For Wire.

in — 7 December 2022

Why has India forgotten Ahmed Kathrada?

Nelson Mandela’s trusted Indian-South African comrade, he spent 26 years in
jail. Sudheendra Kulkarni, who visited Johannesburg last month, asks why
there is no befitting memorial in India to this towering leader of the anti-
apartheid revolution

When Walter Sisulu, a giant among South Africa’s anti-apartheid leaders who
spent 25 years in jail, passed away on 5 may 2003 at the ripe old age of 91,
India’s then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said in his tribute: “We shall
remember him for his warmth and personal simplicity. He was a rare political
personality who had a stature that did not depend on status.”
This tribute appears in the autobiography of another legendary personality in the
same struggle, Ahmed Kathrada, who venerated Sisulu as his mentor and
“father”. Indeed, Vajpayee’s words accurately describe Kathrada’s own
personality. For he belonged to that golden generation of South Africa’s selfless
freedom fighters to whom transitory status meant nothing; their immortal stature
was formed in the crucible of lifelong struggle and sacrifice for the lofty dream
of building a better world.
When it comes to celebrating high achievers among members of the Indian
diaspora, we Indians are so status-obsessed that we often ignore, even forget,
those with stature that does not depend on power or wealth — especially if they
are not from Europe or America. For example, Kamala Harris, Rishi Sunak,
Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella have become household names in our country.
True, they have remarkable accomplishments to their credit. But does anyone
remember Ahmed Kathrada? The name is unfamiliar to most Indians. Even a
vast majority of people in our political and media establishments would be
dumbstruck if asked to tell who he was. This is extremely sad. All the more so
since India’s freedom struggle had such a defining influence over South
Africa’s. Furthermore, the values for which he struggled all his life — non-
racialism, non-sexism, inter-religious harmony, equality, justice and human
dignity — remain universally relevant even today.

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A communist ‘satyagrahi’ since the age of 12
Katharda (1929-2017), a person of Indian origin in South Africa — his Bohra
Muslim parents hailed from village Lachpur in Gujarat — was a towering leader
of the anti-apartheid movement. He was one of Nelson Mandela’s closest
comrades. In terms of struggle and sacrifice, he almost equals the globally
revered icon of South Africans’ epic fight against the oppressive white minority
rule. He spent 26 years in apartheid prisons — that is, just one year less in
incarceration than his leader. For 18 years, he was a jail-mate of Mandela in the
notorious apartheid prison on Robben Island near Cape Town. In the remaining
six years in Pollsmoor Prison, too, Mandela and he were companions.
One of the heroes of the revolution along with Mandela, Sisulu and Oliver
Tambo (who served as the ANC president from 1967 to 1991), he was also a
highly respected intellectual and writer. His Letters from Robben Island (1999)
and his Memoirs (2004) are among the finest chronicles of the battle against
tyrannical white rule.
Kathrada began his political activism at the tender age of 12 — as a member of
the Young Communist League of South Africa. “From the moment I became
involved in politics as a schoolboy,” he would write many years later, “I
realised that unacceptable as my own circumstances were, the lot of my African
colleagues and leaders — Mandela, Tutu, Sisuliu, Tambo, Mbeki — who would
become household names, was infinitely worse.” His childhood hero was Dr
Yusuf Dadoo, a respected leader in the Indian community. Though a
communist, Dr Dadoo accepted Mahatma Gandhi “as our guide and mentor”.
Gandhi, who lived in South Africa for 21 years (1893-1914), had started the
nonviolent ‘satyagraha’ or “passive resistance” in 1906 against laws that
discriminated against people of Indian origin. Mandela, Sisulu and others in the
African National Congress were deeply influenced by Gandhi’s non-violent
struggle in India. (The name of ANC itself was inspired by INC — the Indian
National Congress.)
When Kathrada was 17, he was arrested for the first time for his participation in
“passive resistance” against the “Ghetto Act” (Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian
Representative Act), which segregated the Indian community from others. For
some time, he worked as a journalist with The Passive Resistor, a newspaper
edited by Ismail Chota Meer, a brave leader of the South African Indian
Congress. In 1943 he collected funds for the Bengal famine relief. More about
Meer and his wife Fatima Meer a little later.

