Ashwin Desai: we are the poors

Abstract

Ashwin Desai is a public intellectual and political activist whose oppositional stance is evident in his willingness to ask 'embarrassing questions' and in his quest 'to confront orthodoxy and dogma', as well as his 'spirit of opposition, rather than accommodation', all on 'behalf of underrepresented and disadvantaged groups'. From his early political involvement as a defiant school student in the early 1970s to his political and academic activism during the post-apartheid era, he has been consistent in his quest for social justice for marginalised communities. Desai was born in Isipingo, Durban, on 15 January 1959. The second of two children of a schoolteacher and housewife, Desai went to school in Springfield, Asherville and several other areas in Durban before completing his secondary education at Chatsworth Hugh School. He was a very rebellious teenager, and, despite the numerous significant political events taking place in the area at the time, such as the 1973 Durban strikes and the 1974 Viva Frelimo rallies, these had little impact on him. After completing his schooling in the mid-1970s, he worked as a salesman for Woolfson Bros, and as a waiter at the Admiral Hotel, before spending a year in London. Thereafter he registered for a degree in journalism at Rhodes University, with the intention of becoming a journalist. Desai then completed a BA honours and an MA in sociology at Rhodes University, and a doctorate in sociology at Michigan University as the holder of a Fulbright Scholarship while lecturing at Rhodes University and the University of Durban-Westville.