Legacy of integrity and exemplar to all
A life of substance, fortitude and uncompromising values
NOT UNLIKE the man – Nelson Mandela – whom he looked up to more than any other, Ahmed Kathrada leaves South Africans with a durable exemplar undiminished by his death at 87 in the early hours yesterday.
He was scrupulous in recording, engagingly and honestly, the unexpected rewards of his long incarceration for standing up for the ideals of equality, equity and non-racialism, and spurned the garlands and benefits of high office to represent and nurture those ideals.
In seeking neither power nor influence, he proved to be a man of substance in sustaining values of integrity and fortitude in a national political setting that disturbed him. A year ago, in a letter whose publication he permitted, Kathrada broke ranks to put it to President Jacob Zuma that “if I were in the president’s shoes, I would step down with immediate effect” because “I believe that is what would help the country to find its way out of a path that it never imagined it would be on, but one that it must move out of soon.”
Kathrada wrote that “stories … are rich in life lessons, and solutions to complex problems are often found in simple tales”. His own life, it seems, was such a tale. He grew up in Schweizer-Reneke, the son of a shopkeeper but was compelled, at the age of eight, to leave the family home and continue his schooling in Johannesburg because the schools in his rural home town would not admit an Indian.
By 17, he was politically engaged, and willing to place himself at the service of ideas that would – after his conviction in the Rivonia Trial of the mid-1960s – cost him nearly three decades of imprisonment.
The penalty left him unembittered, his resolve was undimmed.
He recalled in December the words he spoke at Mandela’s funeral – “we pledge to join the people of South Africa and the world to perpetuate the ideals and values for which you have devoted your life” – to “symbolise my continued commitment to this pledge”.
Kathrada understood that the task was not a quick-fix but one that called for stamina, resolve and a willingness to speak out of turn – confronting racism and injustice as assertively as insisting on credibility, accountability and the values of democratic governance. It is memorable that, as the one intimate who more credibly than most sketched a human portrait of Mandela as a great man with his own flaws and foibles, Kathrada devoted his last years to sustaining the generous but challenging precepts of Madiba’s leadership.
He might well have been describing himself when he wrote: “On the whole, I marvel at how Madiba’s contribution is spoken of with praise, even by political parties that are not his own.”