Muslim anti-apartheid veteran Ahmed Kathrada dies aged 87

South Africa mourns Mandela comrade and former Robben Island inmate who spent decades fighting against racial discrimination.

MENA

2 min read

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28 March, 2017

Kathrada was a critic of Israel's system that he saw as 'worse than apartheid' [AFP]

South African anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Kathrada, a former Robben Island prisoner alongside Nelson Mandela, has died aged 87 at a medical centre in Johannesburg.

The African National Congress veteran succumbed to complications from a cerebral embolism that followed brain surgery.

"This is great loss to the ANC, the broader liberation movement and South Africa as a whole," Neeshan Balton, head of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, said. "Kathy was an inspiration to millions in different parts of the world".

Referred to endearingly as 'uncle' or 'comrade Kathy' by his colleagues and supporters, Kathrada was among those jailed alongside Mandela in the 1964 Rivonia trial.

He spent 26 years and three months in prison, where he and other prominent ANC leaders were forced into hard labour.

Following Kathrada's release, he served as parliamentary counsellor to President Mandela in the first ANC government.

Fellow veteran activist and current government minister Derek Hanekom said he had lost a "revolutionary mentor and dear friend" in Kathrada.

"Comrade Kathy was a gentle, humane and humble soul. He was a determined revolutionary who gave his entire life to the liberation struggle in our country," Hanekom said.

The ANC was banned in 1960, and two years later Kathrada was placed under “house arrest.”

Kathrada then went underground to continue the struggle as a member of the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK).

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.

Like Mandela, Kathrada's activism also extended to the Palestinian struggle, which he was vocally supportive of.

After returning from a trip to Palestine, Kathrada wrote to US actor Morgan Freeman in 2013 to urge the star to pull out of an awards ceremony in Israel.

"I have now personally witnessed the plight of the Palestinian people. They are living under conditions of permanent Martial law," Kathrada wrote in an open letter to Freeman. "I came back convinced that Israel is indeed an apartheid state. And in certain respects it is worse than apartheid".

Kathrada will be buried according to Muslim religious rights, his charity foundation said.