tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/ahmed-kathrada-37257/articlesAhmed Kathrada – The Conversation2024-02-06T12:29:17Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2227652024-02-06T12:29:17Z2024-02-06T12:29:17ZZuleikha Mayat: South African author and activist who led a life of courage, compassion and integrity<p>Few Indian South African women have achieved wider public recognition than author, human rights and cultural activist <a href="https://salaamedia.com/2021/05/08/championpeople-meet-zuleikha-mayat-social-activist-and-renowned-author-of-indian-delights-cookbook/">Zuleikha Mayat</a>, who passed away on 2 February 2024. An honorary doctorate from the University of KwaZulu-Natal was just one of many awards bestowed on her during a life that spanned almost 98 years. </p>
<p>Mayat was a remarkable pioneer, evocative writer, public speaker, civic worker, human rights champion and philanthropist. She was a staunch supporter of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/whither-palestine-ronnie-kasrils-19-may-2015-london">Palestinian freedom</a> and an end to Israeli apartheid and genocide. </p>
<p>I am a scholar of social justice issues in South Africa and have known Mayat for 49 years, through my friendship with her children. I assisted her with her last book, and <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/dr-zuleikha-mayat-appreciation-saleem-badat">recently penned an e-book about her incredible life</a>. </p>
<p>She embodied principled, faith-based, socially committed, inspired leadership based on special talents and indomitable resilience, and upheld the dignity of all with whom she associated. In <a href="https://alqalam.co.za/zuleikha-mayat-93-a-true-indian-delight/">an interview in 2019</a> she said that she hoped to be remembered as “someone who interacted with everyone, no matter who they were, without prejudice”.</p>
<h2>Early life</h2>
<p>She was born on 3 August 1926 in Potchefstroom in South Africa’s North West province, the third-generation child of Indian-South African shopkeepers of Gujarati origins. In a country marked by racial divides even before the advent of apartheid in 1948, she learnt from her grandfather – <a href="https://iucat.iu.edu/iub/893561">as she later wrote</a> – that intermingling across social divides and boundaries was important, as was “learning the languages and folkways” of other social groups.</p>
<p>Her father was generous to poor people and drummed into her, <a href="https://iucat.iu.edu/iub/893561">she later reflected</a>, that “others have a share in our incomes”. For her “the Bounty of God is not just for a select few but must be shared” so that all “can benefit”. </p>
<p>The young Mayat read voraciously but racialism stifled her formal education. After grade 6 at the Potchefstroom Indian Government School there was no secondary school for Indians. Segregation (<a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/control-1910-1948">1910-1948</a>), the precursor to apartheid, which legally entrenched racial classification and enforced segregation in all walks of life, meant separate schools for different “races” and the schools for whites would not enrol her. </p>
<p>Patriarchy also played a role. She was one of seven siblings; boys, like her three brothers, continued secondary education in other towns or cities “<a href="https://iucat.iu.edu/iub/893561">but sending daughters away was almost unheard of</a>”. And, so, her ambition to become a doctor was thwarted. </p>
<p>At age 14, as described in her 1996 book <a href="https://iucat.iu.edu/iub/893561">A Treasure Trove of Memories</a>: A Reflection on the Experiences of the Peoples of Potchefstroom, she discovered that she “had a gift as a writer, an intellectual orientation, and a capacity for expressing strong views”. A correspondence course boosted the “English in which (she) would come to write” prolifically. Later, she achieved a certificate in journalism.</p>
<h2>A letter to the editor</h2>
<p>1944 was a turning point. An 18-year-old Mayat posted a letter signed “Miss Zuleikha Bismillah of Potchefstroom” to the newspaper <a href="https://disa.ukzn.ac.za/keywords/indian-views">Indian Views</a>, which was published in Gujarati and English. The editor was M.I. Meer, father of human rights activist and scholar <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/professor-fatima-meer">Fatima Meer</a>. He published the letter, in which <a href="https://iucat.iu.edu/iub/893561">she</a> “argued for higher levels of education for girls” in a “style that revealed not only a principled passion concerning this matter but also her sharp wit”.</p>
<p>In 1954, aged 28, she invited friends to her small apartment in the coastal South African city of Durban. After supper, the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/gender-modernity-indian-delights-womens-cultural-group-durban-1954-2010-goolam-vahed-and">Women’s Cultural Group</a> was founded. It sought to mobilise women for social change.</p>
<p>Fatima and her husband <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ismail-chota-meer">Ismail Meer</a> roped Mayat and her husband Mohammed into their revolutionary activities. While hiding from the apartheid authorities, activist and future president Nelson Mandela slept at the Mayat home a few times.</p>
<p>In 1961, she edited the famous <a href="https://www.spiceemporium.co.za/product/indian-delights-orange/">Indian Delights</a>, a recipe book, which flew off the bookshelves “<a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/kwazulu-natal/zuleikha-mayats-indian-delights-still-cooking-9845007">like hot samosas at a buffet</a>”. Several new editions have been published and it remains one of the best selling books in South Africa today.</p>
<p>Between 1956 and 1963 Mayat contributed a weekly column to Indian Views. Her column, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290929021_Fahmida%27s_worlds_Gender_home_and_the_Gujarati_Muslim_Diaspora_in_mid-20th_century_South_Africa">Fahmida’s World</a>, brought what academics Goolam Vahed and Thembisa Waetjen <a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/gender-modernity-indian-delights">have described</a> as her “signature liveliness and humour, as well as a sharp moral eye, to bear on various topics”. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.hsrcpress.ac.za/books/gender-modernity-indian-delights">In her columns</a>, she criticised social hierarchies, “ethnic and class prejudices” and racist and inhuman conduct, and commented on “the ethical triumphs and breaches of daily life”. </p>
<p>Mayat was involved in numerous institutions and organisations. These included the McCord Zulu Hospital, Shifa hospital, Black Women’s Convention, South African Institute of Race Relations, the Natal Indian Blind Society, and schools, old age homes and mosques.</p>
<p>And, throughout her life, she wrote.</p>
<h2>A life of writing</h2>
<p>In 1966 she compiled Quranic Lights, a book of prayers. <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-08-09-textiles-carry-a-living-history-in-nanimas-chest/">Nanima’s Chest</a> appeared in 1981 to promote the appreciation of traditional Indian textiles and clothing.</p>
<p><a href="https://iucat.iu.edu/iub/893561">A Treasure Trove of Memories</a>: A Reflection on the Experiences of the Peoples of Potchefstroom (1996) recounts growing up and life in her home town. South African scholar Betty Govinden <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/author/Devarakshanam-Betty-Govinden/1751866409">called the book</a> “an important contribution to autobiographical fiction in this country”.</p>
<p>History: Muslims of Gujarat was published in 2008, the result of “inner urges” that compelled her to probe into her family’s distant past.</p>
<p>A year later came <a href="https://humanities.uct.ac.za/sites/default/files/content_migration/humanities_uct_ac_za/1009/files/Devarakshanam_Govinden.pdf">Dear Ahmedbhai, Dear Zuleikhabehn: The Letters of Zuleikha Mayat and Ahmed Kathrada 1979-1989</a>, based on 75 letters exchanged between herself and anti-apartheid giant <a href="https://theconversation.com/ahmed-kathrada-a-simple-life-full-of-love-after-26-years-of-incarceration-75361">Ahmed Kathrada</a> that covered culture, politics and religion.</p>
<p>Then in 2015 she published <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/post-south-africa/20150520/281526519639492">Journeys of Binte Batuti</a>, a travel memoir. And at age 95 Mayat published <a href="https://muslimviews.co.za/2021/07/30/a-new-book-by-the-evergreen-zuleikha-mayat/">The Odyssey of Crossing Oceans</a>, an enthralling and expansive narrative by a consummate storyteller, which embodied some of her philosophy of life. </p>
<h2>Justice and peace for all</h2>
<p>Post-1994, when democratic elections were held for the first time in South Africa, Mayat continued her fight for equity and social justice. She <a href="https://alqalam.co.za/zuleikha-mayat-sadly-india-has-departed-from-indian-nation-to-hindutva-nation/">spoke out</a> and marched against local and global injustices. </p>
<p>She was acutely aware that for many the world was an inhospitable place. She sought, <a href="https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/read-nelson-mandelas-inauguration-speech-president-sa">like Nelson Mandela</a>, “justice for all”, “peace for all” and “work, bread, water and salt for all” – for people to be “freed to fulfil themselves”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222765/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Saleem Badat receives funding from the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences. </span></em></p>Mayat embodied principled, faith-based, socially committed, inspired leadership.Saleem Badat, Research Professor, UFS History Department, University of the Free StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1814942022-05-05T16:42:00Z2022-05-05T16:42:00ZAntjie Krog and the role of the poet in South Africa’s public life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461543/original/file-20220505-16-qp84fz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Antjie Krog from a detail of the cover for the book 'n Vry vrou (a free woman).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Human & Rousseau</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When South African writer <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/antjie-krog">Antjie Krog</a> was just 17, she wrote a poem for her school magazine which was shocking enough to upset Kroonstad High’s parents. The furore caught the attention of the Sunday newspapers, who descended on the town in the Free State province. </p>
<p>The 17-year-old had expressed the desire to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>build myself a land/where skin colour doesn’t count/only the inner brand/of self; where no goat face in parliament/can keep things permanently verkrampt/where I can love you,/can lie beside you in the grass/without saying ‘I do’/where black and white hand in hand/can bring peace and love/to my beautiful land.“ (Translated from Afrikaans <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/change-tongue/9781770220751">by Krog</a>.) </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In South Africa in 1970, the minority white government’s apartheid policy spurned "racial” mixing and prohibited sexual relations between black and white. The poem attacked Afrikaner conservatives (verkrampt means cramped, but also a political designation). </p>
<p>Die Beeld newspaper repeated the entire poem and consulted <a href="http://www.stellenboschwriters.com/vheerdene.html">Dr Ernst van der Heerden</a>, poet and head of Afrikaans and Nederlands at Wits University, about whether it had value. His opinion was that Krog’s work was like that of famed poets <a href="http://www.stellenboschwriters.com/breyten.html">Breyten Breytenbach</a> and <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/opperman-diederik-johannes-1914-1985">DJ Opperman</a>. More press descended, the poem was published again (in English in the Rand Daily Mail). Her mother got involved in defending her writing. The poem appeared in the African National Congress (ANC) publication Sechaba (the ANC, now the country’s governing party, was then a liberation movement in exile). Her father was summonsed by the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Afrikaner-Broederbond">Broederbond</a> (a powerful and secretive patriarchal Afrikaans nationalist society), to explain how this could have happened. </p>
<p>This rapid set of events led to the publication of her first volume of poetry – <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Dogter_van_Jefta.html?id=We81kgEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Dogter van Jefta</a> (Daughter of Jephthah) – but without the offending poem appearing in it.</p>
<p>That tale holds all the ingredients of Krog’s unfolding trajectory as a South African voice: an uncompromising stance about her own experiences and thoughts and a courage to say them out loud, the instant attention of the press and literary fraternity, and a curious and appreciative audience.</p>
<p>This year Antjie Krog turns 70 and her passions and commitments, forged in the 1970s, show no waning. For decades she has represented the important role that a poet can play in public life in a fractured country.</p>
<h2>Two audiences</h2>
