Abu Baker Asvat

Abu Baker Asvat (23 February 1943 – 27 January 1989), also known as Abu Asvat

or Abu nicknamed Hurley was a South African medical doctor who practised in Soweto in the 1970s and 1980s.

A founding member of Azapo, Asvat was the head of its health secretariat, and involved in initiatives aimed at improving the health of rural black South Africans during Apartheid.

He initially embraced an attempt by Ali Bacher in the late 1970s to allow black teams to compete at white grounds ("Normal Cricket"), however, he became disillusioned after realising that facilities at white cricket venues remained racially segregated.

He co-founded the Transvaal Cricket Board (TCB), which rejected Bacher's "multi-racial" approach to the sport, which the TCB saw as perpetuating the racial divisions of apartheid, and instead embraced a "non-racial" vision, which rejected Apartheid racial divisions.

The TCB organised successful boycotts against Normal Cricket initiatives, and the TCB league grew under Asvat's leadership.

During the 1976 Soweto Uprising, Asvat treated numerous children who were shot by the police, and his surgery was guarded by residents of a nearby squatter camp.

His activities made him known in political circles, and he soon came to be called "the people's doctor" in Soweto.

Asvat also opened a creche and soup kitchen for residents of Soweto's informal settlements.

In contrast to other township doctors, Asvat projected a humble image, and insisted on patients calling him "Abu".

He used the methods of the Brazilian radical educationalist Paolo Freire to guide his work with grassroots communities.

Asvat was drawn to the black consciousness movement in the aftermath of the 1976 uprising, which represented the only above-ground resistance movement in Soweto, at the time, and he was attracted to Steve Biko's conception of blackness.

He was an important link between Lenasia, the Indian township that he lived in, and neighbouring Soweto, discarding the racial and social taboos of the time.

Asvat married his wife Zorah in 1977, and they had three children.

After returning to South Africa when he completed his studies, Asvat obtained a post at Johannesburg's Coronation Hospital (now Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital).

He became increasingly politicised when observing the racism of the white senior staff, segregated facilities, and racially unequal pay and conditions.

He was fired after he confronted a white pharmaceutical representative who refused to speak to black doctors.

Asvat took over a small surgery in Soweto from his brother, and soon established a thriving practice, often treating more than 100 patients a day, often on a pro bono basis.

Asvat was beaten, and had his life threatened by a Special Branch policeman in 1978, as part of an ongoing campaign of harassment.

Although committed to the Black Consciousness movement he was known to be non-sectarian and worked with a wide range of anti-apartheid forces.

Asvat, a keen cricketer, was involved in the desegregation of the sport in the Transvaal.

He played for a team called The Crescents in Lenasia.

By the mid-1980s, Asvat was commonly quoted in major newspapers, and became a prominent voice in the anti-apartheid movement on health issues.

Asvat voluntarily stepped down as leader of the TCB in 1981, but remained a cricketer for the rest of his life, playing for the Crescents, and organising a junior league in the late 1980s.

In 1982, Azapo created the Community Health Awareness Project (Chap).

As part of this initiative, Asvat and others would travel throughout South Africa on weekends, towing medically equipped caravans funded by Asvat, providing healthcare to neglected non-urban areas, sometimes treating between 150 and 500 patients in a weekend, and providing health lectures to groups of up to 6 000 people.

In 1984, as part of this project, he compiled a 20 page manual on basic healthcare.

Thousands of copies were distributed, in English, Sotho, Northern Sotho and Zulu.

He also worked with the Black Allied Mining and Construction Workers Union (BAMWCU) to expose conditions in South Africa's asbestos mining towns, where children played in exposed mine dumps, and asbestosis was common in mineworkers.

Asvat and his associates also traveled to the Vaal Triangle during unrest in there in 1984, to treat those hurt in the violence, and to document injuries inflicted by the apartheid security forces.

Asvat hired anti-apartheid activist Albertina Sisulu to work as his nurse, in 1984.

Sisulu was the wife of then-imprisoned ANC leader Walter Sisulu and a co-president of the United Democratic Front (UDF).

In 1988, he criticised the apartheid government's handling of the emerging AIDS epidemic.

He also had a regular column in The Sowetan where he answered readers' health questions.

In 1989, Asvat was shot dead in his clinic, and he died in the arms of his nurse, Albertina Sisulu.

His death has been linked to that of Stompie Seipei four weeks earlier, with allegations that Winnie Mandela (whose personal physician Asvat was) paid for his murder as part of a cover-up of Seipei's killing, being presented to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Asvat was born in Fietas into Gujarati Indian family.

His father was a migrant shopkeeper, and he had two brothers.

After attending the local high school, Asvat travelled to South Asia for his tertiary education, spending time in East Pakistan and West Pakistan, completing his medical studies in Karachi.

While in Karachi, Asvat was involved in the student politics, founded a student organisation affiliated to the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), and hosted its cadres en route to China.