Ebrahim Moosa – Radio Islam International| 14 Rajab 1438/12 April 2017

In May 2010, I had the good fortune of getting to engage the now late struggle stalwart Ahmed Kathrada on his life’s journey. It was a Saturday evening, and the setting was a youth driven radio show, and Mr Kathrada’s unreserved willingness to be part of the discussion in studio in spite of his advanced age, from the outset spoke volumes to me about his humility and approachability.

Ahmed Kathrada was at ease and without airs speaking to questioners a quarter of his age old. His mind was razor-sharp and he showed a masterful command of the English language throughout the interaction. He came across as meticulous, especially when it came to the accuracy of even minute details and the chronological order of events.

Particularly striking for me was how the icon showed no impatience retelling stories to the audience which he probably told a hundred times over. But perhaps that should hardly be surprising. Because, for Mr Kathrada, his life’s journey reflected key developments in the South African story, which had to be preserved and retold.

“I can’t remember a single request that I have refused” to escort visitors to Robben Island, I recall him saying.

“It is a duty, a responsibility to convey our experiences. It will be selfish if we don’t.”

In keeping with this spirit of historical preservation, I recently unearthed this memorable interview from the audio archives, and deem it appropriate, at this moment when many South Africans digest the meaning of his life, and the trajectory of our country, to share a range of fascinating insights, reflections and anecdotes excerpted therefrom:

The man is not bigger than the cause

“We always say that I was one individual in a collective. We stress it all the time, Mr Mandela stresses it. Everything that happened was not possible to happen by one individual. Sometimes it was a smaller group, sometimes a larger one. Eventually, when things changed in this country, it was millions of people”

Earliest memories of apartheid

“At home, in Schweitzer Reneke, you heard when the bell rings at 9 o’ clock at night, all Africans have to be indoors. It does not make an immediate impact. Then, I remember the police came to arrest an African chap in my father’s shop, and my father did not allow that. He said ‘this is my shop, if you want to make any arrests you must go outside’. I remembered that, but I did not realise its significance. Later on, you start asking the question ‘why’”

Islamic roots

“My father was very religious, and my mother as well. My father was well educated in Islam. In fact, his brother was the Mufti of Rangoon for some time and wrote many religious books. So the non-racial thing came from home…You learn one thing at home – respect. Respect for elders, and respect for all people. That comes from home, and from Islam”.

Graffiti artist

“In any major campaign, we would paint slogans. Like under the Group Areas Act, the Western areas and Sophiatown were being closed, and moved to Meadowlands and so forth. There will still be photographs of those [slogans]: ‘We won’t move’. We used to paint those…The other thing that made a lot of publicity, was the youth congress had embarked on a campaign of wanting a library – because there were no libraries, not a single library for any of the black people. There was just the Bantu Man’s Social Centre, where there was an apology of a library. So we ran a campaign for libraries. And that is when the Picasso Club wrote a slogan with a new type of paint – tar paint – that read: ‘Let us black folks in’. They had to use all sorts of means to get rid of that. Sandblasting it – which cost them a lot of money. When they had completed that, we painted another slogan: ‘We black folks aren’t reading yet!’”

A clash with Mandela

“It was a political clash. At the age of 21, I thought I could challenge him. And it was on the question of a strike organised jointly by the Indian Congress, by the African Congress and the Communist Party just before it was banned. The African Congress Youth League had opposed that strike. I happened to bump into Mandela(by that stage, I had known him well). Sooner or later, we got discussing politics and I challenged him: ‘You are an African leader, I am an Indian youth. I challenge you to choose your constituency, your township. I’ll stand on the platform and I’ll win.’ That challenge, only an arrogant youngster could make that challenge. Mandela took it up at a joint national executive meeting of the two organisations. I was just a doorman – I was not even a delegate or a member. And suddenly I heard Mandela get up and complain about this disrespect I had shown. I thought my friends Ismail Meer and JN Singh will defend me, only to hear Ismail Meer say, ‘look, forget him. He is just a hot-headed youngster’. So, in jail, and even upto now we tease each other about that. I always say, ‘I beat you’. Because the strike took place and it was very successful. Unfortunately, 18 people lost their lives”.

‘Smuggler’

“I was part of a small group that was in charge of all of Mandela’s needs when he went underground: Looking for safe houses, safe transport, arranging meetings. Because, by 1960 the ANC and PAC were also banned. So that made things also very difficult. And it is not as we have today, many, many houses – that time houses were few. So that was the job of that committee. It was not just me as an individual. We managed that. To the extent that we managed his trip overseas. We smuggled him out – not personally – we organised a person who was not well known to take him to Botswana, and from there the overseas people had organised a plane to take him out of the country.”

