Interview with Kumi Naidoo, 13 December 2023 

I was appointed as centre coordinator and I remember the people who interviewed me, were like, “oh, he’s promising, but he doesn’t have work experience”. But then I had run a children’s home at the age of 19, 20, before I fled the country to exile. And, there were several women on the selection panel and I said, “Folks, y’all will know that if you’ve run a children’s home, you learn a lot of management skills”. Anybody who’s brought up a child knows that your management skills are stretched. And I was responsible for 12 boys. So, I got the job and then immediately was being pulled into lots of the national developments and I was full of energy and enthusiasm coming back from exile. 

Laurence Stewart: I wanted to check if I… 

Kumi Naidoo: you need to be recorded? 

Laurence Stewart: Yeah. I wanted to check if I have your consent to recording?  

[Zoom voice says: recording in progress]  

Laurence Stewart: I, I have your consent, of course. Yes. Um, and your consent to do the interview?  

Kumi Naidoo: Absolutely.  

Laurence Stewart: All right. Thanks, Kumi. Since I, I’m gonna try and ask all the questions within, um, 30 minutes. Just to briefly introduce myself, I’m part of the second project. I’m a history student at Wits, um, I grew up in Johannesburg, and then, because I’m kind of in the history workshop space, I’ve been employed on this project part-time.  

Kumi Naidoo: Great, great. 

Laurence Stewart: Yes, it’s a real pleasure to have this interview with you. I’ve seen some of your videos and statements and articles. But I want to I want to start much earlier… In as much detail as you like just to speak a bit about your early life, about your parents, where you grew up, your schooling and some of your early influences.  

Kumi Naidoo: Yeah, I grew up in the township of Chatsworth in Durban. My dad was a bookkeeper. My mom was a housewife cum machinist. She used to sew women’s underwear at home to supplement the family income. And, the first influence would be obviously growing up in a township where there was lots of deprivation. The primary school that I went to did not have electricity. And, add various other deficiencies. So, you could see,, the injustice of apartheid every time you drove to town, every time you were on a bus to town because you passed all these really nice schools with many playing fields and so on. That was for the white community. And then in the community itself, there were, a range of community activists. My dad was a sports administrator in institutions that would later become part of SACOS. And we learned a lot of organisational skills from him and values from both our parents. Got involved in the boycott in 1980, as a 15-year-old and, just before that, my mom committed suicide, which was a very big kind of catalytic event in my life, which both kind of traumatised me, but also kind of raised the question where do I put all that energy into and… 

Laurence Stewart: Yeah. 

Kumi Naidoo: for me the struggle was the place to put that energy and, and basically then, you know, was expelled from school and then that became like a really good motivation to further consolidate our commitment by those of us who participated in the boycott. The expulsion actually was was a motivation in a way. And then was very actively involved in grassroots community organising, especially a youth organisation called Helping Hands Youth Organisation, and it was involved nationally within the youth movement. And lots of intensive work around the local civic association, the residents association and use of sport as a way of engaging with the anti-apartheid struggle by mobilising people around different sporting codes like athletics, swimming, and so on. And then eventually joined the underground of the ANC and became a student leader at the University of Durban Westville. My profile went up. Repression, you know, followed. Then I got a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford while I was on the run from the security police in ‘86 and then by March ‘87 I fled to Oxford to take up the Rhodes Scholarship while I was out on bail for violating the provisions of the public violence legislation. This was related to a protest that we had done at the University of Durban Westville at that time to protest against the very state of emergency that had been imposed.  

Laurence Stewart: Hmm. Um, why, uh, you said you were expelled from school, was that because of the boycotts or why did you get expelled?   

Kumi Naidoo: Correct, correct. Because of the boycotts. 

Laurence Stewart: Oh, okay. And that was about the time you were 15? 

Kumi Naidoo: I was first, well we were expelled when I was 15, but we went to court and got reinstated and then I was expelled again when I was 16, and this time I didn’t go back to school and I self-taught myself and, wrote the alternative exam, the Joint Matriculation Board exam, to finish my matric. Because by that stage, it was like kind of known that there was a very good chance that we would be, the term used then was blacklisted or victimised, which meant that even if I passed the matric exam, the Department of Indian Education, as it was known then, would likely have not let me through so as to prevent me from becoming a troublemaker at campus. 

Laurence Stewart: Mmm. Okay. You said you went to the University of Durban Westville, was that in, what year was that?  

Kumi Naidoo: Between 1983 and 1987.  

Laurence Stewart: Okay. And, uh, what, what did you study while you were there?  

Kumi Naidoo: First degree, BA law, second degree, honours in political science. 

