Durban - The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal has sent its condolences to the family of ANC struggle stalwart Prithiraj (Pritz) Dullay who passed away in Denmark on Thursday.
Spokesperson of the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal Ricardo Mthembu, said Dully had been an ANC exile in Denmark until 1992.
He recently returned to Denmark to care for his daughter who had been in a serious accident.
Details of his death is not known.
According to the ANC, Prithiraj Dullay cut his political teeth in the Black Consciousness Movement and was a contemporary and confidant of Steve Biko.
"It is an uncanny coincidence that they were both born on the same day in the same year," said Mthembu.
He said Dullay came from a politically consciousness family.
"His grandparents were imprisoned during the great 1913 strike of Indian indentured workers on the sugar plantations which brought the entire colony to a standstill.
"His father was active in the Natal Indian Congress which has enjoyed a formal fraternal relationship with the ANC since the Three Doctors Pact of 1947.
"That agreement united the Natal and Transvaal Indian Congresses with the ANC in the run up to the 1952 Defiance Campaign, the 1955 Freedom Charter, the 1956 Treason Trial and subsequently the armed struggle."
As a young student at the Springfield College of Education, Dullay served in the SRC and was arrested for the first time in 1968.
His activism extended to working with depressed communities in areas like the Springfield flats where they built a hall that was later destroyed when the entire settlement was washed away by flood.
He was active in the Black Community Programmes and the Student Christian Movement as a platform of struggle even though he was a Hindu by faith.
He qualified as a teacher and worked in Port Shepstone where he was born. Many of the pupils he politicised then remain in active politics today.
Dullay's political work associated with the 1976 Soweto Uprising that spread to all parts of the country and was sustained for a year, saw him face further Security Branch harassment and arrest.
He and his wife and comrade Mala, subsequently fled into exile in 1978 and joined the ANC attracted by its vision of a national democratic society.
"They worked in various places including the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College in Tanzania. They were granted political asylum in Denmark where they continued the political work of the ANC in Scandinavia."
After the unbanning of the ANC, Dullay insisted on returning home at the earliest date. He continued his activism and worked at the Durban University of Technology among other places.
He spearheaded the campaign to have one of the Durban University of Technology campuses named in honour of Steve Biko.
Dullay penned an autobiography titled Saltwater Runs in My Veins. Dullay distinguished himself as an activist, an intellectual and a patriot.
"We record his name in the annals (record of events year by year) of the struggle for South African freedom as a comrade who gave his all for his country so that our people may enjoy freedom and democracy.
"The African National Congress joins his family and loved ones in grieving his passing and extends the condolences of the movement," concluded Mthembu.
Dullay's funeral is likely to be in Denmark but his wishes to have his ashes brought to Port Shepstone, KwaZulu Natal will be honoured.