<p>With Dogter van Jefta, Krog was immediately set on a path to become a serious poet, a writer mentored by Opperman and able to produce volume after volume with the assurance that thousands would buy them. But the appearance of the poem in Sechaba and the London Observer gave Krog another audience, invisible and silent for many years until the liberation movements were unbanned and the ANC returned to South Africa. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461557/original/file-20220505-11-tssf15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An earnest woman looks over her shoulder, round glasses on." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461557/original/file-20220505-11-tssf15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461557/original/file-20220505-11-tssf15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461557/original/file-20220505-11-tssf15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461557/original/file-20220505-11-tssf15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461557/original/file-20220505-11-tssf15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461557/original/file-20220505-11-tssf15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461557/original/file-20220505-11-tssf15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Krog in 2006.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MARK WESSELS/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At a rally in Soweto in 1989 ANC cadre <a href="https://theconversation.com/ahmed-kathrada-a-simple-life-full-of-love-after-26-years-of-incarceration-75361">Ahmed Kathrada</a>, newly released from jail, quoted Krog’s poem written when she was 17. How had he got his hands on it in prison on Robben Island? He thought it might have been in a magazine. It had so touched him he’d written it out by hand and kept it.</p>
<p>So Krog had become a recognised poet within South Africa, but also a voice of dissent and hope for those in prison and in exile. The two hallmarks of the poem, aesthetic-poetic and personal-political, and their entanglement, have since marked all Krog’s work as she has moved beyond poetry into journalism, into nonfiction book writing in English, and as she has taken up an academic post at the University of the Western Cape.</p>
<h2>The truth commission</h2>
<p>Krog had written book reviews for the press for some years before she became editor of the left-leaning Afrikaans magazine Die Suid-Afrikaan in 1993. But it was in 1995 when the public broadcaster’s radio team was gearing up to cover the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/truth-and-reconciliation-commission-trc-0">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> (TRC) that Krog stepped properly into news journalism. She became leader of the Afrikaans reporting team at the SABC. The TRC was a court-like restorative justice body that sought to reveal human rights abuses under apartheid, which had formally ended in 1994.</p>
<p>Bringing a poet sensibility to journalism, Krog pushed the boundaries of radio reporting. She insisted that the voices and sounds of those affected be foregrounded in the listener’s ear. Journalist Hanlie Retief called her </p>
<blockquote>
<p>a disturbing conscience, an umbilical cord between the TRC and Afrikaans-speakers. She … let the often macabre testimonies sometimes wail, sometimes sing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The constraints of news journalism irked Krog. In a great outpouring of energy she produced a nonfiction book in English which described the experiences of reporting the TRC, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/95875/country-of-my-skull-by-antjie-krog-introduction-by-charlayne-hunter-gault/">Country of My Skull</a>. The book also told the powerful stories of victims and their families. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WNamu1Njkzc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>It was this book with its blend of reportage, memoir, poetry and fiction that propelled Krog onto an international stage. Hundreds of invitations were made to talk at conferences and the book became incorporated into university courses all over the world. The book’s power lies in the rawness of her experiences and unflinching descriptions, coupled with a worldwide attention to commissions of inquiry into past atrocities. </p>
<h2>How South Africans speak to each other</h2>
<p>Two more books followed as Krog took on creative nonfiction, <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/change-tongue/9781770220751">A Change of Tongue</a> and <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/begging-be-black/9781770220706">Begging to be Black</a>. Working in both English and Afrikaans, she did her own translations and brought out more poetry, like <a href="http://penguin.bookslive.co.za/blog/2011/02/01/podcast-antjie-krogs-reads-body-bereft-verweefskrif/">Body Bereft/Verweeskrif</a> in 2006.</p>
<p>Using this facility in both languages, she also leaned on her experience during the 1980s, at anti-apartheid rallies with poets reading in other African languages. She ventured into writing that worked in the spaces between translation, into the somewhat untranslatable. The notable book, <a href="https://www.ukznpress.co.za/?class=bb_ukzn_books&method=view_books&global%5Bfields%5D%5B_id%5D=333">There was this Goat</a>, co-written with Nosisi Mpolweni and Kopano Ratele, took on a TRC testimony that had elements of the fantastic and bizarre. </p>
<p>Krog was present during the testimony and had read the official translation but was dissatisfied with it. She, Mpolweni and Ratele worked on a retranslation. She had developed a preoccupation with how South Africans speak to each other, with how they listen and what they hear. As the authors write: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We became aware of the barriers we have to overcome, as well as the lengths we have to go to, in order to arrive at some understanding of our fellow human beings.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This project has become Krog’s university work. Although earlier she had embarked on translation and transcription projects, they were of her own writing or forays into older work in indigenous languages. Some were commissions, like the translation of former president <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a>’s autobiography <a href="https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/nelson-mandela/long-walk-to-freedom/9780759521049/">Long Walk to Freedom</a> into Afrikaans. Now she works with a team selecting key historical texts, usually in a single African language, which are then translated into many South African tongues.</p>
<p>Krog has been busy with the same work since she was 17: using all her literary devices to get South Africans to see and listen to each other. In my <a href="https://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10539/7957/Anthea%2520Garman%2520PhD%2520Thesis%25202009.pdf?sequence=1">doctoral thesis</a> and my <a href="https://www.ukznpress.co.za/?class=bb_ukzn_books&method=view_books&global%5Bfields%5D%5B_id%5D=464">book</a> on Krog, I summed up the role I see her playing in South African public life. It’s to affirm the literary as a resource for social and political life, bringing the personal into the political by asserting its messy, emotional and passionate dimensions, and by insisting on the very great value of open-hearted encounters with others.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181494/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anthea Garman receives funding from the National Research Foundation. She is affiliated with the South African National Editors' Forum.</span></em></p>The famous writer turns 70 this year. She is driven by how South Africans see and hear one another.Anthea Garman, Professor of Journalism and Media Studies, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1811262022-05-01T08:28:22Z2022-05-01T08:28:22ZCan Themba: South Africa’s rebel journalist was a teacher at heart<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459054/original/file-20220421-60275-4z0ccn.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail of a photo of Can Themba at Drum magazine.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo Jürgen Schadeberg courtesy Wits University Press</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Siphiwo Mahala is well known as a South African short story writer, novelist, playwright and literary organiser. He is also an academic. In fact, his most recent book is a product of his PhD thesis, titled <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/can-themba/">Can Themba: The Making and Breaking of the Intellectual Tsotsi</a>. <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/can-themba/">Can Themba</a> was a journalist and short story writer who challenged the apartheid state by foregrounding the pain and the joy of black life. We asked Mahala to tell us more.</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Who was Can Themba and why does he matter?</h2>
<p>Can Themba was part of a generation of black writers that revolutionised journalism and the South African literary landscape in the 1950s and early 1960s. This was a culturally dynamic and politically volatile period in South Africa. In 1948 <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-apartheid-south-africa">apartheid</a> was introduced by the white minority government, followed by the enactment of draconian laws in the early 1950s, which sought to separate people according to race. This prompted the black oppressed majority to intensify its resistance struggle. Artists, intellectuals and the growing cohort of black journalists were at the forefront of finding platforms to speak against these socio-political ills and challenge the regime. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/journalism-of-drums-heyday-remains-cause-for-celebration-70-years-later-142668">Drum</a> was the most widely distributed magazine that foregrounded the voices of urban black people at this time. Themba was associate editor and also wrote for Drum’s sister newspaper, the Golden City Post. He was central in chronicling the black condition. Themba had a penchant for ordinary stories – of the neglected, the marginalised and even the resented – and he wrote them in such a sensational way that they would attract global attention. He was a daring journalist, unafraid to put his body on the line in pursuit of a story.</p>
<p>The kind of stories he covered included the impact on ordinary people of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/1957-alexandra-bus-boycott-and-its-unsung-heroes-roseinnes-phahle-june-2019">1957 bus boycott</a> and of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994">pass laws</a>. One of his most documented stories was Brothers in Christ, where he investigated if white churches would welcome black worshippers in accordance with the Christian doctrine of brotherhood. He was assaulted and charged for trespassing in churches, creating a controversy that solicited international attention. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white photo in which a man looks wryly into camera, a hat on his head and a floral button up shirt on." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459056/original/file-20220421-66106-89g0mg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait of Can Themba.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo Jürgen Schadeberg courtesy Wits University Press</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>His romantic relationship was the subject of police interrogation because he dared to love across the colour line. He was manhandled and arrested for doing journalism. He was banned under the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/suppression-communism-act-no-44-1950-approved-parliament">Suppression of Communism Amendment Act</a> and his writing could neither be published nor referenced in South Africa until 15 years after his death. Clearly the apartheid regime wished to erase him from the face of history. </p>
<p>He went to exile in the early 1960s, was banned shortly after and died in exile. This has made it difficult to trace his life’s journey. Although his works – especially his short story <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2017/02/14/the-suit-why-can-themba-s-1950s-complex-tale-of-love-is-still-a-hit"><em>The Suit</em></a> – have been celebrated for years, his personal story has been sketchy, limited to his period as a Drum journalist. </p>
<h2>How does your study approach him?</h2>
<p>My interest was in his construction. Tracing the factors that contributed to the making of the writer who became known as the winner of Drum’s short story competition in 1953, and the elements that contributed to his deterioration a few years later. I feel privileged to have been the first to <a href="https://www.news24.com/citypress/trending/can-themba-the-man-in-the-suit-20180912">document his life story</a> – more than 50 years after his passing in 1967. In this book, through the voices of people who knew him personally, we get to know Can Themba as a husband, father, a drinking buddy, a teacher, a colleague. As a person and not just the public figure. </p>
<p>More than half the people I interviewed as part of the research have since passed away. The unique insights shared by the late <a href="https://www.news24.com/drum/News/can-thembas-wife-passes-on-20170728">Anne Themba</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/remembering-nadine-gordimer-29224">Nadine Gordimer</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tribute-to-keorapetse-kgositsile-south-africas-poet-laureate-89700">Keorapetse Kgositsile</a>, <a href="http://new.observer.org.sz/details.php?id=14985">Parks Mangena</a>, <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/prof-mbulelo-vizikhungo-mzamane-posthumous">Mbulelo Mzamane</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ahmed-kathrada-a-simple-life-full-of-love-after-26-years-of-incarceration-75361">Ahmed Kathrada</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/lindiwe-mabuza-feminist-icon-who-used-art-to-fight-for-democracy-in-south-africa-173638">Lindiwe Mabuza</a> cannot be replicated and could have been easily lost. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/celebrating-dolly-rathebe-south-africas-original-black-woman-superstar-172532">Celebrating Dolly Rathebe, South Africa's original black woman superstar</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>I trace him from an early age, his family background in the racially mixed community Marabastad, relocating to Atteridgeville, a township outside Pretoria. I trace his schooling as well as his years as a student at the University Fort Hare, where he studied towards a BA degree and majored in English which he passed with a distinction. Sharing the university syllabus helps us to understand the foundations of his literary apprenticeship, as it included literary criticism, the history of literature and the study of poetry. The earliest available record of Themba’s publication dates back to 1945, when he was a student at Fort Hare, and the influence of Shakespeare is palpable. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GFI6eIgbuG8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The author interviewed about the new Can Themba book.</span></figcaption>