Laurence Stewart: Oh, okay. Okay. I guess I’m just trying to get a bit too, um. So, within this trajectory, which includes all sorts of community organising, and I know you’re also part of the UDF and  

Kumi Naidoo: Yeah. 

Laurence Stewart:  And NIC… So, what prompted your focus on education through… 

Kumi Naidoo: Yeah, in three years that I was in exile, I became familiar with the work of Paulo Freire, a Brazilian adult educator. I actually wrote a chapter about education and the thinking of Paulo Freire. It was in a book edited by Mokgobong Nkomo,. I can’t remember the title of the book, but it’s quite important to analysing the state of education struggles [Added by Kumi Naidoo, 04 / 03 /2024]. Mary Metcalfe has a chapter in it as well. The former MEC for education in Gauteng. And, and of course my entry point into education was the struggle against  apartheid education. That was my first protest. And then I was a student in exile, and so education was always a kind of issue. But working on that article really made me realise that there was also, you know, a whole science to education and with different approaches to education. So, the book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire, really had a major influence on me that how we prosecute the struggle, the process of how we engage people can be as important as the product that we are seeking to get. And I came back with from exile in 1990 after Mandela’s release with that kind of fervour to go into education and was looking for jobs in the educational sector because before I got the SACHED job, I actually tried, applied for the co-ordinator position for the National Education Crisis Centre, the  NECC and was unsuccessful. I applied for another job with the community research, sort of NGO and was unsuccessful. Um, but I was gravitating to things that had an educational component to it. And then the SACHED job was, I think, the fifth job that I applied for and then I got that job.  

Laurence Stewart: Um, so just to go back a little bit. Um, you had your, um, uh, you went to the university. You got the Rhodes Scholarship and you studied overseas?  

Kumi Naidoo: At Oxford University between 1987-1990… So, I was at Oxford doing the degree but because I couldn’t come home to do my research because I, I fled. The alternative was for, one of the three years, the years 88,–89, the second year if you want. I was a visiting scholar at Yale University at the Southern African Research Program, and that allowed me to access quite a lot of materials, that I needed to, because they had amazing collections here of resistance materials and so on. So my three years was two years in Oxford and one year o at Yale University. 

Laurence Stewart: Okay. And, and what was your topic?  

Kumi Naidoo: Class, consciousness and organisation: Indian political resistance to apartheid, from 1979 to 1999.   

Laurence Stewart: Okay. Okay, so, so you had that, that period in in Oxford and then a bit at Yale, and you had to come back and do your research. You said you were applying for jobs in, in education. One, could you, uh, just give me a little bit about, um, yeah. I, I, I know you gave the longer trajectory, but at that point, what exactly made you focus on that? But also was SACHED sort of the fifth option or did you have any, was there a desire to join SACHED? Did you know about it?  

Kumi Naidoo: Yeah, no, SACHED had a very big profile within the activist movement. And ​     ​my attention was drawn to the SACHED position. In fact, I wouldn’t have thought that it was possible for me to get a job like that because SACHED had such a high profile. I’d never worked a paid job before, even though I’d done lots of volunteer stuff. Uh, but the regional education coordinator of​ COSATU​​     ​, Gino Govender was a close comrade for many years. When that job came up, he drew it to my attention and recommended that I apply for it. In my own mind, I saw it as a long shot, but I thought it would be amazing opportunity to contribute that way. And in fact, the application for that job was faxed from the COSATU Regional Office with the support of Gino Govender. 

Laurence Stewart: Okay. So, yeah, you got employed at SACHED. What year was that?  

Kumi Naidoo: Nineteen-Ninety I came back in ninety-four. Ninety-six.  

Laurence Stewart: Ninety-six?  

Kumi Naidoo: Uh, eighty-six, wait a minute. Came back after Mandela was released in 1990… No, no, I lie, in 1992.   

Laurence Stewart: Ah, ok ninety-two.  

Kumi Naidoo: Ninety-ninety-two.  

Laurence Stewart: Okay. What did you, what, what, what, what did you do, what were you employed to do and what did you do while in SACHED? 

Kumi Naidoo: I was employed as the, what was called, centre coordinator. Which was a coordinator of the Durban office. And I, in my time there, had to evaluate the existing programs, consult with the community organisations that were drawing on the programs, and then make a determination whether the programs should continue or whether we should design new programs. And the consultations yielded a desire for us to move in different directions. So, for example, rather than continuing to produce studies on the second, third, and fourth international we suspended that work and instead, based on feedback that we received and instead produced a newspaper supplement that reached the working class of KZN, which was inserted in the UMA-Africa newspaper. The supplement was called Thuthuka, and it was basically trying to promote education, adult education, but, but trying to promote educational messages. The province was in violent turmoil at that time. And for example, one of the purposes of Thuthuka was, you know, trying to promote messages of conflict resolution and so on. And yeah, and, really, was trying to look at the question of what educational needs does the society as a whole need? But also, what educational needs that the trade union movement, the NGO sector, social movements,and so on needed. And at that stage, the term was not NGO. The term describing organisations like SACHED were service organisations. Because we were there to service the interests. Uh, to service the interests of, uh, uh, the movements. 

