Amichand Rajbansi, What Legacy? Asks Marlan Padayachee

Legacy, what legacy? Asks Marlan Padayachee, one of the journalists who bore the brunt of Amichand Rajbansi’s vitriolic verbal attacks on scribes who reported on controversies and issues that did not go his way.
The Sunday Tribune’s coverage of the death and funeral of Amichand Rajbansi was excellent, touching on even the funeral snub by his estranged, divorced wife, and chronicling the new year’s eve departure of one of South Africa’s most controversial politicians with strong images.
However, the headline, ‘Tiger’s Legacy Burns Bright’, possibly inspired by an ode to William Blake’s ‘Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright’, has left me searching for answers: Legacy, what legacy did Rajbansi leave behind?
Dennis Pather, respected Niemen Fellow journalist and activist, who walked with iconic anti-system antagonists, Strini Moodley, Saths Coopers, Aubrey Mokoape, and other Black Consciousness adherents, all of whom had virulently opposed system politicians, like the Rajbansis, Rajabs, Reddys, Mangopes, Qozas, Hendrickse, et al, relied on his own experiences before penning his no-holds barred piece on the man who was both hated with disdain and loved with religious fervour by the Indian community, Pather dished out the brickbats and bouquets in one script.
But nowhere did Pather mention the word ‘legacy’.
Legacy is ‘something handed down or received from an ancestor or predecessor’.
Could Rajbansi’s political legacy have spawned an ethnic party for Indians who fought for freedom, human dignity and social justice alongside black compatriots in the ‘congress movement’, while striving to assimilate the spirit of nationhood, nonracialism and non-sexism in a new nation? Or did this legacy separate Indians from the mainstream of our democratic society?
Legacy also means ‘a gift by will, especially of money or personal property’.
Did Rajbansi not help the poor, working-class Indian electorate and dispossessed traders , and thereby helped himself to a legacy of a multi-million rand trust, service stations, and other businesses, when many Group Areas Act victims knocked on his door for compensation?
Surely, the legacy of the 1860 Indian indentured labourers, by their own collective action against oppression, must have inspired migrant Indians and compatriots and comrades to inculcate a strong sense of seeking justice and human rights; a legacy of doing a dint of hard work to survive the discriminatory laws; of self-education; of community-spiritedness; of volunteerism and Ubuntu; of fighting on the side of the voiceless and vote less for the liberation of our country.
Years after the darkest hours of slave-like conditions on the sugar cane plantations and the economic jealousy by colonialists of the Indian trading class, MK Gandhi emerged as a voice of hope for the disenfranchised masses. He left behind a legacy of cordial co-existence between Indians and Africans, and a rich and enviable history of Indians in liberation politics.
The conservative Pather-Kajee Pact and their successive ilk of ‘system’ political opportunists flew in the face of the pioneering Indians like Yusuf Dadoo, Monty Naicker, Kesaveloo Goonum, Amina Cachalia, Billy Nair, Ismail and Fathima Meer, and countless others, who collectively stood firm in protecting Indians from selling out to the National Party’s Tricameral Parliament (drie-kamer) elections that only garnered 12% of the ethnic vote. Coloured votes also put them into bed with the Nats.
Rajbansi worked his way to the top of ‘system’ politics, trampling all dissident voices and political ambitions and aspirations of his fellow travellers in the apartheid laager, leaving behind ‘the cock-eyed is the king of the blind’ legacy, coercing and threatening Indian civil servants to toe the line or face the consequences of losing their jobs.
He left a legacy of political patronage. Opportunistic Indians took the gap and enriched themselves or benefited from perks from his fiefdom, the House of Delegates. Hardline Indians bore the brunt of his vicious public attacks. He was often exploiting the newspaper columns to savagely attack the credibility of anti-apartheid leaders and activists.
Even in the drama of the transition from apartheid to democracy, The Raj masterminded the art of ingratiating himself with the newly-crowned ANC masters, selling out his Indian-bloc vote (mainly from working class Indians marginalized by the ANC’s affirmative action jobs reservation policy) to the ANC in a horse-trading deal that secured him the dream of being MEC for Sports. The hardliners among previously persecuted Indian activists hardened, sparking the drift and dissension away from the black ruling elite.
Rajbansi gave the ANC the edge to rule the province, but after he was discarded from the cabinet, the ‘cat with nine lives’ sulked and became the ANC’s arch-critic.
Rajbansi left a legacy of collaborationist politics. His was hardly a clear ideological platform, making it now difficult for the Minority Front to navigate the provincial political landscape, leave alone the robust affairs at the eThekwini Municipality: even while the majority vote was fait accompli to elect the Communist Party’s James Nxumalo as mayor, and Rajbansi’s nemesis Logie Naidoo as the Speaker, the ‘Bengal Tiger’ snarled from the sidelines of the city hall, lobbying and nudging his councillors to play politics with their votes.
Above this chequered career, the ‘Bengal Tiger’ blew hot and cold within the media. He unleashed verbal tirades on brave journalists and rewarded others, like putting in a good word with the Broederbond-controlled SABC for sympathetic scribes to move up the ladder.
Always on the warpath with words, he played a cunning game between editors and reporters, playing one against each other and creating distrust in the newsrooms. He went for the jugular of offending journalists, as illustrated in Greg Arde’s column, ‘Ah, the Tiger roars eternal: I’ll never forget that slap’. In the same breath, he charmed editors as a celebrated complainant, but dangled news tip-offs and government ad spend in favour of good publicity, especially published photographs.
As a rookie reporter in the 1970s, I earned the wrath of the burgeoning bulldog of ethnic politics: namely, for reflecting in a street survey that revealed Rajbansi was trading on Gandhi’s legacy when he called for Satyagraha (non-violent protest) against apartheid. In the turbulent years ahead, his anger and irritation grew and grew over a string of reports: his children ensconced at private schools during the schools boycott; shambolic affairs of the goings-on at the tricameral chamber; AWB leader Eugene Terre Blanche dislodging his toupee after slapping him on the face during the ANC’s détente with the Nats; and his divorce showdown with his wife outside the courthouse.
But if that’s all in a line of duty, so be it. However, I doffed my beret at his unofficial presence during President Mandela’s state visit to India; attended his colourful marriage to MPP Shameen Thakur and exchanged courtesies at the Twenty-Twenty cricket series.
The twilight days was setting in. The jungle was no longer burning bright for the mellowing, yet unforgiving ‘Bengal Tiger’.
Politics will never be the same again without his Jekyll and Hyde persona.
I believe in an ancient mantra, ‘it’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness’. Hamba Kahle, Mr Leveller.
Marlan Padayachee is a former political correspondent and anti-apartheid activist and works as a media strategist and political commentator