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<p>This period also gives a glimpse of what he and some of his fellow students would become. Whereas Themba and his fellow literary enthusiast <a href="https://theconversation.com/dennis-brutus-south-african-literary-giant-who-was-reluctant-to-tell-his-life-story-141730">Dennis Brutus</a> contributed mainly poetry and short stories in student journals, political leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/sobukwes-pan-africanist-dream-an-elusive-idea-that-refuses-to-die-52601">Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe</a> was contributing articles in political pamphlets. </p>
<p>I hope readers will take away a more holistic view of Can Themba and understand that he was an abundantly talented individual who was as flawed as the rest of us. He died before his fullest potential could be realised. </p>
<h2>What did you conclude about Themba?</h2>
<p>Much has been <a href="https://ujcontent.uj.ac.za/vital/access/manager/Repository;jsessionid=DB90F6AB0DA8180580F37290A3131738/uj:8643?exact=sm_mimeType%3A%22application%2Fpdf%22&f0=sm_type%3A%22Thesis%22">written</a> about the perceived lack of political commitment in his works, his romanticisation of the township and his excessive drinking. In this book, I reveal some of his sharpest political commentary. I reveal that Themba did not drink until he joined Drum. Former Drum photographer Jurgen Schadeberg states that drinking in the newsroom was encouraged. Schadeberg says Themba initially felt out of place in the newsroom, and kept wearing a tie just like the teacher he was. </p>
<p>Themba died in 1967, supposedly of alcohol related causes, only 14 years after he started drinking. I interrogate a number of personal, social and political factors that contributed to his early demise. As an epigraph to the book, I use a quote from his former protege, veteran journalist <a href="https://sanef.org.za/sanef-mourns-the-death-of-veteran-journalist-writer-and-researcher-harry-mashabela/">Harry Mashabela</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Can Themba was what he was and not what he could have been because his country is what it is.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For a writer who believed in freedom of expression, living in a tyrannical society was a constant assault to his soul. </p>
<p>More than anything else, I realised that Can Themba was a teacher at heart. It’s common knowledge that before joining Drum in 1953, he had been working as a teacher, and that he taught at St Joseph’s Catholic School in Swaziland, where he passed away in 1967. It’s not very well known that he lived for teaching even when he was not teaching for a living. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A book cover that foregrounds a photograph of a young man in glasses leaning back, a newspaper open in his hands and a typewriter on the desk in front of him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/459052/original/file-20220421-70763-sldjki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1136&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wits University Press</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>He was a teacher in his <a href="https://readinglist.click/sub/remember-can-themba-on-the-50th-anniversary-of-his-death-at-the-launch-of-the-house-of-truth-by-siphiwo-mahala/">House of Truth</a>, which he established in his room in Sophiatown as a forum for debate. He taught in the newsroom and in the drinking dens, becoming known as the “shebeen intellectual”. And in every space where he found himself. He did guest lectures at universities. He even offered English lessons to groups and individuals. For me, his greatest legacy is his determination to nurture young minds. </p>
<p><em>Can Themba: The Making and Breaking of the Intellectual Tsotsi is <a href="https://witspress.co.za/catalogue/can-themba/">available from</a> Wits University Press</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181126/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Siphiwo Mahala is affiliated with the University of Johannesburg as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and a Senior Research Fellow at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study.
</span></em></p>Abundantly talented and flawed, apartheid-era writer Can Themba wasn’t afraid to put his body on the line for a story.Siphiwo Mahala, Postdoctoral researcher, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1472052020-09-30T15:04:08Z2020-09-30T15:04:08ZPasha 82: Remembering South Africa’s George Bizos<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360766/original/file-20200930-22-109w4fv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">shutterstock</span> </figcaption></figure><p>South African human rights lawyer and advocate George Bizos passed away on 9 September 2020. Bizos was famous as a fighter for human rights and was one of Nelson Mandela’s lawyers in the Rivonia trial. He also represented anti-apartheid struggle icons like Ahmed Kathrada. Bizos left an important legacy in South Africa.</p>
<p>In today’s episode of Pasha Kylie Thomas, a research fellow at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in the Netherlands, pays tribute to George Bizos and discusses his influence. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360770/original/file-20200930-20-1eesnyy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="George Bizos posing" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360770/original/file-20200930-20-1eesnyy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360770/original/file-20200930-20-1eesnyy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360770/original/file-20200930-20-1eesnyy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360770/original/file-20200930-20-1eesnyy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360770/original/file-20200930-20-1eesnyy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360770/original/file-20200930-20-1eesnyy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360770/original/file-20200930-20-1eesnyy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Portrait of Advocate George Bizos by Adrian Steirn.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image Courtesy of Adrian Steirn/21Icons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p><strong>Photo:</strong>
“George Bizos attending Ahmed Kathrada funeral at Westpark cemetery.” By Mike Brown found on <a href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/johannesburg-rsa-march-29-2017-george-626473559">Shutterstock</a></p>
<p><strong>Music</strong>
“Happy African Village” by John Bartmann, found on <a href="http://freemusicarchive.org/music/John_Bartmann/Public_Domain_Soundtrack_Music_Album_One/happy-african-village">FreeMusicArchive.org</a> licensed under <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/">CC0 1</a>.</p>
<p>“The Sad Dwarf” by Unheard Music Concepts, found on <a href="https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Unheard_Music_Concepts/Industry/01_The_Sad_Dwarf">FreeMusicArchive.org</a> licensed under <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Attribution License.</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147205/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Reflecting on the life of George Bizos, one of South Africa's shining lights.Ozayr Patel, Digital EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1458522020-09-10T15:55:09Z2020-09-10T15:55:09ZBook reveals new, surprising nuggets about Nelson Mandela’s last years in jail<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357170/original/file-20200909-14-1csn6d3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Apartheid-era Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee, Thabo and Zanele Mbeki, Nelson Mandela and his daughter Zenani, FW and Marike de Klerk.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GettyImages</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Twenty years ago the South African academic <a href="https://www.ufs.ac.za/humanities/departments-and-divisions/history-home/general/staff?pid=SxD3F6MdCzQ%3D">Jan-Ad Stemmet</a> met the apartheid era justice minister <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hendrik-jacobus-kobie-coetsee">Kobie Coetsee</a>, who announced he had transcripts of 13,000 pages of recordings of Nelson Mandela’s time in prison. </p>
<p>These transcripts of the anti-apartheid struggle icon contained, he said, “bombs, atom bombs” that would</p>
<blockquote>
<p>blow everything up.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The pair began to discuss a book deal but only two days in the 69-year-old Coetsee <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/aug/05/guardianobituaries.nelsonmandela">died</a> of a heart attack and the moment passed. Then, 14 years on, this trove of documents reemerged in an archive at the University of the <a href="https://www.ufs.ac.za/">Free State</a>, where Stemmet taught history.</p>
<p>Stemmet worked with the veteran South African journalist Riaan de Villiers to piece together the transcripts of recordings made in the final five years preceding Mandela’s release <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/06/11/190671704/the-day-nelson-mandela-walked-out-of-prison">on 11 February 1990</a> – a period of intense revolt against the apartheid regime, in which the black townships were rendered “ungovernable” and a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-political-killings-have-taken-hold-again-in-south-africas-kwazulu-natal-143908">low level civil war erupted</a>. </p>
<p>Mandela and his seven comrades had been sentenced to life for sabotage at the end of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Rivonia trial</a> (1963-1964). In line with apartheid policies all, except <a href="https://theconversation.com/denis-goldberg-rivonia-triallist-liberation-struggle-stalwart-outspoken-critic-137670">Denis Goldberg</a>, who was white, were sent to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Robben-Island">Robben Island</a>, where black political prisoners were kept.</p>
<p>From the account of the secret prison recordings documented, Coetsee emerges as a key player in this period of South African history. The small, enigmatic and inscrutable lawyer by training was a far-sighted plotter who sometimes spoke in riddles and held his cards close to his chest. </p>
<p>Coetsee bugged Mandela’s prison conversations, which were also separately bugged by the National Intelligence Service. He seems to have used the knowledge and power this provided to help steer his own government in the direction of negotiations with the ANC.</p>
<p>As early as 1984, as justice minister, he suggested Mandela’s unconditional release, and helped persuade the bellicose Prime Minister <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/pieter-willem-botha">PW Botha</a> of the value of dialogue with “Prisoner 913”. Years later he helped frame <a href="https://theconversation.com/fw-de-klerk-made-a-speech-30-years-ago-that-ended-apartheid-why-he-did-it-130803">FW de Klerk’s historic speech</a> to parliament that announced the unbanning of the ANC and other political organisations.</p>
<p>De Villiers and Stemmet’s book, <a href="https://www.nb.co.za/en/view-book/?id=9780624076322">Prisoner 913: Revelations from the Kobie Coetsee Archive</a>, offers a detailed look at Mandela’s talks with representatives of the apartheid government while he was in prison. It does indeed contain revelations that might be surprising, but no “atom bombs”.</p>
<p>What it does offer is valuable insight into Mandela’s extraordinary role in guiding the future of his country while still in prison, with the gnome-like Coetsee playing a key supporting role.</p>
<h2>Prelude to talks to end apartheid</h2>
<p>Shortly after being separated from his fellow prisoners at Pollsmoor – Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Raymond Mhlaba, Elias Motsoaledi and Andrew Mlangeni – in 1985, Mandela began talking to government representatives. This he only revealed to the others after his initial meeting with Coetsee that year. The book notes that Mhlaba and Mlangeni were enthusiastic; Sisulu and Kathrada less so.</p>
