Remembering Dan Pillay: ANC underground operative aka the Nightingale

IN LATE 1985, an Indian gentleman met me at La Mercy Beach Hotel in Tongaat, at the reception, and asked if he could use the hotel callbox.

- Logie Naidoo Durban

He further requested some change. I referred him to the reception staff, not realising that he would become someone important in our lives.

During those turbulent times of our freedom Struggle, we engaged in both legal and illegitimate political activities.

My hotel became a hotbed of activities ranging from conferences, meeting and underground initiatives.

I became the point of contact for the ANC in Swaziland and our unit in KwaZulu-Natal. It was dangerous and tisky as we lived in an apartheid-style police state.

Many months later, he visited my family flat in Buffelsdale, Tongaat, looking for me, to be told that we moved to a bigger apartment, Flat 1039, in the same suburb of Buffelsdale.

My little neighbour, Rommel, a prominent environment lawyer today, being the brave girl that she was, reluctantly showed him where the flat was.

Even the drug peddlers around the flat forewarned my family about a cop enquiring about me.