Early Life
Yusuf was born on 5 September 1909 in Krugersdorp, in the West Rand, near Johannesburg. His parents, Mohammed and Fatima Dadoo, were Muslim immigrants from Western India. As a young child he had the formative experience of being scolded by his mother for climbing a tree in his neighbourhood park, which was reserved for white people only. At age 10, the Krugersdorp Municipality attempted to evict his father from his shop on racial grounds, but he was successfully defended in court by Mohandas Gandhi. In high school, Yusuf attended meetings by former stalwarts of Gandhi, and along with Ismail Cachalia and other schoolmates, raised funds and awareness for the All India National Congress. At age 15, he presided over a protest organised and led by visiting Indian poet Sarojini Naidu against the proposed Class Areas Bill. Later that year, he was sent to Aligarh College in India to complete his schooling, as the Johannesburg Indian Government School did not offer secondary education up to matriculation level.
Read more about this topic: Yusuf Dadoo
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it’s your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.”
—June Jordan (b. 1939)
“There’s night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there’s likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?”
—George Borrow (1803–1881)