<p>Mandela saw his role as a facilitator between the government and the ANC. He even proposed to Coetsee that the two of them go together to Lusaka to speak to the exiled ANC, an idea that fizzled out. Later Mandela considered an invitation from De Klerk to serve as a member of a “group of wise men” who’d advise him, but this too was dropped.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357166/original/file-20200909-16-1jfsjy3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357166/original/file-20200909-16-1jfsjy3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357166/original/file-20200909-16-1jfsjy3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357166/original/file-20200909-16-1jfsjy3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=913&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357166/original/file-20200909-16-1jfsjy3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1147&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357166/original/file-20200909-16-1jfsjy3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1147&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357166/original/file-20200909-16-1jfsjy3.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1147&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>When Sisulu and seven others were released <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/five-anc-leaders-are-released-prison">in 1989</a> Coetsee and Mandela agreed the ANC should not “fuel further conflict”. He was particularly keen that the ANC tone down its “armed struggle” rhetoric. He spoke on a prison phone to <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/thabo-mvuyelwa-mbeki-mr-0?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIzf6T4azc6wIVWeN3Ch1Lew6hEAAYASAAEgLsxvD_BwE">Thabo Mbeki</a>, who was then the movement’s publicity director. Mbeki read to him an ANC statement but conveniently left out the bit where they called for armed struggled to be intensified. Mandela later discovered this and was peeved, saying Mbeki had “made a mistake”.</p>
<p>In a January 1990 memo for the cabinet, Coetsee summarised Mandela’s dilemma. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>His separate detention in relatively comfortable conditions created a situation in which his colleagues became irritable and even distrustful towards him, especially when it became known that he was holding discussions with ministers and senior officials.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Coetsee suggested this was his side’s aim, saying it was “subtly exploited” but conceded it failed because </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Mandela sought throughout to prevent a wedge being driven between him and his organisation, or even that such perceptions should develop and take root.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One example is negotiation strategy.</p>
<p>Mandela proposed a two-stage model: first the government and ANC would work out preconditions; then the actual negotiations would begin. However, when the ANC adopted a different approach, calling on the government first to create a “climate for negotiations”, Mandela went along with this.</p>
<p>Gradually, the initiative shifted away from Coetsee and towards Prisoner 913, who made the key decisions with the government responding, right down to the timing and modalities of his own release.</p>
<h2>A view on Winnie Mandela</h2>
<p>Some of the most intriguing passages relate to Winnie Mandela. A document covering a conversation with his elder daughter Zenani and her husband, Swazi Prince Muzi Dlamini, is particularly revealing. Nelson wanted their younger daughter, Zindzi, to join her sister at Boston University because he was worried about Winnie’s “corrupting influence”, with the prison note taker recording him saying she had </p>
<blockquote>
<p>no respect for the community, the family or himself and also not for herself.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The note taker summarised Mandela’s remarks on the early years of their marriage when Winnie “went around with married men” and “had relationships with other men”. Once, when in hiding, he told her he was going to Durban and was arrested and it was clear the police knew he was there and that Winnie was the source of this information.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>She had told this to someone with whom she was having an intimate relationship who betrayed him.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The writers suggest that justice minister Coetsee, not wanting to unsettle their talks, ensured Winnie faced lesser charges in the case of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/stompie-seipeis-murderer-goes-jail">Stompie Seipei </a>(the 14-year-old murdered in her care). She was charged with kidnapping and assault rather than murder.</p>
<h2>Importance of the book</h2>
<p>Along the way the documents bring out historical nuggets that the authors don’t elaborate on. For example, it is clear that “unrest” and sanctions are the backdrop for the concessions made by the apartheid government, with Coetsee confiding in Mandela that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the government is under intense economic and financial pressure.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is also clear that the claim by some analysts that it was the fall of communism that prompted moves towards negotiations to end apartheid and secure majority rule is off the mark. The talks momentum started in 1984. By the late 1980s the decision to release Mandela unconditionally had been taken, with the release of Govan Mbeki in 1987 and then Sisulu and seven others seen as trial runs. All of this happened before the fall of the Berlin wall <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-fall-of-the-berlin-wall-30-years-ago-resonated-across-africa-126521">in November 1989</a>.</p>
<p>The book adds to the picture painted in Mandela’s memoir <a href="https://www.takealot.com/long-walk-to-freedom/PLID72235?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIo7Wb_NTb6wIVBbTtCh3cMwH_EAAYASAAEgLdGfD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds">Long Walk to Freedom</a>, sometimes contradicting it in minor details. Now and then Mandela miscalculated but it is clear that without his vision, poise and self-confidence, history might have taken a less promising turn.</p>
<p>Prisoner 913 is a book more for scholars and those with a passion for the South African “struggle” than for general readers. The “913” in the title comes from Mandela’s general prison number, which was used in all the transcripts. His number on Robben Island was famously <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/trials-and-prison-chronology">46664</a>. </p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.nb.co.za/en/view-book/?id=9780624076322">Prisoner 913: Revelations from the Kobie Coetsee archive</a> by Riaan de Villiers and Jan Ad-Stemmet, Tafelberg, 296 pages, is published by NB Publishers</em>.</p>
<p><em>The article was updated to change ‘the University of Boston’ to Boston University.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145852/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavin Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The book shows that the claim made by some analysts that it was the fall of communism that prompted moves towards negotiations to end apartheid is off the mark.Gavin Evans, Lecturer, Culture and Media department, Birkbeck, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1432762020-07-23T12:07:41Z2020-07-23T12:07:41ZAndrew Mlangeni 1925-2020: South Africa loses the last of the Rivonia triallists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349119/original/file-20200723-23-2h6mfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African freedom struggle stalwart Andrew Mlangeni at the UN.
</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Anti-apartheid struggle hero <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/andrew-mokete-mlangeni">Andrew Mokete Mlangeni</a>, who died this week at the age of 95, was the last surviving of the eight African National Congress (ANC) activists who were sentenced to life imprisonment in the infamous <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/people-involved-rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Rivonia trial in the 1960s</a>. </p>
<p>Mlangeni spent 20 of his 26 years in jail on Robben Island alongside fellow triallist Nelson Mandela and other luminaries of the ANC. He symbolised the generations who had joined the ANC during the most dangerous period of resistance to apartheid. No rewards, but only vindictive persecution, including detention and jail, were all that they could expect. They joined the movement to overthrow apartheid and build the South Africa envisioned in the <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/HIST/freedomchart/freedomch.html">Freedom Charter of 1955</a>, the ANC’s blueprint for a free, democratic South Africa.</p>
<p>But he was no party apparatchik. He became a fierce critic of the ANC as it matured into a political party and began to show all the signs of abandoning its early commitment to establish a just South Africa. He was particularly outspoken about rampant corruption under President Jacob Zuma.</p>
<p>Speaking at the Rhodes University conferment of an honorary doctorate, <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2018-04-09-read-in-full-andrew-mlangenis-inspiring-graduation-speech/">he said </a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some of our political leaders have become absolutely corrupt – they are no longer interested in improving the lives of our people. They are busy lining their pockets with the money that is meant to help the poor people. What a disgrace.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He said that if convicted of corruption, Zuma should be jailed.</p>
<h2>Early life</h2>
<p>His early life exemplified what so many South Africans shared. </p>
<p>He was born on 6 June 1925 on a white-owned farm near Bethlehem in the Free State. His father died when he was one year old. The farm owner then evicted the family, who went to live in the blacks-only township of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Bethlehem-South-Africa">Bethlehem</a>, known as Bohlokong (Place of sorrow) in Sesotho. Andrew had to drop out of school to earn money as a caddy at the nearest golf club.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mandela-was-a-flawed-icon-but-without-him-south-africa-would-be-a-sadder-place-142826">Mandela was a flawed icon. But without him South Africa would be a sadder place</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In 1939, he and his mother moved to Pimville, in what is today part of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/soweto">Soweto</a>, the sprawling black residential area southwest of Johannesburg. He returned to school: one of his teachers was <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-anc-is-celebrating-the-year-of-or-tambo-who-was-he-85838">Oliver Tambo</a>, an ANC activist who went on to lead the movement in exile, after it was banned in April 1960.</p>
<p>In 1946 he began work in a factory. First-hand experience of exploitation made him join the Young Communist League. In 1951 he joined the African National Congress Youth League, and in 1954 the ANC. He married June Ledwaba in 1950. They had four children; she passed away in 2001.</p>
<h2>Freedom fighter</h2>
<p>In 1961 Mandela selected Mlangeni as one of the first six volunteers to be smuggled out of South Africa to receive military training and join the newly founded uMkhonto weSizwe (Spear of the Nation), the armed wing of the ANC. He was trained in China, and successfully returned to South Africa.</p>
<p>In 1963 Mlangeni was among those the Special Branch of the apartheid police detained at Liliesleaf farm, and joined Mandela and others as accused in the Rivonia trial for sabotage. In 1964 they were sentenced to life imprisonment, and transferred to <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/analysis/explainer-andrew-mlangeni-what-happened-at-the-rivonia-trial-20200722">Robben Island prison</a>.</p>
<p>When the political prisoners won the right to study by correspondence in 1967, he was the first to enrol, and obtained a degree from the University of South Africa. After 26 years in jail, he was one of the Rivonia triallists released in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/10/16/world/freed-prisoners-call-on-pretoria-to-let-mandela-go.html">October 1989</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="GCIS" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349114/original/file-20200723-17-1wvdhw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/349114/original/file-20200723-17-1wvdhw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349114/original/file-20200723-17-1wvdhw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349114/original/file-20200723-17-1wvdhw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349114/original/file-20200723-17-1wvdhw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349114/original/file-20200723-17-1wvdhw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/349114/original/file-20200723-17-1wvdhw7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=623&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Andrew Mokete Mlangeni receives an honorary Doctor of Literature and Philosophy degree at Unisa.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When South Africa became a democracy <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14662040008447830?journalCode=fccp20">in 1994</a>, he was elected as an ANC member of parliament, serving until the 1999 election. He later served a second term, from 2009 to 2014. He was a <a href="https://www.pa.org.za/person/andrew-mlangeni/">member of both</a> the Portfolio Committee on Defence and Military Veterans and the <a href="https://www.pa.org.za/person/andrew-mlangeni/">Joint Committee on Ethics and Members’ Interests</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/denis-goldberg-rivonia-triallist-liberation-struggle-stalwart-outspoken-critic-137670">Denis Goldberg: Rivonia triallist, liberation struggle stalwart, outspoken critic</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>His Rivonia celebrity status, and being an octogenarian veteran, gave him the space as an MP to take a public stance against corruption in Zuma’s administration. </p>
<p>He repeatedly criticised his own party in public, regardless of the tensions that would cause with some members of his own caucus. Up to the time of his death, he chaired the ANC Integrity Committee. Though a majority on the ANC’s National Executive Committee got it to ignore the Integrity Committee’s findings, Mlangeni had done all that he could.</p>