Laurence Stewart: Mmm. Okay, and I interviewed by Jenny Glennie the other day. She mentioned that you helped work, uh, you, you worked together with her on some of the organisational structure of SACHED. 

Kumi Naidoo: Correct. 

Laurence Stewart: Can you tell me a bit about that as well?  

Kumi Naidoo: Okay, so once I was appointed as centre coordinator, well, firstly, I was a second-choice candidate, right. Because I remember the people who interviewed me, uh, were like, oh, he has, he’s promising, but he doesn’t have work experience. But  then I had run a children’s home at the age of 19, 20, before I fled the country to exile. And, there were several women on the selection panel and I said, “Folks, uh, y’all will know that if you’ve run a children’s home, You learn a lot of management skills”. Anybody who’s brought up, uh, you know, A child knows that your management skills are stretched. And I was responsible for 12 boys. So, I got the job and then immediately was being pulled into lots of the national developments and I was full of energy and, uh, you know, enthusiasm coming back from exile. The country was at the critical moment and you know. I think, you know, we easily routinely worked 20-hour days during that time, you know. It just, and it didn’t even seem onerous because the energy of the moment just drove you. So, there was a joke that people used to say, “if you can’t find people from COSATU, SACHED, and the ANC in the offices, you should go to the airports because you’re probably travelling from one city to the other” and because I was like [laughs] travelling so much and so one of the things that I found was that the organisation was not fit for purpose in terms of its structures. So, there was a to reform the organisational structure. There was a guy called Keith Peacock, who had been brought on as a consultant to lead that process. I served as his, sort of, deputy OD person and in addition to being the centre coordinator, I was you know, helping running this workshop in different provinces and at different centres across the country. I learned a lot but  I don’t know how much I contributed to that in a meaningful way, but I certainly learned a lot from the process.  

Laurence Stewart: Mmm. And just about your educational, the educational supplement that you helped run was… So, SACHED had quite a lot of different educational supplements during its time. So, this was a much later one in the 1990s. But did it follow the model of the previous ones?  

Kumi Naidoo: Well, for one, this was done in Zulu. Okay. Uh, the, so that was different. Secondly, it was consciously aimed at adult learners more than young pupils. But overall, you know. It drew on the Learning Nation experience. And then when I became, in a year’s time, when I moved to Joburg to take up the National Director for Educational Outreach position, and join the management team of SACHED nationally, in that role of Director of Outreach. I then negotiated with Argus now independent newspapers for a range of education supplements that would go in all the newspapers and then that one there tended to be a little more if you want, curriculum-based. Even though it had, you know, similar education, but it was aimed at getting high quality educational resources into the hands of teachers at high schools and primary schools where they didn’t have educational materials. 

Laurence Stewart: Yes. Could you just, uh, just to get the dates right, so you joined in 1992 and you were doing the… You were working at the centre in Durban, checking programs, you did the newspaper supplement Tutuka, you also helped with the national structures. Then, did you then move to Joburg after doing all of that? And what year was that?  

Kumi Naidoo: Ninety-three. 

Laurence Stewart: Oh, okay. and you stayed in Joburg? I’m working on the big structures…  

Kumi Naidoo: Sorry, sorry. Sorry, I started with SACHED, I got there in 91.  

Laurence Stewart: Okay, okay.  

Kumi Naidoo: And, uh, yeah.  

Laurence Stewart: Okay, and you stayed… 

Kumi Naidoo: By ‘92 I was in Joburg.  

Laurence Stewart: By 94 you were in Joburg. And you stayed until? 

Kumi Naidoo: ’92. And I stayed till 1994. 

Laurence Stewart: Okay. 

Kumi Naidoo: Okay. And, and, but 1994, I was splitting my time between SACHED and the National Literacy Coalition, which is, which was a coalition that SACHED belonged to. And then eventually I left SACHED to go and work full time for the National Literacy Coalition.  

Laurence Stewart: Mmm. Why did you leave SACHED? 

Kumi Naidoo: I think it was less leaving SACHED and more joining the National Literacy Coalition, the NLC. Because SACHED was involved in a range of educational developments, including running a printing press, SACHED books, specific magazines and so on. And I was more inclined to put my energies specifically on adult education and adult basic education. Given that that’s where the most educationally poor of our people were, and the NLC was focused on that specifically. And with the elections coming and most people not being able to read the ballot forms. I thought that the NLC would be a way also to contribute to voter education, which is what they, what we did. 