Mr Pedro

“At Liliesleaf Farm, we had a frontman. He had to be white. But, he was also an artist and architect. I was sent to Liliesleaf for disguise, and he changed my image – grow a moustache, change the spectacles, change my hair. Now Portuguese people and not very light looking – I mean, many of them are my colour. So, he is the one who disguised me as a Portuguese.”

Courage and deep seated sense of responsibility

“When we indulged in what we did do, we knew what the consequences can be. And in my case, I was a member of the minority group – Indians. All of us had a responsibility to our people outside. If the leaders show any weakness, the morale will plummet. I had my own responsibility. I was the only Indian. If I had to give up and desert my colleagues, the African masses would say, ‘look at this Indian chap. He used to stand on the platform, be very brave, make brave speeches, but when the time came, he deserted.’ So, that was a special responsibility. We had to fight it as a political case, regardless of consequences. If I had accepted the offer and given the information, again it would be a thing held against the Indian people as a whole. So we could not afford that. We had to fight together, regardless of consequences. We took a decision together that if the death sentence comes, there will be no appeal. We will accept it.”

Eternal optimism

“[In prison, despite being sentenced to life] your optimism does not go down at all. Being together in it helped. But, the most important thing in my mind is the knowledge that is always there: ‘You are suffering in prison. Prison is very hard. BUT you are protected. No policeman is going to come into Robben Island and shoot you. Our colleagues were not safe. Our colleagues were assassinated, tortured to death, hanged. They were not safe.’ So, that knowledge gives you a lot of courage and confidence…You can’t betray the dead. You can’t betray the people who had it much worse than you. So that confidence remained. If you go to Robben Island today, you will find on a block of concrete which was still wet when someone scratched there: ‘ANC is sure of victory – 1968’. Things were very bad on the island[at that time]. But still, the confidence was there.

The Quraan and the Koerant

“On Robben Island, they assured us that the food was Halaal. Obviously we could not check. Fortunately, the Muslim Judicial Council in Cape Town was very active, and they did whatever they could to ensure that the food was Halaal.

“I asked for the Qur’aan from the highest colonel in the prison service. And he asked me, how I could ask for the koerant. He thought I was using the Afrikaans word for newspaper. He did not know what a Quraan was. Eventually, they allowed me the English version of the Qur’aan after many, many years. But not the Arabic.

“They were paranoid. If I got an Eid card with Arabic wording, they’d suspect that this is a message.”

Time vacuum

“[Initially,not being allowed to keep clocks or any devices to keep track of time on Robben Island], one is forced to judge by the sun; you look at Table Mountain, if its covered, you think it is going to rain. Life is controlled by the bell. The bell tells you when to get up. It tells you get ready to line up to get to work, it tells you it is lunch time. So your life is regulated, regimented completely by the bell”.

Thirst for education

“Under very severe conditions, prisoners studied. People who had funds could register. The vast majority did not have funds and could not register formally. They studied informally, getting their education from fellow prisoners. Many came to prison completely illiterate. We can be proud to say not a single Robben Island prisoner left prison illiterate.

“There were two elderly prisoners from Transkei who came to prison illiterate, and even unable to speak English. So, to communicate with us they had to speak with interpreters. But they were absolutely determined to study – they would give anything, to the extent that one of the old men saw us wearing spectacles, and he thought specs give you the ability to become knowledgeable – so illiterate they were. And they were poor. But they got their education from fellow prisoners. They learnt how to read and write and count.

“Additionally, there came to Robben Island a young man of the age of 16. He had a 10 year sentence. He wrote his Standard 8 there, he wrote his matric there, he wrote his BA there, he started studying law there, he finished his sentence, he finished his law outside, he became an advocate, today[2010] he is the deputy chief justice of the highest court in the country – the Constitutional Court. A product of Robben Island. His name is Judge Dikgang Moseneke. If he could do it under severe conditions of hard labour, why can’t young people do it today.”

Humiliation

“I can give you an idea of the mentality of some of the prison warders. Robben Island can be very hot or very cold. On a very hot day, there was an argument between a young prisoner and a warder. This young prisoner was asked to dig a hole, and they buried him in this hole upto his neck. Naturally, being a very hot day, he asked for water. They did not give him water, they threatened to urinate on his face. Now, that was the mentality of some of the warders. It even embarrassed the Apartheid warders so much that they were removed from the island.”

Absence of dignity

“For people who like to complain, I would like to repeat – What freedom and April 1994 has brought is dignity. All over Apartheid South Africa were signs: ‘Europeans Only. Non Europeans and dogs not allowed.’ Apartheid had robbed us of our humanity and dignity. Now we have our humanity and our dignity and we can walk proudly under one flag, one national anthem as equal citizens of South Africa. That is what April 1994 brought”.

Prison friendship

“Jail cements a type of relationship that does not exist easily outside. You go through so much together: Hardships, you stand by each other, you do things together. When one is a bit down in spirit, you help each other – you keep the spirits up. In the face of provocation, you stand together.

