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“I always said I was going to be a lawyer”
- Michigan State University Press
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Navanetham Pillay "I always said I was going to be a lawyer" JUDGE NAVI PILLAY DYES in a large contemporary home nestled into the hills high above Durban. In her late-fifties, she could easily be taken for thirty. Dark, like almost all the Tamils, she is of medium height, and her weight is nicely proportioned over her body. A fashionable haircut frames her attractive face. She is westernized and sophisticated. She is also tough and committed to human rights, as well as to issues pertaining to women. Her handsome husband is quiet and lately, the partner who stays closest to the nest. In the late 1970s, the childless couple adopted two daughters, Isvari and Kamini. After another long, arduous day, Navi dug into her vegetable curry and talked. She was clearly tired but within a few minutes after eating her light dinner, she bounced back. The interview included a tour of her spacious home. This house, with its outdoor pool, ballroom-sized exercise center, and well-kept gardens, is a symbol to both Navi and her husband ofhow far they have come since their respective childhoods. Both grew up poor. "I was one of seven children of Indian origin. Under the laws of this country we were strictly classified as Indian. You grow up knowing this-that you are Indian. And that the white group is better. As a child you grow up believing this. You go to the park, you can't go on the swings. Everything was reserved for whites. When we went to school the desks were all old and broken and you realize that they came from the white schools. "We lived in Clearwood, which is about six kilometers outside the center of [Durban). Talking about over forty years ago, and up until now, there is no water-borne sewerage and the roads are not tarred. So even as a child as you drove in a bus or in the car you just knew that the white areas were the pretty ones. [The black area) was infested with mosquitoes, for instance. So you grew 205 NAVANETHAM PILLAY up with mosquitoes and bedbugs. But at least we were reasonably better off than most people who lived in shacks. "My father was a bus driver and he earned about ten rand a week [less than four dollars) and I don't know how he brought up seven children. My father had never been to school but he was self-taught and spoke many languages. He was also very streetwise and very tough.... They were harassed and hounded by the police just because they were black. He would try and hold several jobs and then suddenly, he would be without any job ... all this uncertainty was brought home. We always did have food at home, though, my parents made sure of that. "My mother was not allowed to go to school. My parents are second-generation Indians-my grandparents arrived from India.... She was not allowed to go to school because her father said if girls had an education they would write letters to boys and get up to mischief. Mother self-taught herself to read a smattering of English and she learned to read Tamil. She passed on skills to us, but the one thing she stressed was education. In those days there was just one school for Indians-schools were segregated by race. In our area there was just a single school and it was difficult to get a place in the schools because of the numbers of children waiting. "You needed to enter at age six but there were ten-year-olds waiting. When I was six my mother took me. She sat quietly, timidly with me in one corner, whereas the other parents were rushing the principal. The principal turned around and said, 'Look at that woman sitting there so quietly. I am going to take her child.' I was so lucky that I got in-under six actually. Every parent got their child admitted by sheer wits or guile: they would give the wrong age for the child [for instance). School-as usual, no library books. No resources. But the teachers were highly qualified. Indian schools always concentrated on education and they still do. That is why the largest number of women attorneys come from the Indian group. "I remember that about age ten or so, somebody asked us to write a little class essay on justice. I wrote about the identical case...