Veteran South African Tamil activist honoured

A veteran South African Tamil activist was honoured here for devoting his life to the promotion of Indian languages in the country.

Mickey Chetty, who played a key role in getting Tamil and Hindi languages included in the syllabus of government schools in South Africa, was presented with a painting at the annual Bharathiar Awards organised here last night.

The painting shows him seated in the robes he wore when he received an honorary doctorate from the Bharath University in Chennai in March.

The awards, named after Indian writer, poet, journalist, Indian independence activist and social reformer from Tamil Nadu Chinnaswami Subramania Bharathi, also honoured a number of educationalist for devoting their lives to the promotion of the Tamil language in South Africa.
 

In his community involvement of more than three decades, Chetty served as President of the South African Tamil Federation for more than twelve years, pioneering a number of projects and raising the profile of the Tamil community at all levels in South Africa.

He is currently the President for Africa of the International Movement for Tamil Culture. He also helped revive the annual Children's Tamil Eisteddfod in the country.

Chetty told PTI that while he has been recognised for his role in promoting Tamil culture, everything that he had achieved was done collectively with many local, regional and national organisations and in the interests of all sections of the South African community.

"Bursary programmes which we started have benefited not just members of the Tamil community, but all communities in South Africa in a variety of fields. We have today many professionals who acknowledge that they would never have become the doctors, lawyers, musicians or other professionals that they are without the support of the bursaries form the Tamil Federation.

"The efforts to promote the Tamil language locally in South Africa have now spread throughout the world in such efforts as the Diaspora Tamil Teachers' Diploma Course, where 45 South Africans have already graduated, and the 21 South Africans who have undergone a Tamil Priest's Diploma course at Bharath University," Chetty said.

"We are now preparing to send first Black South African Shadrack Ntuli to qualify as a priest in Chennai," he said.

The Tamil community makes up more than 60 per cent of the 1.4 million South African citizens of Indian-origin, largely descended from the first settlers who came to the country from 1860 to work as indentured labourers on sugar cane plantations.