Celebrated anti-apartheid icon Kathrada dies aged 87

Johannesburg. Celebrated South African anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Kathrada, a Robben Island prisoner and one of Nelson Mandela’s closest colleagues in the struggle against white rule, died early Tuesday aged 87.

Kathrada was among those tried and jailed alongside Mandela in the Rivonia trial in 1964, which drew worldwide attention to the brutalities of the apartheid regime.

He died in hospital in Johannesburg after a short illness following brain surgery, his charity foundation said. Kathrada spent 26 years and three months in prison, 18 of which were on Robben Island, the notorious jail off the coast of Cape Town. After the end of apartheid, he served from 1994 to 1999 as parliamentary counsellor to President Mandela in the first African National Congress (ANC) government.

Retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu described Kathrada as “a man of remarkable gentleness, modesty and steadfastness,” hailing him a moral leader of the anti-apartheid movement. “These were 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,” Tutu said in a statement. Kathrada’s activism against white-minority apartheid rule started at the age of 17, when he was one of 2,000 “passive resisters” arrested in 1946 for defying laws that discriminated against Indian South Africans. The ANC party was banned in 1960, and two years later Kathrada was placed under “house arrest”. Soon afterwards, he went underground to continue the struggle as a member of 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 senior activists had been meeting in secret. At the famous Rivonia trial, eight of the accused were sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour on Robben Island. His fellow prisoners included Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Denis Goldberg. “The nation has lost a titan, an outstanding leader and a great patriot,” the ANC said in a tribute to Kathrada on Tuesday.

“His life is a lesson in humility, tolerance, resilience and a steadfast commitment to principle. “Uncle Kathy, despite disagreement with the ANC leadership from time to time, never abandoned nor turned his back on the ANC.”

The Nelson Mandela Foundation lauded him as “the embodiment of promise” during the apartheid years, saying Kathrada was “a comrade, associate and close friend of Nelson Mandela’s through seven decades.”(AFP)