Ahmed Mohammed Kathrada, anti-apartheid activist and nationalist best known for his endearing friendship and association with former South African President, Nelson Mandela, passed away quietly in a Johannesburg hospital in the early hours of Tuesday after undergoing a brain surgery, his foundation announced. Mr Kathrada, born to Indian Muslim immigrant parents, became involved in politics at an early age, enduring a series of arrests, which culminated in him spending 26 years in Robben Island and then Pollsmore prisons, after he and eight defendants – including Mandela and Walter Sisulu – were convicted on June 11, 1964, of plotting a “violent revolution” and handed life sentences in prison with hard labour.
Released from prison at the age of 60, in October 1989, Mr Kathrada left no one in doubt that his dedication to the African National Congress had not waned and that they would do anything the foremost nationalist party in Africa wanted them to do.
He later became a Member of Parliament, wrote books and gave tours of Robben Island to prominent world leaders including Margaret Thatcher, Fidel Castro, Barack Obama (twice) and Beyonce. Along with the likes of Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Walter Sisulu, he was part of a group untainted by corruption, acting as a moral compass for the nation.
Perhaps, the most touching aspect of the sacrifice that Kathrada had to make for South Africa was in his being denied the ability to raise a family or have children. Mr. Kathrada described it as “the greatest deprivation” he endured in prison. The closest he came to family life was his union with politician Barbara Hogan, a recent Minister of Public Enterprises, who was his partner in later life.
BBC’s Milton Nkosi probably had this in mind when he said that Kathrada belonged to a generation that literally gave up most of their adult lives to fight to liberate black people from the yoke of white minority rule.
“When Kathrada emerged from a lifetime in prison in 1989, apartheid had taken a lot more from him than his youth; it had also taken his birthplace. The place where he grew up in Schweizer-Reneke, in South Africa’s North West province, had been bulldozed by the authorities in the cause of keeping the races apart, wrote Bishop.
“Incarceration had taken much more. Computers, hotel room cards instead of keys, and the clutter modern world were a mystery to him. He tried driving on the motorways that he had never seen, once, but found it too stressful and confusing. Even a harmless ATM was a mission as Kathrada found out when he went to get some money with fellow Robben Island prisoner Laloo Chiba one Sunday morning,” he wrote.
Tributes have not been in short supply. Retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu called him “a man of remarkable gentleness, modesty and steadfastness” who was among “people of the highest integrity and moral fibre who, through their humility and humanity, inspired our collective self-worth – and the world’s confidence in us”.
South Africa’s Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa said he “will be remembered as an unassuming freedom fighter, whose wisdom, tolerance, humility, steadfastness and humour earned him the love and respect of our people”.
The African National Congress (ANC) called him “a titan, an outstanding leader and a great patriot” whose “life is a lesson in humility, tolerance, resilience and a steadfast commitment to principle”.
Derek Hanekom, a fellow veteran activist and now a government minister, said he “was a gentle, humane and humble soul”, “a determined revolutionary who gave his entire life to the liberation struggle in our country.”
The Nelson Mandela Foundation called him “the embodiment of promise” during the apartheid years, saying Kathrada was “a comrade, associate and close friend of Nelson Mandela’s through seven decades”.
Sadly, in his later years, he watched helplessly as Mr Zuma turned his beloved party, the ANC, into a nest of corruption making nonsense of the sacrifices he and a lot of militant ANC members made to secure freedom and equality for all South Africans. When Mr Zuma became mired in a series of corruption scandal, Kathrada had called on him to resign.
“I know that if I were in the president’s shoes, I would step down with immediate effect,” he had said. “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 was quoted as saying.
It was fitting that his family asked President Zuma to stay away from the elder statesman’s funeral and other memorial events to be held in his honour.
Despite being eligible for state burial as one of the county’s foremost anti-apartheid icons, his foundation said Kathrada had requested a simple burial according to Islamic rites.