<h2>Accolades earned</h2>
<p>Mlangeni was <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/andrew-mokete-mlangeni">awarded</a> the Order for Meritorious Service, gold class, in 1999 by President Mandela, the first head of state of democratic South Africa. In 2016 he was granted the <a href="https://www.joburg.org.za/media_/Newsroom/Pages/2016%20&%202015%20Articles/bizos-mlangeni-given-the-freedom-of-joburg-ID10496.aspx">Freedom of Johannesburg</a> and the <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/anc-veteran-andrew-mlangeni-in-london-to-receive-freedom-of-the-city-20180719">Freedom of the City of London</a>, and received the inaugural <a href="https://www.leadsa.co.za/articles/295772/the-launch-of-the-george-bizos-human-rights-award">George Bizos Human Rights Award</a>, named after the veteran human rights lawyer who represented the Rivonia triallists. </p>
<p>In 2017 he appeared in the documentary film <a href="https://www.uct.ac.za/event/life-wonderful-mandelas-unsung-heroes">Life is Wonderful</a>, along with the then two other living survivors of the Rivonia trial, <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2018-06-07-life-is-wonderful-retelling-the-rivonia-trial-with-new-voices/">Ahmed Kathrada and Denis Goldberg</a>.</p>
<p>In 2018 Durban University of Technology conferred an <a href="https://www.dut.ac.za/dut-to-confer-honorary-doctorate-to-dr-andrew-mlangeni/">honorary doctorate in Education on him</a>; in the same year, Rhodes University granted him <a href="https://www.ru.ac.za/latestnews/archives/2018/rhodesconfershonorarydoctoratetodrandrewmoketemlangeni.html">an honorary doctorate in law</a>. The ANC awarded him its highest honour, Isithwalandwe-Seaparankoe, <a href="https://www.deccanchronicle.com/world/africa/220720/andrew-mlangeni-ally-of-mandela-in-anti-apartheid-struggle-dies-at-9.html">in 1992</a>.</p>
<p>President Cyril Ramaphosa <a href="https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/breaking-anti-apartheid-struggle-stalwart-andrew-mlangeni-dies-20200722">said on his death</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The passing of Andrew Mokete Mlangeni signifies the end of a generational history and places the future squarely in our hands. He was a champion and exemplar of the values we need to build in South Africa.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When the weekly barrage of media coverage on the ANC is dominated by reports of corruption, Mlangeni’s life work reminds South Africans of commitment to winning democracy and defending tenaciously its triumphs and achievements. </p>
<p>It reminds us that democracy is not only a destination, but also a lifelong commitment to a just society and fighting for it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143276/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Gottschalk is an ANC member, but writes this obituary in his professional capacity as a political scientist.</span></em></p>Although a commited veteran of the ANC, Mlangeni was no party apparatchik. He was outspoken against endemic corruption in government.Keith Gottschalk, Political Scientist, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/920512018-02-20T13:01:19Z2018-02-20T13:01:19ZSouth Africa must resist another captured president: this time by the markets<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/207235/original/file-20180221-132680-1l9blwl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cyril Ramaphosa addresses MPs after being elected president of South Africa.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The African National Congress (ANC) has made a dangerous habit of bringing post-apartheid South Africa to the brink of instability and the common ruin of all. The <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2018-02-14-president-jacob-zuma-resigns/">resignation</a> of former President Jacob Zuma and his <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/live-goodbye-zuma-hello-president-cyril-20180215">replacement</a> by Cyril Ramaphosa was such a moment. It brought home the point that the over-concentration of power in the office of the president has clearly not worked. </p>
<p>A rethink on president-centred politics and the threats it poses to the democracy are crucial for the post-Zuma period. South Africa needs to re-imagine democratic practice, leadership and how power works. </p>
<p>Some sections of South African society have reduced the Zuma problem to a corruption problem. Dismantle Zuma’s <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/zuma-turned-sa-into-mafia-style-lawless-kleptocracy-saftu-20170805">kleptocratic network</a>, the argument goes, and all is solved. Zuma’s demise and a few high profile prosecutions will suffice. </p>
<p>But another view on the Zuma problem – and one with which I concur – suggests it is a problem of contending class projects inside the ANC. The <a href="http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/1789">neoliberal class project</a> under Presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki saw South Africa integrated into global markets. It maintained stability through modest redistributive reforms. This project laid the basis for a new black middle class to <a href="https://monthlyreview.org/2003/01/01/neoliberalism-and-resistance-in-south-africa/">emerge</a> while systematically <a href="http://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/14466/theresponsesoftradeunionstotheeffectsofneoliberalisminsouthafrica.pdf?sequence=1">weakening</a> labour and the left.</p>
<p>But it <a href="https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-neoliberal-squeeze-on-post-apartheid-democracy-reclaiming-the-south-african-dream/28453">surrendered</a> the state (including the presidency) to transnational capital and the power of finance. </p>
<p>The Zuma project, on the other hand, <a href="https://www.fin24.com/Opinion/zumas-radical-economic-transformation-is-state-looting-20170404">advanced looting</a> as the basis of accumulation and class formation. The <a href="https://www.news24.com/Columnists/MaxduPreez/the-fatal-flaw-in-project-state-capture-20171205">extra-constitutional state</a> that emerged deepened the macroeconomic, institutional and legitimacy crisis of the ANC-led state. The left and labour, aligned with the ANC in the tripartite alliance, were <a href="https://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-opinion/sa-workers-must-brace-for-a-dark-new-year/">co-opted</a> and divided. Both these projects are entrenched in the ANC.</p>
<p>Now what? Messiah-centred presidential politics is extremely dangerous. This is particularly true in a country of extreme inequality and with a formal concentration of power in the office of the president. If politics is not represented, thought and acted beyond this, South Africa is going to repeat historical mistakes.</p>
<p>Since the ANC’s December 2017 conference the media, the banks and international institutions have been talking up a narrative of the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/2018/01/25/the-gaining-rand-and-the-cyril-effect-what-it-means-for-your-pocket_a_23343014/">“Cyril effect”</a>. Zuma’s removal is attributed to this. In fact the Cyril effect is a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/2018/02/12/will-sas-economy-really-benefit-from-the-cyril-effect_a_23359238/">narrative</a> of capture of South Africa’s new president by transnational and financial capital.</p>
<p>South Africa’s democracy cannot afford another captured president beholden to <a href="https://www.fin24.com/Economy/ratings-agencies-note-ramaphosas-election-but-swift-upgrade-unlikely-20180215">credit rating agencies</a>, <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/opinion-ramaphosa-isnt-the-only-winner-so-is-the-rand-12486405">currency fluctuations</a>, investment flows and business <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/safrica-economy/south-african-mining-seen-a-winner-as-ramaphosa-woos-investors-idUSL8N1PJ4EN">perceptions</a>. South Africa’s democracy has to be grounded in the needs of its citizens and the mandates given by its Constitution.</p>
<h2>The ‘Cyril effect’ is hyperbole</h2>
<p>The end of Zuma was in fact not because of the Cyril effect. In the main Zuma was removed by the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-17450447">people’s effect</a> which connected the dots of corruption, a mismanaged state and rapacious capitalism. </p>
<p>This resistance was expressed over 15 years through various institutions and social forces. These included:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Battles inside the South African Communist Party (SACP) against <a href="https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/south-africa-zumafication-left-politics-alliance">Zumafication</a> but which led to expulsions;</p></li>
<li><p>By feminists during Zuma’s rape trial and subsequently through <a href="https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-10-09-rememberkhwezi-zumas-rape-accuser-dies-never-having-known-freedom/#.Wovpsa6WbIU">#RememberKhwezi</a>;</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.zapiro.com/120520st">Artists</a> and cartoonists lampooning Zuma, including with <a href="https://www.zapiro.com/">shower heads</a>;</p></li>
<li><p>The ongoing struggles in communities against <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-ancs-path-to-corruption-was-set-in-south-africas-1994-transition-64774">corrupt officials</a>;</p></li>
<li><p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/marikana-shining-the-light-on-police-militarisation-and-brutality-in-south-africa-44162">Marikana massacre</a> in 2012. This produced rage among workers and major realignments away from Zuma’s ANC;</p></li>
<li><p>The <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2014/04/20/Numsa-calls-for-Zuma-to-resign">call</a> by trade unions like the metalworkers’ Numsa for Zuma’s removal;</p></li>
<li><p>The <a href="http://www.polity.org.za/article/sa-statement-by-the-sidikiwe-vukani-vote-no-campaign-calls-on-south-africans-to-endorse-campaign-16042014-2014-04-16">Vukani-Sidikiwe</a> campaign during the 2014 elections which opened up a national debate on how citizens should vote; </p></li>
<li><p>The rise of #ZumaMustGo Campaign. This was in response to the sacking of <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-removal-of-south-africas-finance-minister-is-bad-news-for-the-country-52170">Nhlanhla Nene</a> as finance minister in December 2015. The NUMSA-led United Front played a crucial role in this;</p></li>
<li><p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-zumamustfall-and-feesmustfall-have-in-common-and-why-it-matters-53115">#FeesMustFall</a> movement. Students’ demands included labour insourcing as well as quality, decommodified and decolonised higher education;</p></li>
<li><p>The <a href="https://www.news24.com/elections/results/lge">2016 local government elections</a>. These were a harbinger of seismic political realignments against the ANC in key cities;</p></li>
<li><p>The role of <a href="http://amabhungane.co.za/">investigative and nonpartisan media</a> in probing corruption scandals. And the publication of the <a href="http://www.gupta-leaks.com/">Gupta-leaks</a> as well as <a href="http://www.jacana.co.za/book-categories/new-releases-65840/a-simple-man-kasrils-and-the-zuma-enigma-detail">“A Simple Man”</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/two-books-that-tell-the-unsettling-tale-of-south-africas-descent-87044">“The President’s Keepers”</a>;</p></li>
<li><p>The courageous role from 2010 onwards of then <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thulisile-nomkhosi-madonsela">public protector Thuli Mandonsela</a> in drawing attention to ethics and legal violations by Zuma;</p></li>
<li><p>Court decisions affirming the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/display-judicial-independence-south-african-court-denies-zuma-again">judiciary’s independence</a> in relation to Zuma;</p></li>
<li><p>Zuma’s miscalculation in <a href="https://theconversation.com/stakes-for-south-africas-democracy-are-high-as-zuma-plunges-the-knife-75550">firing finance minister Pravin Gordhan</a>, the rallying of activists and the rise of <a href="http://www.savesouthafrica.org/">#SaveSouthAfrica</a>. What followed were some of the largest post-apartheid <a href="https://theconversation.com/rebellion-is-on-the-march-against-zuma-but-will-it-be-enough-to-oust-him-75862">protest marches</a>;</p></li>
<li><p>The powerful voice of liberation struggle veterans like <a href="https://theconversation.com/ahmed-kathrada-exhibit-a-of-the-values-imbued-in-south-africas-freedom-charter-75339">Ahmed Kathrada</a> and others who called for Zuma to resign.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>The ANC’s legitimacy crisis</h2>
<p>As a result of all this activity the crisis of legitimacy in the ANC – and the ANC state – has deepened. This has placed immense pressure on the party to act. In this context, Ramaphosa is playing out his role out of necessity and to secure the ANC’s electoral fortunes.</p>
<p>For middle class and rich South Africans Ramaphosa’s <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/speeches/state-nation-address-president-republic-south-africa%2C-mr-cyril-ramaphosa">state of the nation</a> speech represented a return to normalcy – a democracy that works for a few. That’s not to say that the new president didn’t make some important announcements in his state of the nation address. This included his comments about state owned enterprises, redistributive state programmes and anti-corruption mechanisms. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, the speech struck chords that resonated with the “return to normalcy” narrative.</p>
