Kay Moonsamy, who has died at the age of 90, was a treason triallist who devoted much of his life to the struggle against apartheid.
He was a diehard communist — known as "the last Bolshevik south of the Umgeni" — who never stopped fighting for, and believing in, the ultimate defeat of capitalism.
Born in Durban on July 5 1926, he started working as a factory hand at the age of 14 to help support his family. He joined the trade union movement as soon as he was old enough, to improve the deplorable working conditions and exploitative wages he and his colleagues were exposed to.
When he was 18 he joined the Communist Party of South Africa, and five years later was elected to the party's Durban committee.
At the same time he became involved in the vicious struggle between the progressive and conservative wings of the Natal Indian Congress. He lined up with the progressives under the leadership of Monty Naicker. They formed what they called the "anti-segregation council" to oppose the racist Kajee-Pather group which saw the anti-apartheid struggle in exclusive Indian terms and refused to have anything to do with black anti-apartheid groups led by the ANC.
He was at the forefront of a recruitment drive which resulted in more than 30,000 progressives joining the Natal Indian Congress and voting in a new, dynamic leadership under Naicker's presidency. The defeat of the Kajee-Pather bloc was an important turning point for the Natal Indian community, which began to adopt a far more radical approach to the anti-apartheid struggle.
Having got rid of the obstructive influence of the Kajee-Pather faction, the Natal Indian Congress joined the Transvaal Indian Congress in organising the passive resistance campaign against residential segregation. They famously defied the law by occupying a piece of land at the intersection of Gale Street and Umbilo Road in Durban on June 13 1946. They were tried under the Riotous Assemblies Act and convicted.Hard labour
Moonsamy was put behind bars at Durban Central Prison on his 20th birthday. He was sentenced to four months of hard labour, which he served on a farm in Ixopo, in Natal.
After the Suppression of Communism Act was passed in 1950 he began working for the Communist Party of South Africa underground. He was active in collecting lists of demands from workers to be incorporated in the Freedom Charter, which was adopted at Kliptown, Soweto, in June 1955.
In 1956 he was arrested with 155 other leaders of the Congress Movement and charged with treason. The Treason Trial dragged on until 1961, when all were acquitted. By this time Moonsamy had got to know fellow triallists, notably Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, quite well.
After the 1960 state of emergency following the Sharpeville massacre, Moonsamy spent most of his time underground. He still helped organise the three-day national protest in May 1961 which did much to publicise the struggle against apartheid.
In 1963 he was served with a banning order and a month later convicted and jailed for breaking it.
Although Indians were not allowed to be ANC members, in 1965, when the ANC asked him to go into exile, he did so. He left behind his young, unemployed wife and four young children, including his nine-month-old son. He didn't see them again for 15 years until they met in 1980 in Swaziland.
After leaving he spent three years in Botswana before being sent to ANC headquarters in Lusaka, where he was involved in preparing for the party's consultative conference in Morogoro, Tanzania, in 1969, at which membership of the ANC was finally opened up to Indians, whites and coloureds.
In 1978 Moonsamy went to New Delhi as the ANC's chief representative in India.
He was treasurer-general of the South African Congress of Trade Unions between 1983 and 1987, and in 1989 became the last president of Sactu.
Before returning from exile in 1991 he was involved in the formulation and development of the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Tanzania.
In 1999 the ANC sent him to parliament, where he was an MP for 10 years. In 2015 President Jacob Zuma presented him with the Order of Luthuli.
His wife, Kendhri, died in 2011. Moonsamy is survived by six children.
1926-2017..