Award for book on Durban’s Casbah

Durban — Renowned social scientist Ashwin Desai was utterly surprised following the announcement that a book he had co-written with fellow academic Goolam Vahed had won the award for best monograph at the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS) this week.

The book, titled Durban’s Casbah, looks at the many facets of Durban, exploring how the port city has been a melting pot of many cultures through the years.

The NIHSS book awards is a prestigious event among academics.

“The NIHSS is our pre-eminent organisation, and so when your work gets recognised it gives you a sense of comfort, joy and satisfaction that all the effort in researching and burning the midnight oil was worth it,” Desai told the Sunday Tribune on Saturday.

For Desai, one of the challenges for academics and researchers is to produce work that the general public can relate to, and this was one of the tasks they set out for themselves. He explained how researching the book took them back to their much younger days – they are now in their sixties.

“My co-author and I grew immensely during the research of the book and got to experience what our predecessors experienced when walking the streets of Durban years ago,” Desai said.

For the academic, a major oversight in the past has been that many books published with a historical account have looked at leading figures during the Struggle, neglecting the masses that were part of the movement towards liberation.

He believes that there is space to explore how ordinary people navigate their way under difficult circumstances.

“As we are digging deeper into our democracy, we are finding some amazing stories of ordinary people that were part of the Struggle, and it is important for these to be told,” Desai added.

He said that while the book explores the historical account, it also provides a snapshot of how life in the port city has moved in a cycle-like fashion and why Durban continues to be a central point for many people and cultures.

“We are a global influencer and it is reflected in the people that have walked the streets of Durban in the past and have shaped our way of thinking, from Phyllis Naidoo to Steve Biko, so it is no wonder that we continue to attract different pathfinders, from the arts to other fields,” he said.

Desai added that he was grateful to the NIHSS for both the award and the work that it does.

Sunday Tribune