<p>But South Africans can’t repeat the mistake made in 1994 when progressive civil society <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01436597.2012.666011?scroll=top&needAccess=true">demobilised</a>. The people’s effect has to continue to shape a post-Zuma democracy in the interests of all. The ANC has abused majority support and cannot be trusted with the future of South Africa.</p>
<p>People’s power has to be strengthened and continuously mobilised around strengthening democratic institutions, ending corruption, fundamental economic transformation and advancing systemic alternatives to the climate crisis.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92051/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vishwas Satgar receives funding from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and the National Institute of the Humanities and Social Sciences. He has been engaged in various activist initiatives against the Zuma Regime. </span></em></p>Jacob Zuma was removed by the people’s effect, which connected the dots of corruption, a mismanaged state and rapacious capitalism.Vishwas Satgar, Associate Professor, Department of International Relations, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/858382017-10-25T12:18:10Z2017-10-25T12:18:10ZSouth Africa’s ANC is celebrating the year of OR Tambo. Who was he?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190606/original/file-20171017-30390-1bx309e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Oliver Reginald Tambo served as ANC president from 1967 to 1991.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2538380.Oliver_Tambo">Oliver Tambo’s</a> name and reputation are <a href="http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781770100756">lauded</a>, not least because he succeeded, remarkably, in keeping the African National Congress <a href="http://www.anc.org.za">(ANC)</a> together as a liberation movement during an <a href="http://www.whyjoburg.com/oliver-tambo.html">exile lasting 30 years</a>. Despite this legacy, the ANC, now South Africa’s governing party, has seen a year culminating in what is, arguably, its greatest crisis. Today, factions within the ANC nostalgically point to the <a href="http://www.sabc.co.za/wps/portal/news/main/tag?tag=OR%20Tambo%20Memorial%20Lecture">example of Oliver Reginald Tambo</a> , or OR as he was affectionately known in party circles.</p>
<p>Evidence of <a href="https://www.enca.com/south-africa/the-race-corruption-a-big-problem-for-anc">systemic corruption</a> and <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2017/09/04/mkhize-we-must-face-up-to-the-problems-of-factions-inside-anc">factionalism</a> for personal gain within the ANC are blamed for the failure to deliver improved living conditions to the poorest communities. The loss of three major metropolitan municipal councils in the industrial heartland testifies to diminished <a href="https://theconversation.com/sharp-tongued-south-african-voters-give-ruling-anc-a-stiff-rebuke-63606">confidence in the ANC</a>.</p>
<p>By contrast, in the year of his <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/splash/index">centenary</a>, Oliver Tambo is held as an exemplar of integrity, personifying the ideal of a leader who for 50 years selflessly served the movement, consistently holding up the goals of a humane and caring society.</p>
<p>But who was this much talked about Tambo? And what lessons can be learnt from his leadership?</p>
<h2>Exile</h2>
<p>In 1960, after the <a href="http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/multimedia.php?id=65-259-E">Sharpeville massacre</a>, then ANC President Chief Albert Luthuli instructed Tambo to leave South Africa as an international <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2538380.Oliver_Tambo">diplomat of the ANC</a>. His task was to mobilise a worldwide economic boycott.</p>
<p>With hindsight it was a prescient judgement call. The military wing of the ANC <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/umkhonto-wesizwe-mk">Umkhonto we Sizwe</a> was launched a year later and within two years leaders of the ANC were facing charges of treason in the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Rivonia Trial</a>. The trial, which stretched through 1963-1964, led to life sentences for the leaders of Umkhonto we Sizwe, which included <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/walter-ulyate-sisulu">Walter Sisulu</a>, <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/biography">Nelson Mandela</a>, <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=2360">Govan Mbeki</a> and <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/mr-ahmed-kathrada">Ahmed Kathrada</a>.</p>
<p>Tambo’s task was to alert the world to the horrors of apartheid South Africa, and to seek assistance and support from newly independent states in Africa. It was to be more than 30 years before he returned home in <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/oliver-tambo-returns-exile">December 1990</a>. During this time, his integrity combined with his keen intellect and natural warmth impressed many people in diverse countries around the world.</p>
<h2>Consensus seeker</h2>
<p>Tambo was a careful and astute listener. He followed the indigenous African consensus system of decision making, crafting a conclusion that included at least some of the opinions of all participants.</p>
<p>He believed that the ANC should maintain the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2538380.Oliver_Tambo">“high moral ground”</a> and that it should be a broad umbrella under which all enemies of apartheid could shelter and enrich the movement, irrespective of their political beliefs. He was also cautious, likening the challenge of the liberation struggle to the traditional <em>“indima”</em> method of ploughing a very large piece of land. He <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2538380.Oliver_Tambo">explained</a> at a Sophiatown meeting in 1953.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There’s a point where you must start. You can’t plough it all at once – you have to tackle it acre by acre…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One of Tambo’s strengths was his constructive and creative response to criticism. In 1967, for example, following the failure of Umkhonto we Sizwe cadres to reach the borders of South Africa after a battle at <a href="http://www.sadet.co.za/docs/rtd/vol1/sadet1_chap12.pdf">Wankie in “Rhodesia”</a> (now Zimbabwe), Chris Hani and others, disillusioned with the leaders’ lethargy, released an <a href="http://www.loot.co.za/product/hugh-macmillan-chris-hani/pyjg-2664-g860?referrer=bookslive">angry memorandum</a>. In an interview I did with Hani in Johannesburg in 1993 he admitted: “We blew our tops.” They accused the leadership of Umkhonto we Sizwe and the ANC of getting too comfortable and losing their appetite to return home – they had become “men in suits, clutching passports”.</p>
<p>The response by the leadership was outrage – the Secretary-General Alfred Nzo called for Hani’s execution for treason. But Tambo immediately began organising a conference of elected representatives of the branches around the world. A message was sent to Robben Island to inform ANC leaders jailed there, including Nelson Mandela, of this development.</p>
<p>It was time for frank conversation and a comprehensive, considered assessment. The outcome was the historic and constructive conference at <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/morogoro-conference">Morogoro in Tanzania</a>. The conference took on a more inclusive and democratic direction for the ANC, foregrounding the political aims over the military, and identifying the importance of mobilising workers at home.</p>
<h2>Challenging 1980s</h2>
<p>In the 1980s Tambo was faced with a more serious challenge. International attention against apartheid was growing; he was travelling extensively, persuading ordinary people to undermine apartheid by boycotting its products and banks and denying it arms. Alarmed, the apartheid regime sent spies into ANC camps on the continent, infiltrating top committees in Lusaka and other ANC structures.</p>
<p>The panic that ensued turned the spotlight on the flaws of the Umkhonto we Sizwe leadership. Human rights abuses of suspected spies and “ill-disciplined cadres” led to <a href="http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/media%5C1996%5C9608/s960822l.htm">unlawful deaths and executions</a>.</p>
<p>Tambo’s <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02582473.2012.675813">cautious response</a> was criticised by the leadership of both ANC intelligence and Umkhonto we Sizwe for “impeding investigation” into the spies, owing to “his sense of democracy”. The chief culprits of these human rights abuses were formerly trusted peers of Tambo. He faced the dilemma of blowing the ANC wide apart if he challenged them. Instead, he resorted to the compromising strategy of redeploying them to other sections of the movement, such as education – perhaps leaving an unfortunate legacy for today’s ANC.</p>
<h2>Enduring legacy</h2>
<p>Tambo was to set in motion a process that culminated in South Africa’s democratic constitution. He:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>subscribed Umkhonto we Sizwe and the ANC to the Geneva Convention, which imposed a strict adherence to human rights.</p></li>
<li><p>set up a <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/stuart-commission-report">commission</a> of trusted senior comrades to look into the conditions in the ANC’s camps in Africa as well as abuses. The commission’s report was highly critical.</p></li>
<li><p>summoned an consultative conference in Kabwe in 1985 that reaffirmed ANC’s humanist values, addressed gender inequalities and formally accepted whites in official positions.</p></li>
<li><p>appointed the movement’s top legal minds to research and craft a constitution for the ANC; it was inspired by the <a href="http://scnc.ukzn.ac.za/doc/HIST/freedomchart/freedomch.html">Freedom Charter</a>, which had been drawn up in 1956 after extensive consultation with ordinary people. It opened with the ringing words:</p></li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
<p>South Africa belongs to all who live in it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>South Africa’s new democracy essentially incorporated many of the clauses in the charter’s the path-breaking <a href="https://www.gov.za/DOCUMENTS/CONSTITUTION/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996-1">1996</a> constitution.</p>
<h2>Tambo’s insights remain relevant</h2>
<p>Reporting to his first conference inside South Africa in December 1990 after the unbanning of the ANC, <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/president-or-tambos-opening-address-ancs-48th-national-conference">Tambo warned that </a> “suspicions will not disappear overnight, the building of the South African nation is a national ask of paramount importance. </p>
<p>And he warned:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The struggle is far from over: if anything, it has become more complex and therefore more difficult. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He also reflected that "we were always ready to accept our mistakes and correct them.”</p>
<p>Faced by crises in the ANC, Tambo had always been ready to listen, responding constructively and creatively with new policies to meet the challenges of the time. </p>
<p>This is the enduring legacy of Oliver Tambo: many seasons later, many continue to gain insights and learn relevant lessons from his responses to the universal, human condition of our time. But whether they heeded this call is a moot point:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have devotedly watched over the organisation all these years. I now hand it back to you, bigger, stronger - intact. Guard our precious movement.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85838/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luli Callinicos is author of Oliver Tambo: Beyond The Engeli Mountains published by David Philip Publishersin 2004. She received a Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Grant (1993), Ford Foundation (2000) towards writing the biography of Oliver Tambo. She serves on the MISTRA Council of Advisers, National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciens Board member, also on Council of Robben Island Museum.</span></em></p>Factions within South Africa’s ANC nostalgically point to the example of Oliver Reginald Tambo whose seen as an exemplar of integrity, personifying an ideal leader who served the party selflessly.Luli Callinicos, Researcher and founder member of the History Workshop, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/758842017-04-09T08:48:04Z2017-04-09T08:48:04ZSouth Africans are learning that they’re not that exceptional after all<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164329/original/image-20170406-16680-lok82g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There was a time that South Africa looked very different to the rest of Africa. The <a href="http://www.scholaradvisor.com/essay-examples/descriptive-essay-south-africa-rainbow-nation/">“rainbow nation”</a> was seen by many – including a lot of its own citizens – to be exceptional, having more in common with the developed states of Europe than some of the countries on its own doorstep. </p>
<p>But, in the wake of a series of destabilising <a href="https://mg.co.za/report/zumaville-a-special-report">corruption scandals</a>, financial mismanagement and the incompetent leadership of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-zumas-actions-point-to-shambolic-management-of-south-africas-economy-52174">President Jacob Zuma</a>, this is no longer the case. </p>
