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Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada (sometimes nicknamed Kathy) (born 21 August 1929) is a South African politician and 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. Kathrada was born in the small country town of Schweizer - Reneke in the Western Transvaal, to Indian immigrant parents. Due
to the apartheid 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 to be educated. 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. 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. He obtained his matric at Johannesburg Indian High. 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. 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 World Youth Festival of 1951 in Berlin. 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, Poland, 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 1961. 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
in early 1963. 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 Dennis 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 Bachelor 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. 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 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. Currently, he still serves as the chairperson of the Robben
Island Museum Council. Kathrada's life partner is Ms Barbara Hogan, a recent Minister of Public Enterprises. 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 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. |