Hamba kahle, Uncle Kathy
Ahmed Kathrada, 87, dies in hospital Life of an icon
STRUGGLE stalwart Ahmed Kathrada, 87, died this morning at the Donald Gordon Hospital in Johannesburg.
He passed away peacefully after a short period of illness, following surgery to the brain.
Neeshan Balton, executive director of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, confirmed that the anti-apartheid Struggle veteran “breathed his last today”.
“This is great loss to the ANC, the broader liberation movement and South Africa as a whole. Internationally, he was staunch in his support for the Palestinian struggle. ‘ Kathy’, as he became commonly known, was an inspiration to millions in different parts of the world,” said Balton.
The foundation chairperson, Derek Hanekom, was overcome with emotion, saying he had lost a “revolutionary mentor and dear friend”.
“He was a gentle, humane and humble soul. He was a determined revolutionary who gave his entire life to the liberation Struggle in our country,” he added.
Kathrada will be buried according to Muslim religious rights in Johannesburg tomorrow morning.
Fellow Robben Island prisoner Laloo “Isu” Chiba, 86, said that his comrade’s death left a deep vacuum in his life.
“I have worked with Kathy for over 60 years. He was my strength in prison, my guide in political life and my pillar of strength in the most difficult moments of my life. Now he is gone,” said Chiba.
Kathrada had an illustrious political career, having served between 1994 and 1999 as the parliamentary counsellor to late president Nelson Mandela.
He was born on August 21, 1929, in rural Schweizer-Reneke. He was introduced to politics as a young boy when he joined a non-racial youth club run by the Young Communist League.
At the age of 17, Kathrada participated in the 1946 Passive Resistance Campaign led by the South African Indian Congress.
He was among 2 000 resisters who were arrested and imprisoned for defying a law that discriminated against Indian South Africans.
Kathrada, under the tutelage of Transvaal Indian Congress leader Dr Yusuf Dadoo, later befriended emerging ANC leaders such as Walter Sisulu, Mandela and Oliver Tambo.
In 1951, Kathrada visited East Berlin to attend a youth festival jointly organised by the World Federation of Democratic Youth, and the International Union of Students. While there he visited Poland, where the Auschwitz concentration camp left an indelible impression on him.
Back home in 1952, Kathrada was in a group of 20, including Mandela and Sisulu, who were sentenced to nine months in prison with hard labour – suspended for two years – for organising the Defiance Campaign against six unjust, apartheid laws. The campaign was jointly organised by the ANC and South African Indian Congress.
In 1954, Kathrada was placed under restrictions by apartheid security police and was arrested several times for breaking his banning orders.
In 1956, he was among the 156 Congress activists and lead- ers charged with high treason. The trial continued for four years. All the accused were acquitted. Kathrada, Mandela and Sisulu were among the last 30 to be acquitted.
While they were on trial in 1960, the ANC and PAC were banned. In 1962, Kathrada was placed under house arrest. The following year, Kathrada broke his banning orders and went underground to continue his political and military work in the ANC’s armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe.
In July 1963, the police swooped on Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, a Johannesburg suburb where Kathrada and other banned persons had been meeting secretly. This led to the famous Rivonia Trial in which eight accused were sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour on Robben Island. His fellow prisoners included ANC leaders such as Mandela, Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Denis Goldberg, Elias Motsoaledi and Andrew Mlangeni.
Kathrada spent 26 years and three months in prison, 18 years of which were on Robben Island. In 1982, Mandela, Sisulu, Kathrada, Mhlaba and Mlangeni were transferred to Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town.
While in prison, he obtained four university degrees: BA (in History and Criminology), B Bibliography (in African Politics and Library Science), BA Honours (History) and BA Honours (African Politics).
Soon after his release on October 15, 1989, the ANC was unbanned. At its first legal conference in South Africa, Kathrada was elected on to its National Executive Committee. Until 1994, he headed the ANC’s public relations department. At its conference in 1997, Kathrada declined nomination to the National Executive Committee.
In 1992, he undertook the Islamic Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, and in 1994 he was elected to Parliament and served as Mandela’s parliamentary counsellor. He was chairperson of the Robben Island Museum Council from 1997 until his term expired in 2006.
In 2008, the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation was launched with the aim of deepening non-racialism. Kathrada was an active participant in the foundation’s work, which includes promoting constitutional ideals and human rights, youth leadership and development, challenging racism and preserving and promoting liberation history.
Kathrada’s activism spanned 75 years. He is survived by his wife Barbara Hogan, also an ANC stalwart and veteran.
AHMED “Kathy” Kathrada was one in a long list of great patriots, who with selfless sacrifice and resolute struggle, contributed immeasurably to the birth of a free, democratic South Africa.
Today, we mourn his death, but also celebrate his life – as we say: “We will never forget you, Uncle Kathy.”
Born in Schweizer-Reneke in the then Western Transvaal on August 21, 1929, Kathrada tasted the bitter effects of racial discrimination when white and African schools in the town of his birth would not accept him, and he had to move to Johannesburg to be educated.
In eGoli, he was influenced by giants of the Indian Congress movement, such as Yusuf Dadoo, IC Meer and Yusuf Cachalia – to such an extent that by the age of 12 he became a political activist, joining the Young Communist League of South Africa.
During the Second World War, Kathrada, like so many other black South Africans, questioned why people without rights should support the war effort of South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts. But he went further than that: he also agitated against enlistment, via the anti-war campaign of the Non-European United Front.
Feisty, funny, a highly effective organiser, a doer, the person who got things done – Kathrada was all this, and more.
He was never afraid to stand up for what he believed was right. Some of his early exchanges with Nelson Mandela, who would later become his great friend, were spoken about by others, and even Mandela himself, with great respect years later.
“What Kathrada was able to do with remarkable effect, said Joel Joffe, one of the legal team at the Rivonia Trial, in which Kathrada was one of the accused, “was to heckle pointedly, with biting and pertinent interjections, and often with a great deal of sarcasm and humour”.
After his release from prison, Kathrada, like Mandela, worked energetically for justice and reconciliation among all South Africans – and did not hold back on criticising the ANC government when he felt the occasion demanded it.
Kathrada touched many lives – and the biggest tribute we can pay to him is to carry on his legacy, by continuing the never-ending fight for a truly free, just and equal South Africa.
Hamba kahle, Uncle Kathy.