Agit-prop activities of the Picasso Club

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The savagery of the Second World War made the young idealist in Katharda a
passionate participant in the anti-war campaign of the Non-European United
Front. He writes in his memoirs: “The atrocities and carnage of the Second
World War, the premeditated cruelty that it exposed us to, encapsulates the
great moral tragedy of the twentieth century.” This was the time when he was
influenced by left-leaning singers, poets and artists like Paul Robeson, Pablo
Neruda and Pablo Picasso. During the 1946 Passive Resistance Campaign,
Katharda and some of his friends formed what became known as the Picasso
Club in Johannesburg. He had probably read Picasso’s article "Why I became a
communist (1945), in which the renowned painter Picasso wrote:

"My joining the Communist Party is a logical step in my life. Through

design and color, I have tried to penetrate deeper into a knowledge of the
world and of men so that this knowledge might free us. In my own ways I
have always said what I considered most true, most just and best and,
therefore, most beautiful. But during the oppression and the insurrection I
felt that that was not enough, that I had to fight not only with painting but
with my whole being…I have become a Communist because our party
strives more than any other to know and to build the world, to make men
clearer thinkers, more free and more happy."

Besides distribution of pamphlets, and putting up posters, the Picasso Club took
to political graffiti. One of their slogans that caught the attention of both the
public and the authorities was — “Let Us Black Folks Read” along the walls of
the Johannesburg Public Library which was for the exclusive use of whites. 
The municipality erased it.  After some days, Katharda and friends returned to
the wall and painted a new slogan that said ‘We Black Folks Ain’t Reading
Yet’!

He marched fearlessly to the prison in Robben Island

Katharda was jailed 18 times. The last was in in 1964, when he was sentenced
to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial, along with Mandela, Sisulu, Govan
Mbeki and other INC freedom fighters. Incidentally, Mandela, Sisulu and
Kathrada are the only three leaders who appeared in the three major trials that
form inspiring chapters in the history of the anti-apartheid movement: Defiance
Campaign (1952), Treason Trial (1956-1961) and the Rivonia Trial (1964).
Katharda was fearless in the advocacy of his principles. For proof, read some of
the answers Kathrada gave in his cross-examination at the infamous Rivonia
Trial, which is regarded as “the trial that changed South Africa”. 
Q: Did you have confidence in those irresponsible leaders of the ANC?
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A: I have said that I regard the leadership of the ANC as responsible. I have the
fullest admiration for their courage.
Q: You are a member of the Communist Party?
A: I am.
Q: Whose aim and object is to secure freedom for what you call the oppressed
people of this country?
A: For what are the oppressed people in this country.
Q: Which involves the overthrow of the government of South Africa?
A: That is so.
Q: By force and violence if necessary?
A: When and if necessary.
Katharda knew the price he would have to pay for his fearlessness. Prison
became his home for the next 26 years, 3 months and 4 days — 9593 days.
After he had served some years in jail, the apartheid government offered to
release him — but not other black leaders of the ANC. He refused the offer,
saying, “I do not want to be freed alone. All my comrades should be released.”
Last month I visited Robben Island near Cape Town. Desolate and dreary, its
very location makes it look far away from civilisation. Even in prison, the
apartheid regime enforced discrimination. Life was harsher for blacks than for
Indians and coloured people. “If I had to use a single word to define life on
Robben Island, it would be ‘cold’,” Katharda writes in his memoirs. “Cold food,
cold showers, cold winters, cold wind coming in off the sea, cold warders, cold
cells, cold comfort…Contact of any kind with the outside world was
minimal…. In all the years I spent on Robben Island, I only once looked up at
the night sky from outside my cell. It was on the night of the earthquake, when
all our cells were unlocked and we were moved outside into the courtyard.”
During daytime, prisoners had to do hard physical labour.
Prison life steeled his relationship with the two leaders he admired the most. “In
half a century of knowing Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, I came to know
one sure thing: it is impossible to speak of the one without mentioning the other.
Two distinct and unique individuals, these two struggle leaders were
inextricably bound by their foresight, courage, wisdom and shared experiences.”
He narrates an interesting fact about how he, Sisulu and other prison mates
helped Mandela write his autobiography in Robben Island, with a plan to have it
published for his sixtieth birthday in 1978. Mac Maharaj, a senior INC leader
kept in the same prison, was due to be released in December 1976. He was

