Ahmed Kathrada One
(Article about Indian-origin people)
(Ahmed Kathrada with Cassim Salojee at the home of one of his relatives in Lenasia in Oct 1989)
Intro: As we continue to remember the rich life of one of our great struggle stalwarts, Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada, who passed away last Tuesday (March 28 2017) at the age of 87, Subry Govender recalls that the late Kathrada had some words of advice for people of Indian-origin and others when he was released from life imprisonment in October 1989.
TEXT
Only a few days after Ahmed Kathrada was released after being incarcerated for nearly 27 years, I had the privilege of interviewing the struggle great at one of his family member’s home in Lenasia, Johannesburg. He was released along with Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Andrew Mlangeni, Raymond Mahlaba, Elias Motsoledi, and Denis Goldberg at a time when the F W De Klerk Government at that time had entered into pre-negotiations talks with Nelson Mandela in an attempt to resolve South Africa’s racial and divided political situation.
I was working for the Press Trust of India (PTI) as a correspondent at this troubled time and I was asked to talk to Kathrada as a matter of urgency because he had his roots in the state of Gujerat in North India.
Kathrada’s parents had departed from their village in the late 1920s to seek a new life in South Africa. They settled in the town of Schweize Reneke in the then Transvaal province.
(Ahmed Kathrada with Laloo Chiba prior to 2017.)
After talking to Kathrada about his involvement in the liberation struggles, his imprisonment in 1964 at the end of the famous Rivonia Trial and his nearly three decades on Robben Island and Victor Vertser Prison in Cape Town, I asked him about the role played by people of Indian-origin and, among other things, their continued involvement in a future South Africa.
“Well the role of the Indian community as an oppressed community,” he said, “is to increasingly throw in their lot with the rest of the oppressed people of South Africa, namely the African and Coloured people and the democratic whites, to strengthen the national liberation movement”.
“The Indian people like other communities must play a more active, more important role in the struggles.”
Mr Kathrada was fully aware and informed of the leading roles played by Indian-origin activists in various sporting, social, community, and political organisations in the anti-apartheid struggles during his years of imprisonment. He told me these struggles must continue until a non-racial and democratic South Africa was realised. “We are very encouraged by the political consciousness, especially among the younger Indians. All I can say at this time is that there is room for greater participation on the part of the Indian people,” he said.
(Ahmed Kathrada and Joel Netshitingwe at Mahatma Gandhi birthplace in Gujerat, India.)
I asked him what he thought of those people who had collaborated at that time with the apartheid regime to implement the racial policies of the tri-cameral political.
He said: “Well they certainly don’t represent the aspirations of the Indian people or the coloured people or the people of South Africa. This has been proved in the first election that have taken place and in the election that took place last year. The Indian and coloured masses have shown that they have no confidence in the people who are participating in the tri-cameral system. They have not been able to rally the Indian masses behind them, they have not called public meetings where people would give them a vote of confidence. They have not reported back, so there is no way they can claim that they represent the aspirations of the people of this country.”
I told Mr Kathrada that despite the enormous contributions and sacrifices made by him and leaders like Dr Yusuf Dadoo, Dr Monty Naicker, Dr Kesaval Goonum, J N Singh, Billy Nair, and thousands and thousands of other activists, there were many people within the Indian-origin community who had expressed their fears about their future. This is how he responded: “Well just as I have said about whites that the fears of the Indian-origin people are really unfounded. Such fears arise as a result more of ignorance than anything else. “Unfortunately, because of years and years of apartheid and separation, the Indian, coloured and African and the whites for that matter have not mixed sufficiently. They are ignorant of each other and the media particularly, the commercial media, and the government have gone out of their way to further separate the people, so that they don’t know each. As result suspicions grow, suspicions develop and fear develops. “Of course, there have been some nasty unfortunate incidents, particularly in Inanda and a few other places, Everton here in the Transvaal in the 1980s, which are very unfortunate. I don’t know to what extent the authorities or the police had a hand in those incidents, I don’t know I wasn’t here.” Mr Kathrada then went onto emphasise the non-racial and democratic policies of the ANC. “The ANC policy has never ever been for a black majority government. The ANC policy has always been for a majority government, based on policies which it espouses. An ANC government could be purely black, it could be mixed, it could be all-white, it could be majority white, coloured and Indian because the ANC does not look on the colour of the government of the people. “The ANC is interested in the policies that a government pursues. The basic thing is not the colour of the people. “What we should try to forget about as we tried to do on Robben Island. We tried to forget that we were Indians or coloureds, we were just people and once our people outside jail start to think of themselves just as people, I think we would go more than half way towards laying any fears that exist in the country.” Mr Kathrada was very clear that what should be protected in a future non-racial and democratic South Africa was not minority rights but individual human rights. “We believe that any solution to the problems of South Africa cannot be successful if anyone wants to protect minority rights or group rights. We believe that what is needed is a Bill of Rights which guarantees individual rights, individual human rights and we believe once you guarantee individual human rights you are covering group rights as well. At the same time, we would like to guarantee cultural rights and language rights. But these are not based on ethnicity. There are large numbers of people who are not white but speak Afrikaans. That should be guaranteed in any Bill of Rights, not only Afrikaans but all languages. All cultural heritages of all people should be guaranteed. But that can be guaranteed in individual rights in a Bill of Rights.”
The ideals for a new South Africa, he told me, were emphasised in the Freedom Charter which was adopted during a mass gathering of the Congress of the People at Kliptown in Johannesburg in 1955.
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