A TRIBUTE TO LATE BCM LEADER RUBIN HARE
“He would have made an immense contribution to our legal system
A DARK cloud hangs over Azania as the nation and the Black Consciousness Movement mourn the passing of one of its iconic leaders of the ’70s, advocate Rubin Rashid Hare.
We woke to the sad news last week Tuesday. In keeping with the Islamic statutes, he was buried the following day at West Park Cemetery in Joburg.
Comrade Rubin Hare was the former deputy president of the South African Students Organisation (Saso) in the 1970s and served on the executive that was led by Comrade Pandelani Nefolovhodwe as president.
He was also part of the group arrested after the Viva Frelimo Rallies, when Saso and the Black Peoples’ Convention (BPC) defied the apartheid regime’s ban on celebrating the victory of Frelimo over the colonial Portuguese regime in Mozambique.
Up to 13 Saso/BPC leaders and activists were arrested after the rallies at Currie’s Fountain in Durban and Mankweng at Turfloop.
In the arrests that led to the marathon Black Consciousness trial of 1974, Hare was the youngest defendant, aged 18, and Nomsisi Kraai was the only woman charged.
Steve Biko became the star witness at that trial, as he used the occasion in a gladiatorial display with the judge, to explain and expand on BC ideology, its genesis and purpose in opposing racism and apartheid.
Hare was a qualified advocate, but was disillusioned with the judicial system and the political turn the country had taken post-1994.
His uncompromising stance towards injustice and oppression is attested to by friend and foe alike.
Many believe it was this that led to him being disbarred from practising as a lawyer and hitting hard times.
Reflecting on his times with his comrade as young liberation activists, Nefolovhodwe said: “Rubin Hare had a brilliant mind and was eminently qualified as a lawyer. He would have made an immense contribution to our legal system.”
On the news of his passing, many old activists and his contemporaries expressed outpourings of grief. They remembered his inspiring leadership and display of courage under fire, during the most treacherous and brutal times in the Struggle against apartheid.
Political analyst and writer Ebrahim Harvey, who went to school with Hare, lamented how the talents of this Struggle hero were allowed to waste away by the democratic regime, on his social media page: “Post-apartheid SA was not kind to Rubin, as it has not been kind to so many others who sacrificed so much for liberation.”
Comrade Rubin Hare was also a keen and radical poet and writer in his younger days. His emblematic poem What a Friend We Have in Vorster, and one of his essays, were used as part of the indictment against him in the trial.
The poem was a metaphorical take on the deaths of many of his comrades in detention. Written almost 50 years ago, his poem reminds us today that there are many such victims throughout the country who died without justice being served, or their deaths being accounted and atoned for.
A memorial service to celebrate his heroic life is planned tomorrow at the Newclare Primary School in Johannesburg.