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tasked with smuggling the manuscript out.  Mandela began working on the
manuscript in January 1976. But, as Katharda writes, it was a risky plan.
“Chronicling Mandela’s life was illegal and dangerous.  Discovery would
result in harsh collective punishment… knowledge of it was to be limited
to those directly involved.  Because most of the writing would have to be
done at night, Mandela feigned illness and was excused from the daily
work schedule.  He slept for a few hours while the cellblock was deserted
and wrote deep into the night… Early morning he would give Walter and
me the written pages for comment.  The final draft was then transferred to
sheets of rice paper by Mac Maharaj and Laloo Chiba in miniscule
script… Madiba’s originals were rolled up inside empty cocoa canisters
and buried in our garden.” (Madiba is a title of respect for Mandela,
deriving from his Xhosa clan name.)
Although Mac Maharaj successfully managed to smuggle the manuscript,
it could not be published for Mandela’s sixtieth birthday.  The efforts,
however, were not fruitless. The manuscript formed the basis of his
internationally celebrated autobiography Long Walk to Freedom
published in 1994.

Mandela’s comrade, friend, advisor

Kathrada was released in 1989, just four months before Mandela. One of his
abiding interests after his release was Robben Island. Knowing this, Mandela,
who became South Africa’s first democratically elected president in 1994,
appointed him as the chairman of the Robben Island Museum Council in 1997.
Designed with a keen focus on both history and aesthetics, it quickly earned
recognition by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. It has now become a must-
see place for foreign tourists coming to South Africa. The museum prominently
displays Katharda’s wise words that express its raison d'etre:
“While we will not forget the brutality of apartheid, we will not want
Robben Island to be a monument of our hardship and suffering.  We
would want it to be a triumph of the human spirit against the forces of
evil, a triumph of wisdom and largeness of
Spirit against small minds and pettiness; a triumph of courage and
determination over human frailty and weakness; a triumph of the new
South Africa over the old.”
After the triumph of the struggle against apartheid, and the installation of the
ANC government, some extreme left-wing black activists started criticising
Mandela’s legacy and his vision of South Africa as a “rainbow nation” in which
the whites too had an equal place. He had famously said, “I am opposed to

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white oppression. But I am also opposed to black oppression.” These extremists
were exploiting the anger among poor black Africans, who suffered from
underdevelopment and lack of economic opportunities. What Kathrada said
about this situation, in an interview to National Public Radio (npr) of USA a
few months before his death, is a testimony to his wisdom.
"Anger, revenge, are negative emotions. If one harbors those emotions, you
suffer more. And that is where our very progressive policy of forgiveness [came
from], in which the ANC started with the transformation from apartheid to
democracy — forgive. Don't harbor hatred and revenge.”

He made another perceptive observations about whites in Africa. "We live in a

South Africa [where], unlike other colonial countries where the colonists went
home after freedom, our oppressors were South Africans, born and bred in
South Africa. And not a few thousand, but a few million. So we had to get our
people to understand that these are not a few thousand that you can drown in the
sea."

