Ahmed Kathrada, who spent 26 years in prison, many of them alongside his close friend Nelson Mandela, for resisting the apartheid system of white minority rule in South Africa, died on Tuesday in Johannesburg. He was 87.
The death was announced by Mr. Kathrada’s foundation. He had been hospitalized this month with a blood clot in his brain.
President Jacob Zuma ordered flags to be displayed at half-staff and said that Mr. Kathrada would receive a “special official funeral.” Mr. Zuma’s office called Mr. Kathrada a “stalwart of the liberation struggle for a free and democratic South Africa.”
Born to an Indian Muslim family, Mr. Kathrada was the most prominent Asian South African in the movement to end apartheid, the system of racial segregation and white domination.
Active in leftist politics since his teenage years, he came to prominence in July 1963, when he was arrested with other anti-apartheid activists in Rivonia, a northern suburb of Johannesburg, where the South African Communist Party and the armed wing of the outlawed African National Congress had purchased an isolated farm to use as a meeting place. Among the others arrested was Walter Sisulu, secretary general of the A.N.C.
That October, Mr. Kathrada was indicted on charges of trying to overthrow the government, start a guerrilla war and open the door to invasion by foreign powers. Mr. Sisulu was also indicted, as was Mr. Mandela, who had been in prison since 1962, but who faced new charges after the authorities found documents at the Rivonia farm linking him to the A.N.C.’s armed wing.
The Rivonia trial, which began in April 1964, became a signature moment in the struggle against apartheid. A high point came when Mr. Mandela, in a three-hour speech, told the judge that he was “prepared to die” for “the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.”
Eight defendants — including Mr. Mandela, Mr. Sisulu and Mr. Kathrada — were convicted on June 11, 1964, of plotting a “violent revolution.” They were sentenced to life in prison, at hard labor.
Mr. Kathrada spent 26 years and 3 months behind bars, 18 of them on Robben Island, the apartheid regime’s most notorious prison.
Confinement was something of an education: he and his fellow prisoners deepened their conviction that only continued pressure, at home and abroad, would help bring about an end to apartheid.
“It really confirmed our belief that the South African authorities do not suddenly undergo a change of heart,” Mr. Kathrada said in 1989.
He and his compatriots had suspected that they would be arrested, he said, and had prepared psychologically. They understood, he said, that the isolation of Robben Island — in cold, shark-infested Atlantic waters off Cape Town — was intended to break them.
“From the security police to the prison authorities, they tried to instill into our minds that we would be forgotten in a few years’ time,” Mr. Kathrada said. “They did everything to crush our morale.”
For the first six months, he said, the prisoners were put to work breaking stones with hammers. Then they were sent to work in the prison’s lime quarry for more than a decade. At one point, he said, Mr. Mandela and Mr. Sisulu were put on a meager ration of rice gruel as punishment for supposedly not working hard enough.
Mr. Kathrada said that on arriving at the prison he and the mixed-race convicts were issued long trousers, while black convicts like Mr. Mandela and Mr. Sisulu had to wear shorts without socks. Even sugar, coffee, soup and other foods were apportioned to inmates according to lines of racial hierarchy.
Mixed-race convicts were also spared the brutality that was inflicted on less prominent prisoners, Mr. Kathrada said, though they were hardly exempt from mistreatment.
He recalled one night when the guards, “many of them very drunk,” awakened the convicts, stripped them and forced them against a wall for a rough search. One inmate, Govan Mbeki, nearly suffered a heart attack, he said. (Mr. Mbeki was released in 1987.)
The guards’ attempt to humiliate them only stiffened their defiance, Mr. Kathrada said.
“Because we were so close to the oppressor, it helped to keep us united,” he said. They went on hunger strikes to force concessions.
They tried to keep up with events outside by talking to new prisoners, reading smuggled letters and “begging, stealing and bribing” to procure information.
“Political prisoners give top priority to keeping themselves informed,” Mr. Kathrada said, but they sometimes went without news for several months. They communicated sporadically with the A.N.C. through messages passed among other inmates.
Remembering Robben Island
Ahmed Kathrada recalls his time in prison on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela.
By Marcus Mabry, Dave Mayers and Elaisha Stokes on July 6, 2013. Photo by Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times. Watch in Times Video »
“In prison, the best comes out and the worst comes out as well, because of the deprivation and suffering,” he said.
In 1982, Mr. Kathrada, Mr. Mandela, Mr. Sisulu and two fellow activists were transferred to Pollsmoor Prison, in the Cape Town suburb of Tokai. While in prison, Mr. Kathrada obtained four university degrees, two in history and two in African politics.
He was 60 when he was freed, in October 1989.
On his release, he left no doubt that his dedication to the African National Congress had not waned. “We will carry out whatever the A.N.C. wants us to
“In prison, the best comes out and the worst comes out as well, because of the deprivation and suffering,” he said.
