Ahmed Kathrada

Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada was born on 21 August 1929 in Schweizer-Reneke in the Western Transvaal, the fourth of six children in a Gujarati Bohra family of South African Indian immigrant parents from Surat.¹ Known by the nickname "Kathy", he became one of South Africa's best-known anti-apartheid activists.¹ Convicted in the Rivonia Trial, he spent 18 years on Robben Island and further years at Pollsmoor Prison before his release in 1989.¹ He died in Johannesburg on 28 March 2017.¹²

In Johannesburg, Kathrada was influenced by leaders of the Transvaal Indian Congress such as Yusuf Dadoo, and he became a political activist at the age of 12, joining the Young Communist League of South Africa.¹ At 17 he left school to work full-time for the Transvaal Passive Resistance Council against the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act, the "Ghetto Act", and he was one of the two thousand volunteers imprisoned in the campaign, spending a month in a Durban jail.¹ He was later elected chair of the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress.¹ As a student at the University of the Witwatersrand he was sent as a delegate to the 3rd World Festival of Youth and Students in East Berlin in 1951, attended a congress of the International Union of Students in Warsaw, and worked for nine months at the headquarters of the World Federation of Democratic Youth in Budapest.¹ He was one of the 156 accused in the Treason Trial of 1956 to 1960, at the end of which all the accused were found not guilty.¹ After the ANC was banned in 1960 he continued his activities despite detentions and house arrest, and went underground early in 1962.¹ On 11 July 1963 he was arrested at the internal headquarters of Umkhonto we Sizwe in Rivonia, and in the Rivonia Trial he was sentenced in June 1964 to life imprisonment together with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and others; at 34 he was the youngest of the prisoners.¹ He spent 18 years in the Robben Island maximum security prison and was moved to Pollsmoor Prison in October 1982, completing four degrees while in prison.¹ He was released on 15 October 1989.¹ After the unbanning of the ANC in February 1990 he served on the interim leadership committees of the ANC and the South African Communist Party, was elected to the ANC National Executive Committee in July 1991, and was appointed head of ANC public relations.¹ He went on the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca in 1992.¹ In the democratic elections of 1994 he was elected to parliament for the ANC, declined a cabinet post, and in September 1994 became President Mandela's political advisor in the new post of Parliamentary Counsellor, leaving parliamentary politics in June 1999.¹ He chaired the Robben Island Museum Council, and on 27 October 2013 he launched the International Campaign to Free Marwan Barghouti and All Palestinian Prisoners on the island.¹ In 2008 he founded the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation.¹ He married Barbara Hogan, a former anti-apartheid activist and later minister.¹ Kathrada died at a medical centre in Johannesburg from complications of a cerebral embolism on 28 March 2017, aged 87, and was buried the next day at Westpark Cemetery in Johannesburg in accordance with Islamic rites.¹

His prison correspondence was published as Letters from Robben Island (1999), edited by Robert Vassen.¹ His memoirs appeared as No Bread for Mandela – Memoirs of Ahmed Kathrada, Prisoner No. 468/64 (2004).¹ A Simple Freedom: The Strong Mind of Robben Island Prisoner No. 468/64 followed in 2016.¹ He received the Isitwalandwe Award, the ANC's highest accolade, while still in prison in 1988, and was awarded four honorary doctorates.¹ He was voted 46th in the Top 100 Great South Africans in 2004 and received India's Pravasi Bharatiya Samman in 2005.¹

This section sets out different positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum. The article records that Kathrada was a critic of President Jacob Zuma, and that Zuma, described as his opponent, did not attend his funeral in accordance with the family's wishes, although Zuma ordered the flag flown at half-mast and postponed a cabinet meeting so members could attend.¹ The Persian article likewise describes him as a serious critic of President Jacob Zuma.³ The article records his launch, in 2013, of the International Campaign to Free Marwan Barghouti and All Palestinian Prisoners.¹

• Ahmed Kathrada — English Wikipedia¹
• Ahmed Kathrada — Arabic Wikipedia⁴
• Ahmed Kathrada — Persian Wikipedia³
• Ahmed Kathrada — Wikidata Q401350²