20 Facts About Mewa Ramgobin

Mawalal "Mewa" Ramgobin was a South African politician and former anti-apartheid activist.

Mewa Ramgobin was later the founding treasurer of the United Democratic Front and the first accused in the Pietermaritzburg Treason Trial.

Mewa Ramgobin was born on 10 November 1932 in Inanda in the former Natal Province.

Mewa Ramgobin's father was a successful farmer and the son of Indian immigrants who had arrived in Natal as indentured labourers.

Mewa Ramgobin attended school in Inanda and later in Greyville, Durban.

Later the same year, Mewa Ramgobin joined Nokukhanya Luthuli and others in participating in a five-day fast, in the Gandhian tradition, in protest of the Sharpeville massacre and subsequent banning of anti-apartheid organisations by the state.

The Phoenix Settlement Trust, of which Mewa Ramgobin was secretary, established a host of community projects, including a child-welfare clinic.

In 1965, while Mewa Ramgobin was the secretary of a committee planning celebrations of Gandhi's centenary, he was served with his first banning order, which confined him to house arrest.

At a community meeting at Durban's Bolton Hall on 25 June 1971, attendees had agreed to revive the congress and had established an ad hoc committee, chaired by Mewa Ramgobin, to carry out the task.

Mewa Ramgobin was nonetheless a central figure in the leadership of the congress, though he remained restricted by police even after his house arrest was lifted in February 1973.

Mewa Ramgobin was banned for another five years from 1975.

In 1983, Mewa Ramgobin attended the launch of the United Democratic Front, a popular front against apartheid; he was elected as the front's inaugural co-treasurer, serving alongside Cas Saloojee.

Mewa Ramgobin was arrested ahead of the 1984 election but was released on 7 September by order of the Supreme Court, which ruled that his and other activists' detention was not justified by Law and Order Minister Louis le Grange's contention that they had been trying to "create a revolutionary climate".

On 9 December 1985,12 of the 16 defendants, including Mewa Ramgobin, were released after the state announced that it would withdraw the charges against them.

In South Africa's first post-apartheid elections in 1994, Mewa Ramgobin was elected to an ANC seat in the National Assembly, the lower house of the new South African Parliament.

Mewa Ramgobin served three terms in his seat, gaining re-election in 1999 and 2004, and served on the Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Mewa Ramgobin retired from Parliament after the 2009 general election.

Mewa Ramgobin did not accept Indian citizenship when it was proffered to South African Indians in the early 2000s, saying that he considered dual citizenship "not only as an anachronism, but a betrayal".

Mewa Ramgobin urged other South African Indians to reject the offer, which he said was contrary to the Nehruivian-Gandhian spirit of the Indian constitution and would undermine nation-building in South Africa.

Mewa Ramgobin met his first wife, Ela Gandhi, at the University of Natal, and they married in India in 1960.