YUSUF MOHAMED DADOO
"I am happy
to be back in my homeland. I will have the opportunity to again
take my full share in the struggle of all anti-Nationalists to overthrow the
Malan Government and to establish a truly democratic State which will ensure
full citizenship rights to every citizen."
These were Dr. Y. M. Dadoo's first words on arriving back in the
Union last week from India, in defiance of threats of deportation
and State action against him made by blustering Nationalists at their
Party congresses.
Dr. Dadoo was denied a passport to the United Nations just over
a year ago. During that year, travelling without a passport, Dr.
Dadoo has enlisted support for the democratic cause in South Africa
from Britain, Europe, India and Pakistan.
Interviewed
by The Guardian the day after his return, Dr. Dadoo was emphatic
that "every
attack on the meagre rights of the Non-Europeans must be resisted."
"Every
issue is a battleground on which the people must struggle for their
existing
rights and the extension of them.
"The Government
must not be allowed to mow down one section of the people or get
away with any single attack, no matter how small."
Dr. Dadoo said he wished to warn the Indian people that they had
no justifiable grounds for survival in South Africa unless they made
common cause with, and worked in the fullest cooperation with, the
Africans and all oppressed peoples in the struggle for national liberation.
Dr. Dadoo said that the Smuts` policy of divide and rule had been
to give occasional trivial concessions to one section of the people
as against another, in this way trying to prevent the unity of struggle
of the Non-Europeans. He continued:
"Malan's
tactics are, with the aid of police intimidation, pressure tactics,
and
threats of violence, to scare the people into
inactivity and to create groups of stooges who, to save their own
skins, not only do not oppose the Government, but themselves preach
a brand of apartheid among their own people and help to foster racial
antagonisms.
"The people
must not be duped by these attempted sell-outs. They must make
short
work of the enemies of a vigorous anti-Nationalist
struggle.
"The people
of South Africa must march forward, unitedly, through struggle
to freedom
and must take their place as proud fighters
in the democratic camp of the world headed by the Soviet Union, People's
China, the new democracies and hundreds of millions of toiling people
advancing towards peace, freedom and socialism."
