Politics is a complex component of a society. It depends on sound judgement, credibility, life experience, an understanding of public dynamics, leadership and integrity. One of the scarcest political commodities is experienced elderly leaders who are mentors and wise advisors. The passing of Ahmed Kathrada has taken away one of the few in South Africa.

Kathrada is today mainly associated with the Rivonia trial in 1964 and therefore his incarceration on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, and others. They assumed an iconic leadership role in the ANC for both the ANC in exile and the internal UDF movement until 1990.

Kathrada’s political history started in the 1940s when he joined the Young Communist League and worked for the Transvaal Passive Resistance Council. In 1946 he was the first time jailed for participation in civil disobedience. In 1952 he was again sentenced for his participation in the famous Defiance Campaign. As a protégé of CPSA leaders Yusuf Dadoo and the Cachalia brothers, his political philosophy included Gandhi’s satyagraha peaceful challenge of authority. It changed when he was accused of treason in 1956 as part of the Treason Trial which lasted until 1961. All the accused were involved in preparing the Freedom Charter.

After the ANC’s banning in 1960 he went underground became part of the first High Command of Umkhonto we Sizwe as a member of the SACP which was formed a year later. His public life came to an end in July 1963 when most High Command members were arrested at Lilliesleaf farm, Rivonia. It was a devastating set-back for the ANC and SACP. Most of those remaining went into exile and managed to regroup only in 1969 at the Morogoro conference.

Between 1969 and the Soweto uprising in 1976 the Black Consciousness movement gained prominence and inside the country the ANC struggled to survive itself. The Rivonia leaders’ profile was also low. With the UDF’s formation in 1983 it changed. The Rivonia leaders assumed a status as honorary leaders as the inspiration and authority for the internal struggle. The international Release Mandela Campaign focused the attention on the Rivonia triallists and Robben Island became the icon of ANC leadership in detention.

The release of political prisoners in 1989-90, first Govan Mbeki, followed by Walter Sisulu, Kathrada, Andrew Mlangeni and others, and finally Nelson Mandela, as well as the return of the exiles in 1990 required a complex integration of the Rivonia leaders, UDF structures and the ANC exiles. Kathrada, Mandela and Sisulu were critically important in this process and also to ‘normalise’ the ANC and SACP as legal, mass movements. The only time Kathrada assumed an official position in the ANC was in 1991 when he was elected as member of the National Executive Committee. Notable is the fact that he played a leading role until his death but without competing official leadership positions. He was also not a member of Government.

After the first election in 1994 he became a Member of Parliament and President Mandela’s Parliamentary Counsellor. He also met his partner, Barbara Hogan, who was later Minister of Health and then Minister of Public Enterprises until 2010 when President Zuma dismissed her. In his final years Kathrada established the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation in Lenasia with its main focus on ‘Deepening Non Racialism’. Former President Kgalema Motlanthe and Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa are leading figures in the AKF. Motlanthe delivered AKF’s first annual lecture with the emphasis on non-racialism. As a life-long member of the SACP and later also ANC, Kathrada’s mission was to promote non-racialism in South Africa.

While imprisoned, Kathrada completed four degrees through Unisa, includng two Honours degrees in History and African Politics, respectively.

He published a number of books, including:

• Letters from Robben Island: A selection of Ahmed Kathrada’s prison correspondence, 1964-1989. Zebra, 1999
• Memoirs of Ahmed Kathrada. Penguin Random House, 2004
• A free mind: Ahmed Kathrada’s notebook from Robben Island. Jacana, 2005

Kathrada’s final political act was in response to the ANC’s growing internal troubles. On 31 March 2016 he wrote a letter to President Zuma in which he urged him to step down. One of the points was: I am not a political analyst, but I am now driven to ask: “Dear Comrade President, don’t you think your continued stay as President will only serve to deepen the crisis of confidence in the government of the country”. Later in 2016 he and Barbara Hogan joined the ANC’s veterans group who met with the top six and NEC to call for a radical intervention and an extraordinary consultation conference.

Kathrada’s work is unfinished and he passed on amidst yet another crisis between the President and his Finance Minister. - By Prof Dirk Kotze, Department of Political Sciences, College of Human Sciences