Laurence Stewart: Mmm. Yeah, sorry to slightly just change the kinds of questions I’m asking. Um, but just in the interest of time. I just want to ask a few general questions about your time in SACHED. For example, uh, could you tell me a bit about the culture of, of SACHED? Your, your perception of the culture…  

Kumi Naidoo: Well, the culture was best described by, um, the Grahamstown leader called Mzu. Uh, when he said, “we do a lot of navel grazing at SACHED” He meant to say “navel gazing”. You know, “there was quite a lot of navel grazing happening at SACHED too” [laughs] And I think the culture that I found was on the positive side; confident, courageous, amazing people with like track records that were very impressive. Courage, courageous organisations where, you know, people attack it, faced oppression and so on. Good at working in partnership and so on and very, very high quality, very high premium placed on methodology, the quality of the educational output, you know, and all of that. On the negative side, I would say very, the navel gazing comment is very sort of inward looking. A lot of the time, far too much of arrogance sometimes, like, like a know-it-all attitude. And far too much of internal posturing, you know, so too much of resources went into fighting people within SACHED because of different, you know, views and factions and fractions and very minor, you know ideological conflicts were made in, you know, much bigger than they should have been made. And the negative side, it also had, uh, a lot of that and I guess one of the problems of SACHED is, is today what people will call a structurally racist organisation. Uh, in the sense if you look at who were in the leadership and who controlled decision making and so on, you didn’t have a full sense that that demographic represented the country as it was then or now. 

Laurence Stewart: Was, was that more with the leadership or the, or, or including the funders or? 

Kumi Naidoo: Both. 

Laurence Stewart: Okay. Um, you have, you kind of touched on it just in your previous, uh, statements, but, could you speak a bit about the tensions then within SACHED? So, things which kind of came up as, as tensions. Yeah. With some of these negatives or issues.  

Kumi Naidoo: Yeah. So, I was there for only three years. And it was a particular time between 1991 to 1993. And during that time, you know, there were lots of tensions about how we relate to ANC and all of that. And, like, I, for example, there was a request for me that came from Walter Sisulu for me to be seconded to the ANC’s media division for the election. And that was all kind of in process and happening until the NLC approached me to head up the National Literacy Coalition and then I made a decision to do that rather than go into the, to be seconded role to the ANC. And but, like, you know, there were lots of people in the SACHED who correctly didn’t want to be slavish to the ANC and had reservations about, about how the ANC would use its power. And it turns out that those reservations were very, very well placed. And, um, and, so yeah, so some of the tensions tended to be around those ideological things. Funding was changing during that period because now the ANC and the other liberation structures were now in the country and donors were more inclined to fund those institutions rather than to fund, you know NGOs. And you had Mandela there as the head of the ANC, everybody wanted to, you know, fund government directly and so on. So, there were funding challenges emerged during that time as well. And purpose challenges, clarifying your purpose. And I think part of the reason that SACHED didn’t survive is that we did not invest properly in trying to understand what could be our purpose in a changing society. And many people in leadership, or some people in leadership, powerful leadership positions were focused on where they would land in the new dispensation and less on exactly how could we make sure that SACHED actually survived the transition process. So, I’m afraid to say, I’m on time. So, what I would suggest is: why don’t you send me the remainder of the questions. I’ll try to send you voice notes, answers to them.  

Laurence Stewart: Okay.  

Kumi Naidoo: By WhatsApp. And then, and then if it’s necessary, after Christmas we can have another conversation. And I understand that you’re in touch with my colleague Colin, right?  

Laurence Stewart: Yes, I did speak to Colin, yes, yeah. 

Kumi Naidoo: And he knows, uh, what I had in my archive, which is with the documentation centre at UKZN. And we can try and access for you.   

Laurence Stewart: Yes, he did send me some stuff, just, I know you have to go, but he did send me some stuff and, uh, it we’re not trying to take things out of other archives at all. If it’s there, it’s great. Um, but just to add to our internal List, you know, collection of documents that was, and people found the documents very interesting. So that’s also useful. Yeah.  

Kumi Naidoo: Okay, great. Great.  

Laurence Stewart: Um, okay. Okay. So, on WhatsApp, I’ll just send you my number and then, or something. Well, I’ll send you the question by email. 

Kumi Naidoo: Send me an email, send me an email with your WhatsApp number and the questions that you would’ve asked me… And I would try and send it back to you. And then if after you reviewed that, you still need to talk to me again, then let’s talk in the new year about trying to set up a talk. 

Laurence Stewart: Alright. Thank you so much, Kumi. I appreciate it.  

Kumi Naidoo: Good luck with everything. Take care. All the best. Cheers. Bye. Bye.