THE CONSTANT GARDNER

A Memoir of Colin Oxenham Gardner, Anti-Apartheid Activist and Academic

Mary Gardner

During the apartheid era Pietermaritzburg was home to a significant number of liberal figures. Among them was Colin Gardner, professor of English at the University of Natal, who after retirement became the first speaker of the Msunduzi Council. He died in 2013 and in this memoir has been written by his wife Mary with additional contributions from activists and academics. The details of Colin's career in university and public life reflect a vanishing world. He did not have a doctorate, nor publish a major book. Instead, he concentrated on teaching, influencing many minds and subsequent careers; on reviewing; and on conference papers and articles in journals. His writing included many letters to and opinion pieces in the local press. Thus, the overlap with his civil society persona. He was involved with a wide range of organisations that reflected his concerns for humanity and the environment. As a committed Catholic, there was early involvement in the student Christian movement. As a political activist he was a prominent member of the Liberal Party until its forced dissolution in 1968. In the 1980s he was involved with organisations affiliated to the United Democratic Front, which led to membership of the ANC. A post-retirement role in local government took him into the realm of social issues mainly through Community Chest and the board of Edendale Hospital. This memoir adds to a growing number of publications recording the lives of liberals associated with Pietermaritzburg - Alan Paton, Colin Webb, Peter Brown and Deneys Schreiner, for instance - whose links with the Congress movement and other anti-aparheid organisations gave the city a distinctive history under National Party rule. Mary Gardner has drawn extensively on Colin's long series of notebooks, which he called 'Notes and Queries', containing diary type entries and other reflections. Many are poetic and some of this poetry is reproduced here. This use of Colin's voice gives the book specific immediacy. The overall impression is of a person of conscience wrestling with the triple demands of work, political activism and family against the background of an increasingly repressive society. Colin was a child during the London blitz of World War II before his family moved to South Africa in 1948 and this book reflects, too, the dilemmas of the immigrant and the ambiguities of connections with a past that is distant in more than one way.

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