<p>It’s time therefore to look to the rest of the continent for evidence on how the <a href="https://mg.co.za/tag/anc-crisis">crisis</a> within the country’s ruling African National Congress <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/">(ANC)</a> is likely to unfold.</p>
<p>The notion of <a href="http://www.politik.uni-osnabrueck.de/POLSYS/Archive/czada%20sa%20exceptionalism.pdf">South African exceptionalism</a> runs deep. Having suffered white minority rule much longer than most other African states, the country had one of the most stable and <a href="http://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/unit.php?id=65-24E-6">successful transitions</a> to democracy on the continent. Following the election of the ANC in 1994, Nelson Mandela’s government promoted <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/1994-national-elections-manifesto">tolerance and responsible</a> government.</p>
<p>At that point, South Africa did not look very “African”. While Nigeria was blighted by <a href="http://www.unh.edu/nigerianstudies/articles/Issue2/Political_leadership.pdf">endemic corruption</a>, the ANC was led by a man whose <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/12/20121211124815790365.html">reputation</a> was beyond reproach. When the ZANU-PF government was becoming increasingly brutal in <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-mugabes-latest-challenger-will-find-it-hard-to-break-the-mould-57587">Zimbabwe </a>, Mandela’s administration was promoting the rule of law and inclusion. And just as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Somalia were falling apart, the South African state appeared to be growing stronger.</p>
<p>Moreover, the notion of exceptionalism wasn’t just something dreamt up by academics or reporters: it was also deeply felt by South Africans themselves. <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02589001.2015.1122870?src=recsys">Some surveys</a> have found that many believe that they are exceptional, and in some cases that they are superior to the rest of the continent. This had some positive consequences, most notably by supporting the reconstruction of a broader national identity.</p>
<p>But it also had its downsides. A <a href="http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/research-data/ktree-doc/6253">report</a> by the country’s Human Science Research Council into the xenophobic violence against migrants from Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe in 2008 concluded that, in addition to urban deprivation and intense competition for jobs and housing, a popular understanding of “exclusive citizenship” motivated anti-foreigner sentiment.</p>
<p>The xenophobic violence, and the economic conditions that gave rise to it, were a clue – for those who had their eyes open – that South Africa wasn’t really that exceptional after all. </p>
<p>On the one hand, a number of other countries such as <a href="http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Africa-Democracy-Politics-Research/440808-2808336-xorq81/index.html">Ghana and Mauritius</a> were also doing well when it came to consolidating democracy. It was just that these positive stories tended to be ignored. </p>
<p>On the other, some aspects of the South African “miracle” didn’t stand up to closer scrutiny.</p>
<h2>Before and after Zuma</h2>
<p>After the transition to majority rule the country recorded impressive achievements in terms of its progressive <a href="http://www.gov.za/DOCUMENTS/CONSTITUTION/constitution-republic-south-africa-1996-1">constitution</a> and growing welfare state. But at the same time it soon became clear that many parts of the bureaucracy were prone to rent seeking behaviour.</p>
<p>Similarly, despite its proud history and impressive first four years in office, the ANC was already exhibiting patrimonial tendencies well before Zuma became president in 2009.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164327/original/image-20170406-16682-1v1i5p3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164327/original/image-20170406-16682-1v1i5p3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164327/original/image-20170406-16682-1v1i5p3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164327/original/image-20170406-16682-1v1i5p3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164327/original/image-20170406-16682-1v1i5p3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164327/original/image-20170406-16682-1v1i5p3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164327/original/image-20170406-16682-1v1i5p3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Demonstrators protest against the firing of Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, outside Parliament in Cape Town.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As political scientist Tom Lodge <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiWk6zSt4_TAhUhIcAKHdUdAm8QFggdMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fafraf.oxfordjournals.org%2Fcontent%2F113%2F450%2F1.abstract&usg=AFQjCNEkiFPoCLAdxHH2KirJhUuuolDt1A&bvm=bv.151426398,d.d24">has argued</a>, many of those who rose to prominence in the movement during the apartheid era had been born into privileged positions. And the ANC was forced to develop ties to <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article/113/450/1/48437/Neo-patrimonial-politics-in-the-ANC">criminal networks</a> to operate after it was banned by the National Party in <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/african-national-congress-timeline-1960-1969">1960 </a>and forced into exile.</p>
<p>During the liberation struggle, the imperative of fighting the apartheid regime kept these patrimonial tendencies and criminal connections in check. But after the advent of democracy they started to become more pronounced. </p>
<p>Partly as a result, schemes such as <a href="http://www.dti.gov.za/economic_empowerment/bee.jsp">Black Economic Empowerment</a> were used not transform the underlying structure of the economy, but to generate opportunities for self-enrichment. South African political analyst Moeletsi Mbeki has called this <a href="http://africanarguments.org/2012/09/13/moeletsi-mbeki-on-south-africa-%E2%80%9Cblack-economic-empowerment-is-legalised-corruption-%E2%80%9D-%E2%80%93-by-magnus-taylor/">“legalised corruption”</a>.</p>
<p>These tendencies were then exacerbated by Zuma’s rise to power, in large part because he’s a leader that understands politics through a patrimonial lens. Lacking the intellect and management skill to lead by example, he has set about entrenching himself in power by <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/face-off-between-zuma-loyalists-and-critics-at-anc-headquarters/a-19528070">promoting loyalists</a> within the party and the state. This while condoning corruption and sacrificing policy for patronage. As a result, the party’s patrimonial tendencies have been sent into overdrive.</p>
<p>In addition to major corruption scandals over the upgrade to his <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/nkandla-corruption-exposed-1607427">Nkandla home</a> and a multi-billion dollar <a href="http://www.corruptionwatch.org.za/the-arms-deal-what-you-need-to-know-2/">arms deal</a>, Zuma has drawn fire for his close relationship to <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi1yOOZuY_TAhVJKMAKHQnlDngQFggcMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld-africa-22513410&usg=AFQjCNEv1Od9prhAbBfH8qaCfrNt19-P2w&bvm=bv.151426398,d.d24">the Gupta family</a>. He allegedly allows the family to influence major policy decisions in return for its financial support.</p>
<p>More recently, the president plunged the ANC into a full-blown crisis by removing many of the most competent members of the cabinet and replacing them with <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/fm/fm-fox/2017-03-30-gigaba-new-finance-minister-in-cabinet-bloodbath/">loyalists</a>. As a result, South Africa’s credit rating has been <a href="http://www.fin24.com/Economy/breaking-fitch-downgrades-sa-to-junk-status-20170407">downgraded</a>.</p>
<p>For many, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. In the days that followed, a number of prominent political <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2017/03/31/Save-South-Africa-calls-for-protest-after-Cabinet-reshuffle1">figures</a> and the ANC’s partners in the triple alliance, the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2017/04/04/BREAKING-Cosatu-calls-on-Zuma-to-step-down">called on Zuma to go.</a></p>
<h2>Lessons from elsewhere</h2>
<p>Putting this process in its historical context is important: it makes it clear that while Zuma has been a disaster, it would be naïve to think that he is the sole source of the ANC’s problems – or that his removal will solve them. It also shows that South Africa is not exceptional, and instead faces similar problems to many other countries on the continent.</p>
<p>One small silver lining to this cloud is that we can use the experience of other states to better understand the prospects for South Africa. One thing we know from Kenya and Nigeria is that the kind of politics practised by the president <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiDiJHKuY_TAhVsAcAKHWyVBwQQFggfMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vanguardngr.com%2F2017%2F01%2Fcorruption-cases-nigeria-embedded-budgetary-process%2F&usg=AFQjCNHax2IiuZMwgoSzPnMXsAJnP_IBFQ&bvm=bv.151426398,d.d24">quickly embeds clientelism</a> within key parts of the government and bureaucracy.</p>
<p>When this happens, it’s not enough to change just the president. Meaningful reform requires the removal, or at the very least retraining, of an entire tranche of figures put in place during the president’s tenure. Otherwise, patterns of patronage and clientelism have a way of reasserting themselves.</p>
<p>The experience of other states also tells us that some of the solutions that have been promoted as silver bullet solutions for South Africa’s predicament are unlikely to work. It’s been suggested that the direct election of the president (who at present is <a href="https://www.quora.com/Why-are-there-no-presidential-elections-in-South-Africa">elected by the parliament</a> would lead to more accountable and responsible government. But America just directly elected <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/09/us/politics/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-president.html?_r=0">Donald Trump</a>, while Zimbabwe continues to directly elect <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-are-elections-really-rigged-mr-trump-consult-robert-mugabe-68440">Robert Mugabe</a>. Presidential elections are no panacea.</p>
<p>The lesson from other African countries is therefore a worrying one: the road back is a long one. </p>
<h2>Distinctive features remain</h2>
<p>But these comparisons shouldn’t lead to defeatism. There are a number of ways in which the country remains distinctive. Civil society remains more robust than in many other states, and more independent as the Confederation of South African Trade Union’s criticism of Zuma demonstrates. </p>
<p>Similarly, the <a href="http://www.sabc.co.za/news/a/388736004c4223ab9542b5f68d25dd2f/SAs-judiciary-continues-to-lead-by-example-in-Africa:-Pillay">judiciary</a> tends to be both of higher quality and more impartial, while the governing ANC itself has <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Thabo-Mbeki-Battle-Soul-ANC/184277848X">more internal checks and balances</a> than most governments on the continent.</p>
<p>These features didn’t prevent the slide towards patrimonialism, and on their own they will not topple Zuma. But they are the foundations on which the struggle for a new South Africa can be fought.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75884/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nic Cheeseman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The notion of South African exceptionalism runs deep. Many people in the country believe that in some cases they are superior to the rest of the continent.Nic Cheeseman, Professor of Democracy, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/753612017-03-29T07:25:39Z2017-03-29T07:25:39ZAhmed Kathrada: a simple life full of love after 26 years of incarceration<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163089/original/image-20170329-1674-1fzeb0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ahmed Kathrada leaves a legacy filled with self-sacrifice and courage.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kopano Tlape/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/ahmed-kathrada">Ahmed Kathrada</a>, one of South Africa’s preeminent struggle stalwarts who has died at the age of 87, was best known to many as Kathy or Uncle Kathy. He was a most unassuming man. Shy and non-imposing, he would walk through his neighbourhood and if approached it would be like meeting an old family friend. He was warm and gentle, always leaving you with a smile. That’s how I came to know and love him. </p>
<p>His quiet demeanour belied a sharp and inquiring mind. Until his last days he was interested in politics always referring to himself as a political animal. He requested a meeting with <a href="https://theconversation.com/africa/search?q=rhodes+must+fall">Rhodes Must Fall</a> activists, exchanging notes on history and activism.</p>
<p>Often he would remind me that “saints are sinners”. Part of being human we had a margin of error, allowing ourselves the right to self-correct but also to forgive. In many ways, he maintained a childlike innocence – always seeing the best in everyone. </p>
<p>Surrounding himself with strong and opinionated people, he married the fierce and courageous <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/barbara-anne-hogan">Barbara Hogan</a> whom he adored. She was also an anti-apartheid activist. He was most animated with Barbara and his godchildren, Mateo and Hari, sharing stories of domestic bliss including the famous “mouse in the house” that kept eating bits and pieces of his chocolates. Barbara entertained with good humour all his jabs, revealing a warm and tender relationship.</p>