Katharda also played a key role in the establishment of the Nelson Mandela
Foundation in Johannesburg in 1999. In his Foreword to Kathrada’s
autobiography, Mandela writes: “Ahmed has been so much part of my life over
such a long period that it is inconceivable that I could allow him to write his
memoirs without my contributing something. Our stories have become so
interwoven that the telling of one without the voice of the other being heard
somewhere would have led to an incomplete narrative.”
The two comrades addressed each other affectionately as ‘Madala’ or old man.
Mandela’s death on 5 December 2013 was a profound personal loss for
Kathrada. In a moving eulogy, he said:
“Madala, while we may be drowned in sorrow and grief, we must be
proud and grateful that after the long walk paved with obstacles and
suffering, we can salute you as a fighter for freedom in the end.  Farewell,
my dear brother, my mentor, my leader.  With all the energy and
determination at our command, we pledge to join the people of South
Africa to perpetuate your ideals.  When Walter died, I lost a father, and
now I have lost a brother.  My life is in a void and I don’t know who to
turn to.” 

The umbilical cord connecting Mahatma Gandhi and the Mandela-led anti-
apartheid struggle
In recent years, there have been some academics and black activists in Africa
who maliciously paint Gandhi as a racist and deny any Gandhian influence over
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the struggle against apartheid. Therefore, I would like to add here a few lines
about Katharda’s editor Ismail Meer and his illustrious wife Fatima Meer, both
of whom were Mandela’s close associates in the anti-apartheid movement. They
were also Katharda’s lifelong friends. This digression is necessary to recall the
now largely forgotten, and even falsely contested, umbilical cord that connected
the anti-racist struggle of Indians under Gandhi’s leadership in the early part of
the 20th century and the subsequent larger struggle of the ANC against
apartheid.
Fatima’s father, Moosa Meer, a migrant from Gujarat, was a trusted associate of
both Gandhi and Mandela. He was the editor of Indian Views, a newspaper that
opposed the white-minority government. Fatima and Ismail Meer played a
pivotal role in cementing the relationship between the Indian community, ANC,
and important black leaders such as Mandela, Sisulu, Tambo and Chief Albert
Luthuli (who headed the ANC from 1952 to 1967, and was awarded the
1960 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in leading the nonviolent anti-apartheid
movement).
As Ismail Meer, who was greatly influenced by the writings of Jawaharlal
Nehru, has recorded in his autobiography A Fortunate Man, “It was the Passive
Resistance Campaign of 1946 by Indian South Africans against the Asiatic
Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act that laid the seed for the 1952
Defiance Campaign (the largest scale non-violent resistance ever seen in South
Africa and the first campaign pursued jointly by all racial groups under the
leadership of the ANC and the South African Indian Congress); the 1955
Congress of the People (which brought together the African National Congress,
the South African Indian Congress, the South African Coloured People’s
Congress, the South African Congress of Democrats and the South African
Congress of Trade Unions into a non-racial united front known); the birth of
the Freedom Charter (which visualised the abolition of all racial discrimination
and the granting of equal rights to all, with its electrifying slogan 'Freedom in
Our Lifetime’); and the Treason Trial of 1956 (in which 156 people, including 
Mandela, were arrested and subsequently found not guilty; however, some of
the defendants, including Mandela, Sisulu and Katharda were later convicted in
the Rivonia Trial in 1964).
Fatima Meer (1928-2010) herself forms another close and proud link between
Indians’ and black Africans’ struggle against racism. She was imprisoned for
working closely with Winnie Mandela (Nelson Mandela’s first wife) in
the Black Women’s Federation. She authored Mandela’s authorised and
internationally acclaimed biography Higher than Hope. She was also a
renowned Gandhian scholar-activist. She gives a perceptive description of how
South Africa transformed Gandhi, in her book Apprenticeship of a Mahatma —
A Biography of M.K. Gandhi:

