“By 1920, the Keshavjees, having established flourishing general dealerships, began to diversify and expand their interests. Velshi Keshavjee acquired the ABC Bakery, a tiny business in a tin shanty that made deliveries by horse and cart. He bought out the owner, a Chinese man who had gone bankrupt, modernised the bakery and put in the latest equipment and machinery. Under Rajabali, Velshi’s eldest son, it became the eleventh most advanced bakery in the country. Rajabali was an enterprising businessman and a progressive thinker. As a young boy, he had lived at Tolstoy Farm, the satyagrahi settlement that Mahatma Gandhi had established in 1910 at Lawley on the outskirts of Johannesburg. So he was interested in the political movements of the time and in social upliftment and supported the work of the Indian Congresses.
His large, spacious house behind the bakery became a guesthouse for many prominent political figures. As there was no hotel accommodation for people of colour in the area at that time, when the Kajees (A.I. Kajee was chairman of the Natal Indian Congress in the 1940s) came to Pretoria, they went straight to Rajabali’s home at the bakery. In 1952, Rehmtulla, Rajabali’s son, took part in the Defiance Campaign and marched to Germiston Location in Patrick Duncan’s batch, which also included Mrs Thayanayagie Pillay. His involvement in politics brought people like Ahmed Kathrada and Walter Sisulu to the bakery. Though their visits were very discreet, the police were aware of the activities at the bakery and raided it frequently” (Muthal Naidoo, 2008)
http://gonashgo.blogspot.ca/2009/12/534weaving-together-keshavjee-family.html
Ismailimail 