Rivonia trialist Ahmed Kathrada’s 60th birthday was celebrated with a great deal of festivity by old friends, including veteran activists Helen Joseph and Issu Chibba. They reminisced about Kathrada’s sense of humour and his life as a young man in a small Western Transvaaldorpie.
It was a birthday party in the true sense of the word, complete with birthday cake (decorated in ANC colours and bearing a hammer and sickle emblem) and songs rendered by his two nieces, except for the fact that Kathrada was in prison, where he has been for the past 26 years. Some of the songs, sung in Urdu, were composed in honour of Kathrada and birthday greetings were sent from the South African Communist Party, the African National Congress and Transvaal president of the United Democratic Front, Albertina Sisulu, who addressed Kathrada as ”son”.
The celebration was organised by the Transvaal Indian Congress, and over 700 people – many of them wearing UDF T – shirts gathered at the Selbourne Hall in Johannesburg to listen to, among others, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) president, Elijah Barayi, UDF patron Helen Joseph and national chairperson Curnick Ndlovu speak about the elections, the defiance campaign and, of course, about Ahmed Kathrada. A singing crowd welcomed Joseph, who came in a wheelchair and spoke about Kathrada, a great defier.
TIC vice-president Chibba, who had spent 20 years on Robben Island with Kathrada, said: ”He was a powerful youth leader who formed lasting personal-ties with prominent communists of our time. His dynamism and militance is a reflection of the same qualities in our youth today. We embrace you in our imagination with love and reverence, and await your return,” he added. – Audrey Brown
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
