SON OF THE SOIL: Durbanite Chengiah “Rogers” Ragavan was a student leader and peer of Steve Biko, whose death he mourned from exile. Photo: Supplied
During the turbulent years of the 1960s and 1970s, when South Africa’s campuses were alive with protest and apartheid’s repression was tightening its grip, hundreds of young scholars fled into exile across Africa and beyond. Among them was Dur- ban-born Chengiah “Rogers” Ragavan, a student leader and later an exile academic whose life embodied courage, intellect, and conviction. He passed away recently at the age of 95.
In exile, Ragavan was deeply shaken by the 12 September 1977 death in detention of his close friend and comrade, Steve Biko. The news reached him in London, where he had fled following years of police surveillance and political banning orders. For Ragavan, Biko’s killing symbolised the cruelty of the apart- heid state and renewed his deter- mination to keep the struggle alive through scholarship, solidarity, and moral advocacy.
A year earlier, in the watershed year of 1976, Soweto’s schoolchildren exploded into the streets in protests against apartheid’s education policy. The aftermath was horrific and alerted the world to the Afrikaner regime’s genocide: Upwards of 700, with the official figure of 176, were killed and thousands more were injured or detained, and some died in detention, and hundreds fled into exile – mainly into the arms of then banned [and exiled] ANC. The protests, triggered by the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruc- tion, led to widespread violence from 16 June 1976 to the rest of the black week when police reacted with tear gas and live ammunition.
The nationwide incident strengthened the resolve of the Biko-Ragavan generation of revolting students. Rogers Ragavan was far more than a student politician. He was a bridge between movements and generations, a thinker who fused the intellectual and the spiritual dimen- sions of liberation. As a friend and ally of Biko, and as a believer in the Black Consciousness philosophy articulated by Saths Cooper, Strini Moodley, Aubrey Mokoape, and Barney Pityana, he helped build a vision of freedom rooted in self- awareness and human dignity.
Born in the 1930s in Isipingo, Ragavan studied at the University of Natal’s “Non-European” section — the same campus where Biko later read medicine. He became president of the university’s first black Student Representative Council and went on to serve as vice-president of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS). His activism soon drew the atten- tion of the apartheid security branch. In December 1967, he was banned under the Suppression of Communism Act — confined to Durban and prohibited from teach- ing or studying. The ban effectively ended his formal education. Exile became not an escape but a continuation of resistance.
In the late 1960s he left South Africa for Britain, joining a growing community of political exiles that included journalist Govin Reddy, medical doctor Kesaveloo Goonum Naidoo, academic Pitika Ntuli, and non-racial sports pioneer Sam Ramsamy. Communication in those pre-digital years came through long-hand letters, often delayed or censored.Ragavan’s letters to me carried not only personal news but also encouragement and reflection — calm, deliberate, and suffused with faith that justice would one day prevail.
Back home in Durban, his younger brother, Betsy Ragavan, became the custodian of Rogers’s memory during those long years of separa- tion. Working at an oil refinery in south Durban, Betsy kept family, friends, and fellow activists informed about Rogers’s life abroad, ensuring his story remained part of the wider anti-apartheid narrative.
Later, while pursuing postgraduate studies in the United Kingdom and lecturing in Canada, Ragavan remained an active part of South Africa’s international solidarity net- work. He engaged with liberation movements, contributed to political education programmes, and mentored younger exiles who would later return to help rebuild the new South Africa. It was during this time that he introduced many of us to the writings of Noam Chomsky — the American public intellectual whose critiques of imperialism and power structures shaped Ragavan’s own outlook.
Chomsky’s libertarian socialism and belief in grassroots democracy deeply resonated with him. These ideas, he believed, offered moral and philosophical guidance not only for resistance but also for governance in a liberated society. Even from afar, Ragavan followed events in South Africa closely. He wrote letters and essays to activists, journalists, and academics, reflecting on the unfinished work of freedom and cautioning against the moral complacency that can fol- low liberation.
In his later years, he often expressed concern that the democratic ideals he had sacrificed so much for were being eroded by corruption and inequality — current chapters of democracy that continue to haunt us. Last Sunday, family, friends, and comrades gathered at the Clare Estate Hindu Crematorium in Durban to bid farewell to a son of Isipingo who rose to national prominence on the same platforms as Biko and his NUSAS contemporaries.
The crematorium, surrounded today by informal settlements, symbolised the unfinished journey from oppression to true social justice that defined his life’s work. Those who knew him described him as gentle yet firm, philosophical yet pragmatic — one of the quiet revolutionaries whose contribution was measured not in slogans or self- promotion, but in integrity and constancy. “He never gave up on South Africa,” said one former student activist at the memorial. “Even when far away, his heart remained here.”
Ragavan’s story is part of a broader narrative of the intellectuals and activists who carried the torch of liberation beyond South Africa’s borders. His exile years mirror those of a generation whose struggle was waged not with arms but with words, classrooms, and ideas — a generation that sought to humanise politics and awaken conscience.
Throughout the decades, his brother Betsy kept that flame alive at home. When local newspapers were still heavily censored, Betsy would share Rogers’s letters and photo- graphs with friends and community members, reminding them that the struggle’s reach extended from Durban’s townships to distant university halls abroad.
For me, as a fellow activist and chronicler of that generation, Ragavan’s passing feels personal. I recall his disciplined handwrit- ing, his reflections on justice, and his calm belief that truth, though delayed, was inevitable. His life, like that of many who went into exile, was marked by longing — for family, for home, for the freedom that came too late for so many of his peers.
Rogers Ragavan’s legacy is one of intellect and principle, of a man who refused to surrender his ideals to the machinery of apartheid or the moral compromises of politics. He exemplified a generation whose faith in humanity never wavered, even in the face of repression, isolation, and loss. He leaves behind his family, com- rades, and a rich archive of thought and correspondence that illuminate one of South Africa’s darkest yet most defining eras.
As we remember him, we remem- ber too the fraternity of those years — men and women who sacrificed comfort for conscience, who believed that the liberation of the self was inseparable from the liberation of society.
May Rogers Ragavan’s soul find eternal peace in the freedom he helped shape.
Marlan Padayachee is a veteran political, foreign and diplomatic correspondent, freelance journalist and researcher.