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 “On the 18th of July, 1914, twenty-one years after his arrival, Mohan
accompanied by his family, left South Africa. He had come to the country
as a young man of twenty-three, a semi-Englishman. His host, on meeting
him, had wondered how he could afford to keep such an expensive-
looking dandy. His tastes had continued to be expensive for a while, but
they had changed through the intermingling of thoughts and experiences.
Now he left the country bearing all the signs of a man who would soon be
recognised as a saint — As Christ became the Saviour, Muhammed the
Prophet, Gautama the Buddha, the little boy frightened of the dark
became the Mahatma and paid the price of all Mahatmas.”
I had the privilege of meeting her in Durban, when I accompanied Prime
Minister Vajpayee to attend the Non-Aligned Movement Summit in 1998. The
precious gift she presented to me at her home — South African Gandhi, a 1200-
page book edited by her — has preserved for me my memories of this
courageous and gentle-faced fighter for human freedom and dignity.
Kathrada in his memoirs writes with deep affection about Ismail and Fatima
Meer. “The passing of Ismail Meer on 1 May 2000 not only left a vacuum in my
life but, as I wrote to his widow Fatima and their family, ‘left South Africa
poorer. May the example of his life serve to nourish the ideas and practices for
which he devoted so much of his time and energy.”

Embodiment of modesty, humility and incorruptibility

Katharda personified not only courage but also modesty and humility, qualities
that come to those who have walked in the shadow of death and are transformed
by the pain of prolonged jail life. He never hankered after power. After the
success of the revolution in 1994, President Mandela offered him ministership,
which he refused. Instead, he chose to serve Mandela as his Parliamentary
Counselor. Both his leader and he retired from state office in 1999. Thereafter,
till the end of his life he continued to be an influential voice committed to
taking South Africa along the path of non-racialism, non-sexism, and pro-poor
governance free of corruption.

Such was his moral courage that, a year before his death on 28 March 2017, he
publicly criticised South Africa’s then President Jacob Zuma (who belonged to
the African National Congress) when the latter got embroiled in corruption
scandals. Two Indian businessmen, Rajesh and Atul Gupta, who were extremely
close to Zuma, were the kingpins in these scandals. Kathrada wrote an open
letter asking Zuma to resign — “Dear Comrade President, don’t you think your

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continued stay as president will only serve to deepen the crisis of confidence in
the government of the country?”

Zuma was ultimately forced to resign in 2018, and was also arrested in June
2021. His arrest sparked violent attacks on the Indian community in Phoenix
and other parts of the country. When Kathrada died, his family and friends
asked President Zuma to stay away from the funeral. In accordance with his
wishes, he was buried with Islamic rites. Also, in line with his belief in multi-
religious unity, his funeral commenced with Muslim, Christian, Hindu and
Jewish prayers. 

This is not surprising because Kathrada had friends and comrades who belonged
to different religions. His closest friend, also his jailmate, was Ishwarlal Laloo
Chiba. After his release from prison, he married Barbara Hogan, who had
herself been sentenced to ten years of imprisonment in the early 1980s for her
participation in the anti-apartheid struggle. “I support the freedom of people to
worship as they see fit, but I believe in a secular state,” he writes in his
memoirs.

India’s cultural pluralism fascinated him

Kathrada’s autobiography is replete with praise for Gandhi, Nehru and India in
general. He especially admired India’s plural culture. “My own views on
multiculturism,” he wrote, “are best summed up in a passage by Gandhi: ‘I want
the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I
refuse to be blown off my feet by any.’”
Throughout his prison term he received letters from friends who had travelled to
India. “Without exception, they had been profoundly impressed and excited by
what they found there. I could not understand what they found so pleasant.
Born and educated in South Africa, they had all grown up, as I did, with a
mental picture of a vast country besieged by famine, malnutrition, disease,
undesirable poverty, communal strife, lawlessness, corruption and filth.”
He then writes: “It was only when I went to India myself, after my release, that I
understood the enchantment, and realised that the picture sketched by the media
in the West was grievously distorted, with so much emphasis on the negative
aspects of the country that we were ignorant of the hospitality, warmth,
simplicity, cultural richness and beautiful architecture of the subcontinent.
Unfortunately, Third World countries all too frequently fall victim to slanted
reporting that relies on sensationalism and unfavourable news at the expense of
the positive.”

