Kesval Moonsamy was a South African trade unionist, politician and anti-apartheid activist.
20 Facts About Kay Moonsamy
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Kay Moonsamy was one of the 156 accused in the 1956 Treason Trial.
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Kay Moonsamy went into exile in 1965 and returned to South Africa in 1991.
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Kay Moonsamy was elected treasurer of the South African Communist Party in 1997 and served as an African National Congress Member of Parliament from 1999 until 2009.
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The son of an indentured labourer, Kesval Kay Moonsamy was born on 5 July 1926 in Durban, then part of the Union of South Africa's Natal Province.
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Kay Moonsamy soon became involved in the trade union movement and by the age of 19, he was president of the Natal Box, Broom and Brush Workers' Union.
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Kay Moonsamy had become a member of the Communist Party of South Africa when he was 18 and 5 years later he gained election to the Durban committee of the party.
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Kay Moonsamy supported Monty Naicker's leadership of the progressive faction of the organisation and was part of the formation of the "anti-segregation council" in opposition to the conservative Kajee-Pather bloc of the organisation which sought to exclusively focus on the issues of Indian South Africans and not be affiliated with the African National Congress.
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Kay Moonsamy was part of the recruitment drive which recruited 30,000 progressives to the organisation which resulted in the progressive faction's triumph over the Kajee-Pather bloc.
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Kay Moonsamy was arrested on his 20th birthday and sentenced to four months at the Durban Central Prison.
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Kay Moonsamy spent his time underground following the State of Emergency in 1960.
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Kay Moonsamy was given a banning order in 1963 and was arrested a month later after breaking it.
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Kay Moonsamy only saw them again in Swaziland in 1980, fifteen years after he went into exile.
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Kay Moonsamy became the ANC's chief representative in 1978 and subsequently went to New Delhi.
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Kay Moonsamy became the final president of SACTU in 1989.
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Kay Moonsamy was elected as treasurer of the South African Communist Party in 1997.
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Kay Moonsamy went on to serve as a Member of Parliament until 2009.
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Kay Moonsamy was awarded the Order of Luthuli in bronze in 2015.
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President Jacob Zuma declared a Special Provincial Official Funeral for Kay Moonsamy and instructed that the national flag be flown at half-mast at all of the flag stations in KwaZulu-Natal on the day of his funeral.
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Kay Moonsamy's funeral was held on 24 June 2017 at the Clare Estate Crematorium.