In 1982, Mr. Kathrada, Mr. Mandela, Mr. Sisulu and two fellow activists were transferred to Pollsmoor Prison, in the Cape Town suburb of Tokai. While in prison, Mr. Kathrada obtained four university degrees, two in history and two in African politics.
He was 60 when he was freed, in October 1989.
On his release, he left no doubt that his dedication to the African National Congress had not waned. “We will carry out whatever the A.N.C. wants us to do,” he said at the time.
Mr. Kathrada later became a member of Parliament. He wrote several books. He gave tours of Robben Island, to Margaret Thatcher, Fidel Castro, Jane Fonda, Beyoncé and, twice, to Barack Obama — in 2006, when he was a senator and again in 2013, during Mr. Obama’s presidency.
Though Mr. Kathrada remained loyal to the A.N.C. — he served on the party’s National Executive Committee and ran its public relations department — in recent years he criticized the scandal-plagued Mr. Zuma, who has been in office since 2009.
Last April, Mr. Kathrada called on Mr. Zuma to resign, after the country’s highest court found that the South African president had violated his oath of office by refusing to pay back public money spent on renovations to his rural home.
Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada was born on Aug. 21, 1929, in Schweizer-Reneke, a small town in northern South Africa, the son of Muslim emigrants from Gujarat in western India. He was introduced to politics when, as a child, he joined a club run by the Youth Communist League. At 17 he took part in what was called a “passive resistance campaign” organized by the South African Indian Congress, and was one of 2,000 people arrested on the charge of defying a law that discriminated against Indians.
Shortly afterward, he quit school. Selected to visit East Berlin in 1951 for a youth festival, he toured Auschwitz, the former Nazi concentration camp in Poland, before returning to South Africa. In the 1950s he was arrested several times and monitored by the authorities for his political activities.
Mr. Kathrada, who once said that his being denied the ability to have children was “the greatest deprivation” he endured in prison, is survived by his longtime partner, Barbara Hogan, a white anti-apartheid activist who was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1982 for treason. She became a government minister after the fall of apartheid in the early 1990s.
In a 2013 interview, Mr. Kathrada said that he and his fellow prisoners had had it better than those on the outside.
“No policeman could come to Robben Island and start shooting at us,” he said. “In the Soweto uprising of 1976, we are told, 600 kids were killed. Others, people we knew closely, tortured to death, shot, assassinated. We were safe.”
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Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada (21 August 1929 – 28 March 2017), sometimes known by the nickname "Kathy", was a South African politician, former political prisoner and anti-apartheid activist.
Kathrada's involvement in the anti-apartheid activities of the African National Congress (ANC) led him to his long-term imprisonment following the Rivonia Trial, in which he was held at Robben Island and Pollsmoor Prison. Following his release in 1990, he was elected to serve as a member of parliament, representing the ANC. He has authored a book, No Bread for Mandela- Memoirs of Ahmed Kathrada, Prisoner No. 468/64.
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[hide]Early life[edit]
Kathrada was born in the small country town of Schweizer-Reneke in the Western Transvaal,[1] the fourth of six children in a Gujarati Bohra family of South African Indian immigrant parents from Surat, Gujarat.[2]
Owing to his Indian origin and the policies of the time, he could not be admitted to any of the "European" or "African" schools in the area and thus he had to move to Johannesburg, 200 miles to the east, to be educated.[3][4] Once in Johannesburg, he was influenced by leaders of the Transvaal Indian Congress such as Dr. Yusuf Dadoo, IC Meer, Moulvi and Yusuf Cachalia, and JN Singh.[1] Consequently, he became a political activist at the early age of 12 when he joined the Young Communist League of South Africa..[3] He took part in various activities such as handing out leaflets[4] and performing volunteer work in the individual passive resistance against the Pegging Act in 1941. During World War II, he was involved in the anti-war campaign of the Non-European United Front.[5]
Political activist[edit]
At the age of 17 he left school to work full-time for the Transvaal Passive Resistance Council in order to work against the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act, commonly referred to as the "Ghetto Act", which sought to give Indians limited political representation and defined the areas where Indians could live, trade and own land.
Kathrada was one of the two thousand volunteers imprisoned as a result of the campaign; he spent a month in a Durban jail.[1] This was his first jail sentence for civil disobedience. Reportedly, he gave an incorrect age to the police so that he would not be treated as a juvenile, but sent to an adult prison instead. Later, he was elected as secretary-general of the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress.
While Kathrada was a student at the University of the Witwatersrand he was sent as a delegate of the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress to the 3rd World Festival of Youth and Students in East Berlin in 1951.[6] He was elected as the leader of the large multi-racial South African delegation. He remained in Europe in order to attend a congress of the International Union of Students in Warsaw, and finally travelled to Budapest and worked at the headquarters of the World Federation of Democratic Youth for nine months.
