Wordsmith-commissar

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

DURBAN DATELINE : AT the 27 th session of the World Economic Forum Forum for Africa at the award-winning Inkosi Albert Luthuli ICC, Wednesday, 3 May 2017.

Thursday, June 11, 2015

Marlan Padayachee on fourth visit to the USA

Receives Gopio International Recognition Award from the US Congresswoman Grace Meng at the Gopio International commemorative banquet at the Marriott La Guardia Hotel on Saturday in Queens, New York.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Opera singer to serenade Pastor Fred Roberts

CAPE TOWN’S CELEBRATED OPERA SINGER TO SING THE PRAISES OF DURBAN’S LEGENDARY EVANGELIST PASTOR FRED L ROBERTS AT THE DURBAN ICC ON THURSDAY 26TH APRIL (7PM) & MASS CELEBRATION AT JESUS DOME DURBAN CHRISTIAN CENTRE MAYVILLE SUNDAY 29TH APRIL 2012 (6PM)

By Marlan Padayachee and Ron Steele

LEADING Cape Town opera singer Cecil John Peters will serenade his best-known trademark rendition of Luciana Pavarotti’s World Cup soccer signature tune, Messun Dorma (None Shall Sleep Tonight), at the grand 80th birthday celebration of Durban’s legendary evangelist Pastor Fred Roberts at the Durban International Convention Centre on the eve of South Africa’s Freedom Day on Thursday night (26TH April 2012).

“I am looking forward to singing the praises of a charismatic churchman with my trademark song, Pavarotti’s Messun Dorma (None Shall Sleep Tonight), which he sang at the 1992 World Cup soccer opening ceremony in Italy,” said Peters, one-time winner of the Roodepoort Award at the international eisteddfod.

Cape Flats-born Peters composed the theme song, ‘I Know a Nation’ for Cape Town’s unsuccessful bid for the 2004 Olympic Games. He also auditioned for Lloyd Webber-Rice’s ‘Phantom of the Opera’.

The celebrations for Pastor Roberts, founder of the Durban Christian Centre at the old Alhambra Theatre in Berea’s Umbilo Road in 1979, gets underway at an invitation-only black-tie banquet of musical and video tributes at the Durban ICC on Thursday evening, culminating with mass celebration to be attended by 5 000 congregants and dignitaries, including several international clergy and evangelists, at the Jesus Dome in Mayville on Sunday from 6pm.

Ends

For Media Support, Photo Shoot and Editorial Enquiries, contact:

Marlan Padayachee 073 625 8247; 084 519 5931; marlan.padayachee@gmail.com / greengold@mtnloaded.co.za & Ron Steele 082 891 7458: rsteele@mweb.co.za

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Plagiarism claim settled

Plagiarism claim settled
By Candice Soobramoney
THE legal dispute between media consultant Marlan Padayachee and community leader TP Naidoo has been resolved.
Padayachee accused Naidoo of plagiarism and sued him for R500 000. Last week both parties agreed to an out of court settlement but neither would comment on the amount.
The issue was about a book Naidoo authored, titled The Settler: Tribulations, Trials and Triumph. It was published to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Indians arriving in South Africa.
Acknowledge
Padayachee said he wrote the series The 1946 Resisters but Naidoo failed to acknowledge his contribution.
Padayachee said he was the one who interviewed freedom fighter Yusuf Dadoo while covering a conference in London on the United Nations’ sanctions against South Africa sport in 1983. Padayachee said in the book, Naidoo took credit for the interview.
He subsequently filed papers in the Durban Magistrate’s Court claiming R500 000.
Speaking to POST this week Padayachee said: “Given Naidoo’s age, his standing in the community and his contribution to profiling Indian South African achievers and organising cultural events, while blending these success stories with the participation of other members of our cosmopolitan society, I have decided, with the advice of my attorney, to settle this matter out of court and amicably.”
Naidoo’s daughter Vasantha, responded on her dad’s behalf - as her father has been unwell for several years.
“I am happy to see that this matter has been finally resolved. Both men enjoyed a cordial working relationship for many years. This friendship extended to our families.”
“The fact that this matter had to reach the papers has deeply saddened me.
“Being friends, Padayachee was free to approach my dad to discuss this further. The monetary side can never equal the mental, emotional and physical anguish it caused my family. However, that is now water under the bridge.
“Despite the agony and the personal anguish, I will always be grateful to the thousands of friends, family and even strangers who stood by us during these sad and disappointing days.”
Ends
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Source: Published in the POST, Independent Newspapers, Durban, South Africa, Page 3 March 28-1 April 2012. Circulation: 45 000. Readership 160 000-200 000.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Marlan Padayachee Media Clients in South Africa

