Thumba Pillay ... the firebrand activist who became a judge

INVOLVED IN SEVERAL ORGANISATIONS

- DENNIS PATHER

IT’S only fitting that retired judge and human rights campaigner, Thumba Pillay's birthday falls in April - what we in South Africa call Freedom Month.

Freedom, after all, has been the watchword epitomising his impeccable character, strong values and unyielding principles all through his life.

Some people say it runs through the veins of this 89-year-old veteran.

Barathanathan Thumba Pillay was barely 10 years old when, travelling by bus from his Clairwood home to the Durban city centre, his curiosity was drawn to a crowd of protesters at a Passive Resistance rally in Gale Street, calling for an end to racial discrimination.

That’s when the first seeds of his political awareness were planted.

And it later grew during his school days when he avidly followed radio reports of global political developments, including the struggle for independence in India by leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chander Bose.

Judge Pillay recalls his first clash with authority came when he received six of the best for being part of the leadership of a school stayaway to celebrate India’s independence in 1947.

After completing high school at Sastri College, the young Pillay embarked on his university career and that’s where he began to see more starkly the evils of apartheid in all its rawness.

“That’s when the political bug caught me,“ he recalled.

Opportunities were abysmally limited for people of colour at the time.

He was forced to attend lectures in what was called the non-European section of the old University of Natal.

These consisted of makeshift prefabs separated from the main white campus at Howard College.

“I realised that the system of separate and unequal education violated all the values that a true university represented," he said.

The budding activist