' Naidoo stood in the doorway of the cell at the Fort in Johannesburg, now the premises of the Constitutional Court in democratic South Africa, and recalled the torture he had undergone as an apartheid-era prisoner.
- IANS
- Published: 23:35 January 10, 2009
Chennai: Two years ago, Parmanathan 'Prema' Naidoo stood in the doorway of the cell at the Fort in Johannesburg, now the premises of the Constitutional Court in democratic South Africa, and recalled the torture he had undergone as an apartheid-era prisoner. This, in the same jail where young lawyer Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had been imprisoned almost a century earlier and later Nelson Mandela as well.
The occasion was the birth anniversary of Gandhi. It was thus fitting when Naidoo joined a dozen other People of Indian Origin (PIO) on stage at the Convention Centre here on Friday to receive the Pravasi Bharatiya Award from President Pratibha Patil on the anniversary of the day that Gandhi first arrived in South Africa to develop his philosophies that would assist both India and later South Africa to gain independence.
Some of the 1,500 delegates from all over the Diaspora were puzzled as to why Naidoo was getting an award from the Indian government when his citation indicated that he had played an important role in the formation of the South African Indian Council Committee (SAIC) in 1981. This because the SAIC was an apartheid-era body created by the white minority government in an attempt to appease the million-plus South African Indians descended from the first indentured labourers who arrived in the country in 1860.
But Naidoo had joined the SAIC to undermine it. After the first democratic elections, Naidoo was elected to the municipality and is now in charge of environmental projects for the city.
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