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

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

Thursday, December 29, 2011

‘You stole my work’

‘You stole my work’
JOURNALIST SUES CULTURAL LEADER FOR R500 000
CANDICE SOOBRAMONEY
Published in the front-page of POST December 28-January 1 2012 (South Africa)
A JOURNALIST is suing respected community leader TP Naidoo for half a million rands.
Marlan Padayachee, currently a media and communications strategist, claims Naidoo plagiarised his work.
Naidoo is the director of the Indian Academy of South Africa and has played an active role in promoting Indian culture in South Africa. Last year he authored the book The Settler: Tribulations, Trials and Triumph. It was published to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Indians coming to South Africa.
It included a series titled The 1946 Resisters.
Padayachee claims he wrote the series but Naidoo failed to acknowledge his contribution.
He has now filed papers in the Durban Magistrate’s Court claiming half a million rands.
Padayachee said from 1988 to 2004 he assisted Naidoo in compiling and contributing stories and profiles on community icons for the publication The Indian Annual. Until then he had complaints about working with Naidoo.
In 2009 he approached Naidoo with a proposal.
“I told him I was putting together a series of updated and rewritten articles, which previously appeared in the e Indian Annual, on the 1946 series. It was accepted for the 2010 special edition and I was subsequently paid R3 000.”
After the book The Settler was launched Padayachee realized Naidoo had taken credit for an interview he (Padayachee) did with South African anti-apartheid activist Yusuf Dadoo in London in 1983.
According to Padayachee the (then) Argus newspaper group assigned him to cover the three-day conference in London on United Nations’ sanctions against South African sport.
While there he conducted interviews with freedom fighters including Dadoo, who at that stage was in exile.
When he returned home he wrote a series of articles for the Sunday Tribune.
At a later stage some of them were rewritten, updated and published in The Indian Annual.
“I had not seen the draft (of The Settler) and was surprised when I realized I was not rightfully credited.
“Naidoo is not a journalist and was never in London in 1983. He was in Durban. I couldn’t and still cannot understand why he took credit for my work when it was previously published in The Indian Annual and I was credited for it.”
Padayachee consulted attorney Siven Samuel and served summons.
He demanded R500 000 in lieu of Naidoo’s failure to acknowledge his work.
This was followed by a second summons this month.
Padayachee said Naidoo believed the proprietorship of any article that appeared in The Indian Annual belonged to the Indian Academy of which he is the Editor.
“But he cannot claim credit for another professional’s work. He is well aware that each of the stories I submitted over the years had my copyright> then by adding his name to the Dadoo story, he erroneously gave the impression he wrote the entire series.
“I will not stand for that. He has committed plagiarism and political fraud.”
Asked if this could have been an oversight on Naidoo’s part, Padayachee remarked: “This is no oversight. He wanted credit for himself.”
Padayachee said he was writing a book on his journalistic career and feared other writers and historians would dispute his information, which Naidoo staked claim to.
“I will not allow this to go unchecked. If he continues to publish further editions of my work, he will continue to abuse my intellectual property and history will record it as that.”
Naidoo’s daughter said her father did not want to comment.

Published in Durban by Post newspaper at Independent Newspaper KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, on the 28th December 2011. Copyright Post/INKZN.