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My visit to Ahmed Katharda Foundation in Johannesburg

We Indians should keep alive the memory of this great freedom fighter not only
because he was of Indian origin, not only because he was Mandela’s alter ego,
but also because of another reason that is important for both contemporary India
and contemporary South Africa. And I came to know about this reason when I
visited the headquarters of Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, which is devotedly
carrying forward his mission to “deepen non-racialism and to promote the
values, rights and principles enshrined in the Freedom Charter and the
Constitution of South Africa”.
One a cool morning last month I drove from my hotel in Sandton, the main
business district of Johannesburg, to Lenasia, some 40 kilometers away on the
city’s outskirts. The apartheid regime created this township exclusively for the
Indian community in the days of racial segregation. Even today a majority of its
residents are people of Indian origin. Although they have been living in South
Africa for many generations, the streets are still named after Kashmir,
Lucknow, Bombay, Bangalore, Mahanadi and so on.
The office of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation was buzzing with activity —
young volunteers, both black and Indian, female and male, were immersed in
their tasks. It has 30 youth clubs across the country and aims to create 100 of
them within the next few years. Here I met two leading office-bearers of the
foundation — Neeshan Balton, its executive director, and Ismail Vadi, its board
member. They told me that the African National Congress, which successfully
led the struggle against apartheid, is no longer what it was in the days of
Mandela and Kathrada. “ANC is faction-ridden. Economy is not in a good
condition, especially for the poor. Youth unemployment is as high as 50%.
There is racial tension between Indian and African communities. Moreover, the
corruption scandal involving the Gupta family and former President Zuma has
badly damaged the reputation of Indians. Therefore, we need to build a new
generation of leaders committed to the better values of the liberation movement
— integrity, honesty, welfare of all South Africans without any distinction or
discrimination. We cannot live in the past.”
If this is the contemporary South African situation that necessitates preservation
of the legacy of noble souls like Ahmed Katharda, there is also something
happening in contemporary India that has created the same need.
“Unfortunately, the politics of communal polarisation in India is creating
divisions between Hindus and Muslims in the Indian community in South
Africa,” Balton and Vadi said to me. “The Muslim community has become

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inward-looking. Its Muslim identity has become stronger and its Indian identity,
especially among the youth, is becoming weaker.”
It was painful to hear this because unity of the Indian community across
religious, caste and linguistic lines was one of the proud achievements during
Gandhi’s time in South Africa and the subsequent period of the anti-apartheid
movement under Mandela’s leadership. Surely, the Indian government, India’s
political parties (especially the BJP), our religious-cultural-business
organisations, our Gandhian organisations and all other civil society
organisations have a major responsibility to cement the cracks that have
surfaced both between black Africans and the Indian community and also
within the Indian community itself.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Ahmed Katharda during his visit to South
Africa in July 2016, and tweeted: “Dr. Ahmed Kathrada is a hero and a great
source of inspiration. So delighted to meet him.” In January 2017, the
Government of India donated two million rands (about Rs 90 lakh) to Ahmed
Katharda Foundation “in recognition of the important role it plays in South
Africa and to support the Foundation in fulfilling its activities”.
This gesture was certainly laudable. But certainly more needs to be done,
especially in India, to preserve the memory of this great Indian-South African.
Why not an Ahmed Katharda University in Gujarat? Why not a Gandhi-
Mandela Museum for India-Africa Friendship with a gallery devoted to
Katharda? Why not an award in his name to honour those South Africans
rendering great service in furtherance of the common ideals of India and South
Africa? Why not invitation to members of the youth clubs of Ahmed Katharda
Foundation to visit India — and reciprocal visits by India’s youth leaders?

Sudheendra Kulkarni  served as an aide to former Prime Minister Atal

Bihari Vajpayee and is the founder of the ‘Forum for a New South
Asia – Powered by India-Pakistan-China Cooperation’. He is also the
founder of Gandhi-Mandela Centre for India-Africa Friendship. He is
the author of  Music of the Spinning Wheel: Mahatma Gandhi’s
Manifesto for the Internet Age.  He tweets  @SudheenKulkarni.

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