As result of the growing co-operation between the African and Indian Congresses in the 1950s, Kathrada came into close contact with African National Congress leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu he was one of 156 accused in the four-year Treason Trial which lasted from 1956 to 1960. Eventually, all of the accused were found not guilty.
After the ANC and various other anti-apartheid organisations were banned in 1960, Kathrada continued his political activities despite repeated detentions and increasingly severe house arrest measures against him. In order to be free to continue his activities, Kathrada went underground early in 1963.
Rivonia trial[edit]
On 11 July 1963, Kathrada was arrested at the South African internal headquarters of Umkhonto we Sizwe ("The Spear of the Nation" - the military wing of the ANC) in Rivonia, near Johannesburg. Although Kathrada was not a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe, he became one of the accused in the famous Rivonia Trial, which started in October 1963. He was charged with sabotage and attempting to overthrow the government by violent means.
The trial ended in June 1964; Kathrada was sentenced to life imprisonment along with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Andrew Mlangeni, Billy Nair, Elias Motsoaledi, Raymond Mhlaba and Denis Goldberg.
Imprisonment[edit]
For the following 18 years, Kathrada was confined to the Robben Island Maximum Security Prison along with most of his Rivonia Trial "colleagues". In October 1982, he was moved to Pollsmoor Maximum Prison near Cape Town to join others such as Mandela, Sisulu, Mhlaba and Mlangeni who had been moved there a few months before.
While in jail on Robben Island and in Pollsmoor, Kathrada completed Bachelor's degrees in History/Criminology and Bibliography as well as Honours degrees in History and African Politics through the University of South Africa. (The prison authorities refused to allow him or the other prisoners to pursue postgraduate studies.)
On 15 October 1989 Kathrada, along with Jeff Masemola, Raymond Mhlaba, Billy Nair, Wilton Mkwayi, Andrew Mlangeni, Elias Motsoaledi, Oscar Mpetha, and Walter Sisulu were released from Johannesburg prison.[7]
Activities after release[edit]
After the unbanning of the ANC in February 1990, Kathrada served on the interim leadership committees of both the ANC and the South African Communist Party. He resigned from the latter position when he was elected to the ANC National Executive Committee in July 1991. During the same year, he was appointed as head of ANC public relations as well as a fellow of the University of the Western Cape's Mayibuye Centre.
In the first all-inclusive democratic South African elections in 1994, Kathrada was elected as a member of parliament for the ANC; in September 1994 he was appointed as the political advisor to President Mandela in the newly created post of Parliamentary Counsellor. In June 1999, Kathrada left parliamentary politics.
In 1994 and 1995, Kathrada was elected as chairperson of the Robben Island Council. He remained the chairperson of the Robben Island Museum Council. On 27 October 2013, on the island, he launched the International Campaign to Free Marwan Barghouthi and All Palestinian Prisoners.[8]
Kathrada's life partner was Barbara Hogan, a recent Minister of Public Enterprises.
Death[edit]
Kathrada died at a medical center in Johannesburg from complications of a cerebral embolism on 28 March 2017, aged 87.[9][10]
Honours and awards[edit]
In addition to receiving the Isitwalandwe Award (the ANC’s highest possible accolade) whilst still in prison, Kathrada has also been awarded four Honorary Doctorates, including the University of Missouri, Michigan State University, and the University of Kentucky.[11]
Kathrada was also voted 46th in the Top 100 Great South Africans in 2004.
He was awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman by the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs in 2005.
He was the chief guest on Nelson Mandela International Day at the India International Center, where he shared his views with children.
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Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada (b. August 21, 1929, Schweizer-Reneke, Western Transvaal, South Africa – d. March 28, 2017, Johannesburg, South Africa), sometimes known by the nickname "Kathy", was a South African politician, former political prisoner and anti-apartheid activist.
Kathrada's involvement in the anti-apartheid activities of the African National Congress (ANC) led him to his long-term imprisonment following the Rivonia Trial, in which he was held at Robben Island and Pollsmoor Prison. Following his release in 1990, he was elected to serve as a member of parliament, representing the ANC. He authored a book, No Bread for Mandela- Memoirs of Ahmed Kathrada, Prisoner No. 468/64.
Born into an Indian Muslim family, Kathrada was born in the small country town of Schweizer-Reneke in the Western Transvaal, the fourth of six children in a Gujarati Bohra family of South African Indian immigrant parents from Surat, Gujarat.
