DURBAN - STRUGGLE hero Swaminathan Gounden, 90, has been immortalised in an oil painting by renowned portrait artist Collin Sabapathy.
The artwork was commissioned by the ANC for Saturday night’s celebratory dinner at the Coastlands Umhlanga Hotel in honour of the stalwart.
Gounden was decorated with the nation’s highest civilian accolade, the Order of Luthuli in silver, by President Cyril Ramaphosa during Freedom Day weekend.
Sabapathy was ecstatic to be selected to do the picture.
“I got shivers down my spine as I heard Mr Gounden’s story of struggle and sacrifice for the sake of the freedom of our country. That inspired my creative juices to depict him with the silent majesty of a Nkrumah or Nehru.”
Gounden was born in 1928 at Durban’s Magazine Barracks, a municipal compound for workers. The oppression of the workers and harsh living conditions drove him into political activism.
“My mentor was my elder brother, RK Gounden, who was a Communist and a trade unionist. He was the president of the Durban Indian Municipal Employees Society for 25 years,” said Gounden at his modest Asherville home, where he has lived for 60 years.
Gounden joined the Communist Party in 1944 and the Natal Indian Congress in 1946. He became one of the organisers of the 1946 Passive Resistance campaign, under the leadership of prominent activists, including the doctors Monty Naicker, Yusuf Dadoo and K Goonum. By 1950 he was active in the alliance with the ANC, formed to support the 1952 Defiance Campaign Against Unjust Laws - Nelson Mandela was volunteer-in-chief. “A highlight of my political life was going clandestinely to the Kliptown Conference, at which the Freedom Charter was written in 1955,” said Gounden, one of the few surviving veterans who attended the event.
Art collector and close comrade of Gounden, Dr Dilly Naidoo, said of the painting: “This is so lifelike. This is a portrait of a mellowed personality who is in deep concentration of a profound nature. The artist has portrayed Swami in a true and remarkably serious posture. This is a great portrait.”