Yusuf Dadoo

Yusuf Mohamed Dadoo (5 September 1909 – 19 September 1983) was a South African physician and politician, and a leader of the anti-apartheid movement. ^{1 2} He was president of the South African Indian Congress (1950–1952), a leader of the 1952 Defiance Campaign, and chairman of the South African Communist Party from 1972 until his death in exile in London. ¹

Yusuf Dadoo was born in Krugersdorp, in the West Rand, on 5 September 1909; his parents, Mohammed and Fatima Dadoo, were Gujarati Muslim immigrants from Surat in western India. ¹ At fifteen he was sent to Aligarh College in India to complete his schooling; he then studied medicine in London before transferring to the University of Edinburgh, where he took his medical degree (LRCPS) in 1936 and read Marxist literature among fellow students from across the British Empire. ¹

He returned to South Africa in 1936, set up a medical practice in Doornfontein, Johannesburg, and joined the Transvaal Indian Congress, founding a nationalist bloc within it in 1939 that pressed for passive resistance; he then joined the Communist Party of South Africa. ¹ With Monty Naicker he led the Natal Indian Congress passive resistance campaign of 1946–1948, and in 1947 the two of them, with Alfred Bitini Xuma, signed the "three doctors' pact" of cooperation between the ANC and the Indian congresses. ¹

Elected president of the South African Indian Congress in 1950, he was deputy chair of the Defiance Campaign's planning council; in 1952 the government banned him and ordered him to resign. ¹ In 1953 he helped secretly reconstitute the party as the South African Communist Party and chaired its central committee. ¹ After the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 he worked underground for several months before the movement smuggled him into exile in London as its international spokesperson. ¹ In 1972 he was unanimously elected chairman of the SACP on the death of J. B. Marks, and held the post until his own death. ¹

He died of prostate cancer in London on 19 September 1983 and was given a Muslim burial, at his own behest, at Highgate Cemetery, a few metres from the grave of Karl Marx. ¹

His documented joint work includes the 1947 Joint Declaration of Cooperation with Xuma and Naicker, and his central role in building the alliance of the SACP, the ANC and the Indian congresses. ¹ He received the Isitwalandwe/Seaparankoe award in 1955, the Soviet Order of Friendship of Peoples in 1979, the Order of Georgi Dimitrov in 1980, and South Africa's Order for Meritorious Service in gold in 2003, after his death. ¹ A primary school and a hospital in Krugersdorp were named after him, and centenary celebrations were held at the University of Johannesburg in 2009. ¹

This section sets out positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum.

The sources present Dadoo's public position as Marxist-Leninist commitment joined to non-violent mass resistance: the passive resistance campaign of 1946–1948 and the Defiance Campaign of 1952. ¹ Nelson Mandela's message to the 2009 centenary called him "one of the giants of our country's struggle for freedom" and one "of the founders of a democratic South Africa". ¹ The article also records that the apartheid government immediately banned the memorial meeting and tribute pamphlets issued after his death. ¹

His personal belief is not stated in the cited sources: the English article records his Gujarati Muslim parentage, files him under "South African Muslims", and records his Muslim burial at his own behest, but names no school and makes no statement of atheism; his faith field therefore stays unknown in his record. ^{1 2}

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
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