<h2>A man who banished bitterness</h2>
<p>Kathrada <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/28/world/africa/ahmed-kathrada-dies-nelson-mandela.html?_r=0">spent 26 years</a> incarcerated by the apartheid regime, 18 of them on Robben Island, many alongside his friend Nelson Mandela. Barbara reminded me that his life after prison was good, simple but full of love and beauty. Surrounded by family and friends he kept his circle small and lived a humble life without seeking fame or fortune. </p>
<p>He was a role model for his nephews and nieces, never promoting family or friends because if you were worthy of that promotion you should earn it through good work. These values sometimes conflicted with other’s expectations of him. Yet he continued to maintain a strong hold on a simple freedom without being a slave to materialism or power. It was exactly this simple freedom that made his life exceptional.</p>
<p>He didn’t share many stories about the Island. But often he mentioned the unnaturalness of prison by measuring it against the lack of children’s voices. It was children and the youth that excited him. Especially his appreciation for beautiful young women, keeping everyone entertained and, in particular, the story of the young woman that pulled his face to show off her dimple for a selfie. </p>
<p>His hope for the future was a South Africa free of racism and poverty, talking about his wish to see every child in the country going to sleep in a warm bed, after eating a hot meal and waking up to go to school safely. Dignity was for him the cornerstone for human rights. Poverty and markers of marginalisation had to be eradicated so that dignity was ensured for all. </p>
<p>He was old fashioned but he knew that some principles such as the right to love whomever you chose was about restoring dignity. It was this approach that you recognised when you met him. He treated everyone with equal respect. </p>
<p>I was once full of anger and resentment; life had knocked me badly. He invited me to tea as was his custom when he needed to talk. In a gentle manner he spoke about a conscious choice he made not to be bitter when he came out of prison. He said bitterness only affects the person carrying it. Making me laugh, he said you can always tell a bitter person. It’s written on their face.</p>
<h2>Self-sacrifice and courage</h2>
<p>On reflective moments he would share some of his errors in judgement. In 1951/52 while living for a year in Budapest and working for the World Youth Federation Congress he came upon political prisoners working on a bridge on a cold winter’s night not sufficiently clothed and how he shamefully felt disgust for them. </p>
<p>Later these thoughts would haunt him as he became a political prisoner. He shifted from being a forceful and irreverent youth to being a measured and thoughtful person, never shying away from the politics of the day. He encouraged difference in opinions and reflected on them. It was this openness to see things from a fresh perspective that he encouraged discussions with young people, respecting divergence in historical memory. </p>
<p>He supported the release of political prisoners in Palestine and <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/rdm/politics/2017-03-28-kathradas-letter-to-zuma-submit-to-the-will-of-the-people-and-resign/">spoke out</a> against corruption and bad governance in South Africa. </p>
<p>History will be written from varying perspectives. His life and times will be written about in years to come and will be contested and challenged. Unlike other Rivonia Trialists who were sentenced to life imprisonment, he could have had a lighter sentencing. He chose life imprisonment out of loyalty with his comrades. </p>
<p>One thing is certain, he leaves a legacy that is filled with stories of self-sacrifice and courage. Even though much of the country’s history of the struggle is beginning to be forgotten, his is a legacy I hope South Africans can use as an example for a good life. He leaves a gaping hole in many hearts and his unwavering courage to speak out in matters of national interest will be missed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75361/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nadira Omarjee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Amed Kathrada’s legacy can be used as an example for a good life. South Africans will miss his unwavering courage to speak out on matters of national interest.Nadira Omarjee, Visiting scholar of Sociology, Vrije Universiteit AmsterdamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/753392017-03-28T14:56:06Z2017-03-28T14:56:06ZAhmed Kathrada: exhibit A of the values imbued in South Africa’s Freedom Charter<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162943/original/image-20170328-3793-gik1ii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nelson Mandela and Ahmed Kathrada share a moment in South Africa's Parliament in 1999.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Another South African legend has gone. <a href="https://v1.sahistory.org.za/pages/people/bios/kathrada,a.htm">Ahmed ‘Uncle Kathy’ Kathrada</a>, an unassuming, quiet man who has left South Africans with a legacy that’s immediate, not historical.</p>
<p>Born in 1929, two factors mark his life and his passing, as they did for Nelson Mandela: he was <a href="http://www.anc.org.za/content/what-anc">African National Congress</a> through and through. And he was a non-racialist. The byline of the <a href="http://www.kathradafoundation.org/content/foundation">Kathrada Foundation</a>, a non-governmental organisation he established, is to ‘deepen non-racialism’. This is something he believed in to his core, even as others around him <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-mandela-foundations-verdict-on-the-mandela-era-it-failed-65257">began to argue</a> for an Africanist approach. </p>
<p>He was saddened that others, in an attempt to advocate for “colour-blindness” or more strident African nationalism, watered down the noble value of non-racialism. He maintained that non-racialism was a radical solidarity that at its very soul had undoing structural and interpersonal racism, and <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Non_Racialism_in_South_Africa.html?id=oI75kQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y&hl=en">wrote</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I would still insist that meeting the modern challenges of poverty, hunger, homelessness and so on requires an approach that has a non-racial outlook embedded within it. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Kathrada <a href="https://v1.sahistory.org.za/pages/people/bios/kathrada,a.htm">was arrested</a> in 1963 – his 18th arrest for political activities – and sentenced a year later, along with Nelson Mandela and other ANC leaders, to life imprisonment at the end of the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/rivonia-trial-1963-1964">Rivonia Trial</a>. He was 34 at the time. After 1994 Kathrada was Mandela’s political advisor in South Africa’s first democratic parliament.</p>
<p>Retirement for Uncle Kathy meant more political work, multiple engagements, setting up school, university and youth affiliates of the foundation, and then more work after that. Money was of no interest to him, nor honours or headlines. And he set a pace that most failed to maintain.</p>
<h2>Purity of political vocation</h2>
<p>His dogged, lifelong pursuit of equality and non-racialism remind many South Africans of how low they have fallen in the shadow of his generation. His passing happened on the same night that the country’s Minister and Deputy Minister of Finance were flying back to South Africa, <a href="http://www.businesslive.co.za/rdm/politics/2017-03-27-politics-live-zuma-enters-the-endgame-with-gordhan/">summarily ordered to do so</a> by the president, to the sound of the <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/27/south-africas-zuma-recalls-gordhan-from-international-roadshow.html">currency plummeting</a> and the economy <a href="http://www.fin24.com/Economy/sipho-pityana-gordhan-recall-is-economic-sabotage-20170327">reeling</a>. </p>
<p>Uncle Kathy passing at the same time as the national economy is being sacrificed for cheap personal and political gain will perhaps provide the spark that says to all South Africans: enough! Stop the rot! He did not struggle, sacrifice, and be released from prison to work even harder, to allow it all to be stolen in front of their eyes.</p>
<p>Uncle Kathy had an uncomplicated wisdom that will far outlast his living years. He believed in the purity of political vocation, despite knowing the tendency for the office to be sullied by political vanities. He believed that the human spirit could transcend physical walls meant to divide and imprison. He loved children and believed in the possibility of remaking society through them. </p>
<p>Yet he always reminded those around him that change, freedom or an anti-racist society would never be “delivered” to South Africans. Rather it would have to be wrought through the values, responsibility and integrity of the people. Although he was well-read in the complex art of politics and sociology, he had a matter-of-fact attitude to the challenges the society faced and what was needed to tackle them. </p>
<h2>Inspired at close quarters</h2>
<p>Working closely with him at the Kathrada Foundation offered many opportunities to be struck by the profound simplicity of the task that lay before us in doing our bit to build an equal and non-racial society. He reminded us all that what people thought mattered, and that our work needed to be based on these realities (uncomfortable as they may be).</p>
<p>While we continued the academic pursuits of meanings and interpretations of race, non-racialism, anti-racism and identities he reminded us that if our deliberations did not ultimately inspire the kind of pro-active work that made the prospects of an African child better than her parents’ had been, we had ultimately failed. </p>
<p>For some time, he had refrained from public political discourse that may have been controversial, but in the past two years, his sense of integrity compelled him <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2016/04/02/Ahmed-Kathrada-pens-a-letter-asking-Zuma-to-step-down">to publicly address</a> the ANC – his party – leadership. He was the kind of man that was Exhibit A of the values imbued in the Freedom Charter. He was saddened that his party had become a shadow of its former glorious self, and had come to taint that historic document. </p>
<p>A year ago, Kathy <a href="https://www.businesslive.co.za/rdm/politics/2017-03-28-kathradas-letter-to-zuma-submit-to-the-will-of-the-people-and-resign/">wrote to Zuma</a>, typically casting himself as merely “a loyal and disciplined member of the ANC and broader Congress movement since the 1940s” and admitting the pain that writing was causing him. He spoke directly to Zuma – and indirectly to South Africans:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The position of president is one that must at all times unite this country behind a vision and programme that seeks to make tomorrow a better day than today for all South Africans. Now that the court has found that the president failed to uphold‚ defend and respect the constitution as the supreme law‚ how should I relate to my president? If we are to continue to be guided by growing public opinion and the need to do the right thing‚ would he not seriously consider stepping down? 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?’</p>
<p>And bluntly‚ if not arrogantly‚ in the face of such persistently widespread criticism‚ condemnation and demand‚ is it asking too much to express the hope that you will choose the correct way that is gaining momentum‚ to consider stepping down? If not‚ Comrade President‚ are you aware that your outstanding contribution to the liberation struggle stands to be severely tarnished if the remainder of your term as president continues to be dogged by crises and a growing public loss of confidence in the ANC and government as a whole?</p>
<p>I know that if I were in the president’s shoes‚ I would step down with immediate effect. To paraphrase the famous MK slogan of the time‚ there comes a time in the life of every nation when it must choose to submit or fight.
Today I appeal to our president to submit to the will of the people and resign.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He will remain, for many a warm, wise uncle, who did not succumb to political limelight, but was unapologetic about his lifelong responsibility – in everyday, and intimate interpersonal ways – to the unfinished project of freedom and liberation in South Africa and elsewhere in the world. And never, ever afraid of asking the difficult questions, or stating the truth as he saw it. </p>
<p>Hamba Kahle Malume (Rest in peace uncle), you are dearly loved. </p>
<p><em>Dr Caryn Abrahams, senior lecturer at the Wits School of Governance and former head of research at the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, contributed to this article</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75339/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Everatt is a member of the Board of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation.
Caryn Abrahams was formerly head of research at the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Caryn Abrahams is a member f the Antiracism Network of South Africa (ARNSA)</span></em></p>South African struggle stalwart Ahmed Kathrada believed in non-racialism to his core, even as others around him began to argue for an Africanist approach.David Everatt, Head of Wits School of Governance, University of the WitwatersrandCaryn Abrahams, Senior lecturer, School of Governance, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.