Martin Plaut

Lucky we are today to be able to read the stirring struggle stories of Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Mac Maharaj, Ronnie Kasrils and untold others who brought liberation to South Africa. The happy endings, after such suffering and repeated setbacks, are cathartic. You cannot help but finish reading these stories on a high. We want to read about successful struggles – still more so now, as time separates us from the First Victory Decade.

Martin Plaut has written a different success story in his second book about earlier struggles for a non-racial South Africa. This is a biography of Dr Abdullah Abdurahman, the first coloured pupil to be educated at SACS (the super-exclusive boys high school in Cape Town), the first elected black politician in South African history, the first coloured citizen elected to the City Council (in 1904) and to the Cape Provincial Council (in 1913). The long-time leader of the APO, the main party of coloured South Africans, the setbacks he faced were unrelenting. As Plaut says “the political plight of the majority of South Africans was worse at the end of his life [in 1940] than it had been when he first entered politics.”

This is the first book-length biography of Dr Abdurahman ever to be published. It is fast-paced, with careful commentary on his private life and reference to many features of the city – schools, instututions, sports events, nature reserves – all still with us, that started with “the Doctor”. The book is not overwhelmed by the many political defeats. Plaut reminds us that none of Abdurahman’s contemporaries, whether in the tiny ANC or riven Communist, left-wing and other coloured parties, made more of a contribution to fighting white and imperial oppression in this period than he did.

Abdurahman – and his many supporters – faced implacable white racist politicians in people like Botha (not PW), Smuts, Hertzog (not Albert), and DF Malan. Abdurahman said “Their political morality is so low, their racial prejudice so intense that … civilization in this country is bound to suffer if they remain in power.” South Africa’s whites were fully supported by the duplicitous British.

Dr Abdurahman lost and lost and lost and lost. Now we have won. And what have we made of it?

Dr Abdurahman lived at a different time – but he faced many of the same awful characters and attitudes we have today. His efforts, in many respects, showed the winning way. You get the impression of a great life. I ended reading on a different sort of high.… (plus d'informations)