Mawalal (Mewa) Ramgobin papers
- ZA HPRA A3446-C
- Serie
- 1960s-2000s
Parte deIain Edwards Papers
The grandson of an indentured labourer, Ramgobin led the re-launch of the Natal Indian Congress in 1971 - first started by Gandhi in 1894 - and was a founding national office bearer in the United Democratic Front, one of the six activists to sit-in at the British Consulate in Durban in 1984, and Accused number 1 in the `Pietermaritzburg Treason Trial - along with Albertina Sisulu, Rev Frank Chikane and others - of 1984 and 1985. Banned and also later placed under house arrest for periods totalling seventeen years, in 1994 he became an African National Congress Member of Parliament, elected in South Africa’s first democratic general elections. In this collection are personal letters from the Consulate and as an imprisoned detainee and treason trialist. Included in the documents are crucial new material on the NIC and the UDF, the return of the ANC in the post-1990 period, and material from his secret state security file. This material offers the informed reader crucial new insights into the dynamics of anti-apartheid politics in the crucial period leading up to both Feb 1990 from then until April 1994. (Book Summary)