Role of ANC veteran Mosie Moola in commemorating Nelson Mandela in India recalled

Johannesburg, Apr 3 (PTI): The special links that veteran ANC freedom fighter Moosa ‘Mosie’ Moola had to India, especially his role in getting Nelson Mandela Marg in Delhi so named, were recalled at a memorial service here at the weeken.

Role of ANC veteran Mosie Moola in commemorating Nelson Mandela in India recalled

Johannesburg, Apr 3 (PTI): The special links that veteran ANC freedom fighter Moosa ‘Mosie’ Moola had to India, especially his role in getting Nelson Mandela Marg in Delhi so named, were recalled at a memorial service here at the weekend.

Moola died aged 88 last Saturday and was buried by Muslim rites on Sunday morning.

Former High Commissioner to India Sbu Ndebele recounted that Moola had passed on just before he could be part of a huge statue of Nelson Mandela being erected in Delhi. “As you enter New Delhi, the Nelson Mandela Marg stands as a proud symbol of the India/South Africa friendship. As part of celebrating 30 years of diplomatic relations between India and South Africa, a huge statue of President Nelson Mandela is in the final stages of being installed on this Mandela Road. This is a tribute to the pioneering work of comrade Mosie Moola,” Ndebele said in his tribute.

“For sixteen years of tireless mobilisation of the people of India for active support of the liberation struggle against Apartheid South Africa comrade Ambassador Mosie Moola was an ubiquitous and peripatetic presence in this great nation. It is no wonder that by 1986 the government of India had granted the ANC diplomatic status as it intensified its own struggle to isolate apartheid,” Ndebele said.

India had ended diplomatic relations with the white minority government of South Africa in 1947, started the international fight against apartheid from the UN, and remained steadfast in it total boycott of the country for nearly four decades more.

Relations between the two countries were only resumed when Mandela was released in 1997 after 27 years as a political prisoner.

For a long time, Moola served in India, first as Deputy Chief Representative and later as Chief Representative of the ANC in India. Nelson Mandela Marg was inaugurated during Moola’s time in the country.

“Since being High Commissioner in India I constantly called comrade Mosie Moola telephonically for advice,” Ndebele said as he also recalled how Moola had a special affinity with the Springdale School in New Delhi.

“As we prepare to celebrate Freedom Day on April 27 it is heartwarming to listen to the student choir of Springdale School in New Delhi sing our National Anthem and many freedom songs in Xhosa and Zulu perfectly. This is the school where comrade Mosie Moola’s son Afzal Moola studied and this is where he created an unbreakable people to people bond. He may be silent today but a thousand tongues ventriloquise his message of progressive humankind,” Ndebele said.

Historian and writer Rashid Seedat, who was another speaker at the memorial service, said Springdale was one of two schools, the other being Bluebells, where Moola inspired the teachers and learners to pledge solidarity with South Africa.

Moola and his late wife Zubie hosted countless visitors from South Africa and those in exile in Delhi.

“They supported South African students who were studying at Indian higher education institutions,” Seedat said.

Hundreds of South Africans of Indian origin studied in various fields in India because most places at South African universities were reserved for whites only, and because of a quota system, very few could pursue further studies locally.

Seedat also reminded the audience how Moola had been particularly proud of having met Rajiv Gandhi twice before his assassination.

Seedat quoted Moola from a chapter the latter had written in a book by another ANC veteran, Pallo Jordan: “When OR [Oliver Tambo] paid a visit to India in the 1980s to receive the prestigious ‘Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding and Peace’, I had the honour of accompanying him to meet Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. A known and committed supporter of our cause, Rajiv made it known that he was honoured to have met a great South African freedom fighter.” Tambo had accepted the award on behalf of Mandela, who was then still in prison.

In 1989, Moola was part of a delegation of leaders from the Transvaal Indian Congress and the Natal Indian Congress who met Rajiv Gandhi to brief him on the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. PTI FH RUP RUP

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