22 Facts About Yusuf Dadoo

Yusuf Mohamed Dadoo OMSG was a South African Communist and an anti-apartheid activist.

Yusuf Dadoo was a leader of the Defiance Campaign and a defendant at the Treason Trial in 1956.

At high school, Yusuf Dadoo attended meetings by former stalwarts of Gandhi, and along with Ismail Cachalia and other schoolmates, raised funds and awareness for the All India National Congress.

At the age of eighteen, having completed secondary education, Yusuf Dadoo returned to Krugersdorp; where his father insisted that he help with running his business, despite Yusuf Dadoo's desire to study law.

In London, Yusuf Dadoo continued to be politically active, and was arrested for participating in a protest against the Simon Commission.

In Edinburgh, Yusuf Dadoo met many fellow students from across the British Empire, giving him a broader view of colonialism.

Yusuf Dadoo befriended fellow student and Indian South African Monty Naicker.

In 1936, Yusuf Dadoo was awarded his medical degree, LRCPS, and returned to South Africa resolved to revitalise the struggle against racial discrimination there.

Shortly after his return home, Yusuf Dadoo bought a house and set up a medical practice in Doornfontein, Johannesburg.

Yusuf Dadoo soon became involved with the Transvaal Indian Congress, an organisation that had been involved with the earlier Gandhian protests, but found it to be dominated by the interests of wealthier Indians over the working-class, and by moderates reluctant to engage in passive resistance against the government.

In 1938, Yusuf Dadoo became a founding member and the secretary of the Non-European United Front.

The campaign was postponed at the personal request of Gandhi, leaving Yusuf Dadoo to join the Communist Party of South Africa, and focus on anti-war activism with the outbreak of World War II.

In 1950, Yusuf Dadoo was elected president of the SAIC, which promptly joined with the ANC in organising a defiance campaign against unjust laws.

Yusuf Dadoo was the deputy chair of the planning council, headed by Walter Sisulu, and the two were mainly responsible for the report around which the campaign was organised.

Yusuf Dadoo was banned from attending all gatherings and ordered to resign from the SAIC and the Defiance Campaign planning committee.

In 1953, Dadoo and others secretly reconstituted the CPSA as the South African Communist Party, with Yusuf serving as chairman of the central committee.

That same year, Yusuf Dadoo was further banned from participating in fifteen protest organisations.

Yusuf Dadoo evaded arrest and operated underground for several months, until the SACP, in consultation with the SAIC, decided to smuggle him out of the country to act as an international spokesperson for the struggle.

Yusuf Dadoo strongly disagreed with the idea, but was overruled, and finally agreed to go into exile in London.

In 1972, the then-chairman of the SACP, J B Marks, died, and Dadoo was unanimously elected in his place.

Yusuf Dadoo continued in this role, as chairman in exile, until his death.

Centenary celebrations for Dr Yusuf Dadoo were held in 2009 at the University of Johannesburg.