Owing to his Indian origin and the policies of the time, he could not be admitted to any of the "European" or "African" schools in the area and thus he had to move to Johannesburg, 200 miles to the east, to be educated. Once in Johannesburg, he was influenced by leaders of the Transvaal Indian Congress such as Dr.Yusuf Dadoo, I. C. Meer, Moulvi and Yusuf Cachalia, and J. N. Singh. Consequently, he became a political activist at the early age of 12 when he joined the Young Communist League of South Africa.. He took part in various activities such as handing out leaflets and performing volunteer work in the individual passive resistance against the Pegging Act in 1941. During World War II, he was involved in the anti-war campaign of the Non-European United Front.
At the age of 17, Kathrada left school to work full-time for the Transvaal Passive Resistance Council in order to work against the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act, commonly referred to as the "Ghetto Act", which sought to give Indians limited political representation and defined the areas where Indians could live, trade and own land.
Kathrada was one of the two thousand volunteers imprisoned as a result of the campaign; he spent a month in a Durban jail. This was his first jail sentence for civil disobedience. Reportedly, he gave an incorrect age to the police so that he would not be treated as a juvenile, but sent to an adult prison instead. Later, he was elected as secretary-general of the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress.
While Kathrada was a student at the University of the Witwatersrand he was sent as a delegate of the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress to the Third World Festival of Youth and Students in East Berlin in 1951. He was elected as the leader of the large multi-racial South African delegation. He remained in Europe in order to attend a congress of the International Union of Students in Warsaw, and finally travelled to Budapest and worked at the headquarters of the World Federation of Democratic Youth for nine months.
As a result of the growing co-operation between the African and Indian Congresses in the 1950s, Kathrada came into close contact with African National Congress leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. Kathrada was one of 156 accused in the four-year Treason Trial which lasted from 1956 to 1960. Eventually, all of the accused were found not guilty.
After the ANC and various other anti-apartheid organizations were banned in 1960, Kathrada continued his political activities despite repeated detentions and increasingly severe house arrest measures against him. In order to be free to continue his activities, Kathrada went underground early in 1963.
On July 11, 1963, Kathrada was arrested at the South African internal headquarters of Umkhonto we Sizwe ("The Spear of the Nation" - the military wing of the ANC) in Rivonia near Johannesburg. Although Kathrada was not a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe, he became one of the accused in the famous Rivonia Trial, which started in October 1963. He was charged with sabotage and attempting to overthrow the government by violent means.
The trial ended in June 1964; Kathrada was sentenced to life imprisonment along with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Andrew Mlangeni, Billy Nair, Elias Motsoaledi, Raymond Mhlaba and Denis Goldberg.
For the following 18 years, Kathrada was confined to the Robben Island Maximum Security Prison along with most of his Rivonia Trial "colleagues". In October 1982, he was moved to Pollsmoor Maximum Prison near Cape Town to join others such as Mandela, Sisulu, Mhlaba and Mlangeni who had been moved there a few months before.
While in jail on Robben Island and in Pollsmoor, Kathrada completed a bachelor's degree in History/Criminology and Bibliography as well as Honours degrees in History and African Politics through the University of South Africa. (However, the prison authorities refused to allow him or the other prisoners to pursue postgraduate studies.)
On October 15, 1989, Kathrada, along with Jeff Masemola, Raymond Mhlaba, Billy Nair, Wilton Mkwayi, Andrew Mlangeni, Elias Motsoaledi, Oscar Mpetha, and Walter Sisulu were released from Johannesburg prison.
After the unbanning of the ANC in February 1990, Kathrada served on the interim leadership committees of both the ANC and the South African Communist Party. He resigned from the latter position when he was elected to the ANC National Executive Committee in July 1991. During the same year, he was appointed as head of ANC public relations as well as a fellow of the University of the Western Cape's Mayibuye Centre.
Kathrada went on the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in 1992.
In the first all-inclusive democratic South African elections in 1994, Kathrada was elected as a member of parliament for the ANC. In September 1994, Kathrada was appointed as the political advisor to President Mandela in the newly created post of Parliamentary Counsellor. In June 1999, Kathrada left parliamentary politics.
In 1994 and 1995, Kathrada was elected as chairperson of the Robben Island Museum Council. He remained the chairperson of the Robben Island Museum Council. On October 27, 2013, on the island, he launched the International Campaign to Free Marwan Barghouthi and All Palestinian Prisoners.
Kathrada's life partner was Barbara Hogan, a Minister of Public Enterprises.
Kathrada died at a medical center in Johannesburg from complications of a cerebral embolism on 28 March 28, 2017, at the age of 87.
In addition to receiving the Isitwalandwe Award (the ANC’s highest possible accolade) whilst still in prison, Kathrada has also been awarded four Honorary Doctorates, including the University of Missouri, Michigan State University, and the University of Kentucky.
Kathrada was also voted 46th in the Top 100 Great South Africans in 2004.
He was awarded the Pravasi Bharativa Samman by the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs in 2005.
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