“There’s a man called Laloo Chiba, he spent 18 years with us. The relationship between him and myself is much more than between me and any of my family. It’s more than brothers, because we went through so much together. So we are comrades, we are brothers, we are friends.”

The longing for children

“There are many deprivations in prison. The greatest deprivation is the absence of children. I saw and held a child for the first time after 20 years.

“What happened on that occasion was that a lawyer came to see me in Pollsmoor prison. He had a little daughter called Priya. She was about 3, and she refused to stay in the car. The wardens relented and allowed her to accompany her father inside. It was so thrilling, such an experience that there was no legal consultation. For the half an hour or so that they were there, this child just sat on my lap. It was as if I was on another planet. For 20 years, you have not seen a child, or felt one, or heard a child cry. You even long to hear a child cry. And this child just sat on my lap, and all I could do is try to talk to her and stroke her hair, and there was no legal consultation. That day, I could not remember anything else but this child.

“When I went back to my cell after that, I could tell my comrades nothing except this child. Later on children were allowed. Even upto now, some of the kids that came to see me, I still keep in touch with them, I’ve been to the weddings of two of them, I send them birthday cards every year. They were little kids when they came to see me…but that made a very special impact on us.’”

What is a fax?!

“[On being told by a prison warden that a fax had been received from Pretoria approving our release from prison] instead of jubilation, our first question was ‘What is a fax?’ We did not know what a fax was. We saw it on television, we saw it in newspapers, but we could not conceptualise how you would put in a piece of paper and it gets to the other side. That was the beginning of surprise after surprise after surprise, because the technological revolution had passed us by. We are still learning”

“I managed to master a computer and wrote my books on them. But an ATM took me some years to master. And I never got to grips with using a public telephone, or paying for parking through the machine.”

Similarities between marriage and prison

“You get into prison, it is saying goodbye to a previous life and adapting to a new situation. Marriage is a similar thing. You have come from a life of bachelorhood with a certain style of living, and you get married, and you have to, in that situation, adapt yourself. Where compromises are necessary, you have to make the necessary compromises – all to make for a happy couple, a happy union. The similarity is that you have to make adaptations.

Hope for all oppressed peoples

“We, in the face of great odds – and people would not believe it would happen – came to a negotiated settlement. We just hope and pray, in other conflict areas, people will come to a negotiated, peaceful settlement. That is what we hope and pray for.

“As for Palestine, we have a special, special relationship with Palestine. Among the people who supported us, was the PLO. We can never forget that. They were suffering, they are still suffering.

“Friends of ours have been to Palestine and they have seen apartheid –some of like what we have not experienced. So, our sympathies are with the people of Palestine – absolutely.”

Between past and present

“Our suffering is part of history. That we can never forget. We have forgiven, but we want to look forward. We don’t want to keep on harping about the past. It does become necessary from time to time when we have to teach the younger people who have not grown up with Apartheid just to teach them they have responsibilities. But we don’t want to harp on the past. It is not necessary to blame everything knee-jerkedly on Apartheid. We are 16 years old as a democracy[2010]. It is time we take responsibility upon ourselves. We have got the freedom, we have the vote, we have the destiny in our own hands. Of course, apartheid legacies are still there. We can correct that. It will take time, but by just continuing to blame apartheid, it gets us nowhere. We must take responsibilities as well”.

Lament

“What we are very worried about is ignorance of young people about the past. Freedom did not fall from the heaven. Freedom was fought for. Great sacrifices were made. People were killed. People died. People were hanged. People were tortured.

“The ignorance amongst young people is the greatest challenge. They don’t know where they come from. They don’t know the sacrifices that were made.

“The price of freedom is responsibility. Young people have got the world opened to them. They must study, they must acquire skills, so that they can satisfy themselves, their families, their communities and the nation.”

A call to parents

“Education starts at home. It is the responsibility of parents to teach their children their responsibilities. Children have to know about the past, they have to know what apartheid meant, they have to know what their parents suffered, so that this will never ever be repeated. We can guarantee that only if we firmly know what happened in the past.”

What makes me smile

“You know, I sit on my balcony here in Killarney every morning and what makes my day is, I see a little child – she must be 3 – with her minder and she walks with her and comes back. I just watch her from my second floor and it makes my day. Because that child shows her independence, she crosses the street when she wants to. I just look forward to seeing that child every day. It makes my day. It makes me smile”.

My dream

“If its humanly possible, as an individual I’d be joining all the forces that can bring about a society, which in Mr Mandela’s words were (paraphrased): ‘We can only be satisfied, if we are sure that every child goes to bed with a full stomach, gets up in the morning with a full stomach, well clothed and goes to school’. I will join any forces that work to achieve that. And, if we achieve that, then only can we say we are satisfied”.

LISTEN to the full interview HERE