Remembering Rogers Ragavan of BC

At the University of Natal’s “Non-European”section, Rogers Ragavan was active in student politics and leadership of Nusas

- Marlan Padayachee

During the turbulent years of the 1960s and 1970s, when South Africa's campuses were alive with protest and apartheid's repression was tightening its grip, hundreds of young scholars fled into exile across Africa and beyond. Among them was Durban-born Chengiah "Rogers" Ragavan, a student leader and later an exile academic whose life embodied courage, intellect, and conviction. He passed away recently at the age of 95.

In exile, Ragavan was deeply shaken by the 12 September 1977 death in detention of his close friend and comrade, Steve Biko. The news reached him in London, where he had fled following years of police surveillance and political banning orders. For Ragavan, Biko's killing symbolised the cruelty of the apartheid state and renewed his determination to keep the struggle alive through scholarship, solidarity, and moral advocacy.

A year earlier, in the watershed year of 1976, Soweto's schoolchildren exploded into the streets in protests against apartheid's education policy. The aftermath was horrific and alerted the world to the Afrikaner regime's genocide: Upwards of 700, with the official figure of 176, were killed and thousands more were injured or detained, and some died in detention, and hundreds fled into exile - mainly into the arms of then banned [and exiled] ANC. The protests, triggered by the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, led to widespread violence from 16 June 1976 to the rest of the black week when police reacted with tear gas and live ammunition.

The nationwide incident strengthened the resolve of the Biko-Ragavan generation of revolting students.