Memoirs
by Ahmed Kathrada
(Zebra Press)
For me the highlight of the 1989 welcome-home rally for the Rivonia trialists was Ahmed Kathrada’s powerful speech that began with his account of his visit to Auschwitz in the 1950s. Standing in that silent place of death, Kathrada recalled how the inevitably murderous logic of racism was brought home to him. This story, which stuck in my imagination, is recounted here, as are many other incidents, images and characters that give these memoirs a combination of political intensity and personal engagement.
Kathrada recounts the peculiarities of growing up in Schweizer-Reneke, in what was then the south-western Transvaal. Born in 1929 into an Indian family, he grew up in one of the most conservative towns in South Africa, yet he recalls how despite the generalised white prejudice and segregation (the latter that would be “perfected” into apartheid in 1948), there remained oddly good relationships between his family and some Afrikaner neighbours who, though they were ardent Nationalists, somehow made a distinction when dealing with his family. This is but the first of many ironies he highlights in his book.
Moving to Johannesburg as a teenager, he was set to go to university on finishing his matric but growing involvement in political movements, particularly the Young Communist League and the Communist Party itself, led him to drop out of Wits to pursue a career as a full-time activist. Today he has a number of degrees to his name — two bachelor’s (in history, criminology, African politics and library science) and two honours (history and African politics), all through Unisa and completed while in prison at Robben Island and, later, Pollsmoor.
As a young activist he worked with many of the greats of the South African struggle: Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Yusuf Dadoo and Bram Fischer — men who became his friends as well as his mentors.
It is characteristic of these memoirs that it is their work, their energy and courage that comes to the fore. In contrast, Kathrada is often self-effacing, playing down his part in the events he describes — the Defiance Campaign, Congress of the People campaign, the Treason Trial, the formation of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) and the Rivonia Trial, at which MK commanders received life sentences. On his own work he is modest — going to international solidarity meetings in Eastern Europe, attending youth congresses, helping run the political campaigns, debating issues of strategy.
Humility is rare in a politician — Kathrada is perhaps humble to a fault. When awarded the Isitwalandwe Award by the African National Congress in 1988, he expressed gratitude and a profound sense that he did not belong among the giants — Albert Luthuli, Mandela, Trevor Huddleston and Dadoo, among others — who had received it before him.
The experience of clandestine work, trial and imprisonment is combined with the very human side of the struggle. Activists, including Kathrada, fall in love, after all; many are married and are faced with terrible choices about how far the work should take precedence over family. Kathrada describes his love for a fellow activist, Sylvia Neame, which was made impossible not only because of the Immorality Act, but by detention and, later, Kathrada’s imprisonment. Happily, on his release Kathrada met another courageous woman activist, Barbara Hogan, and their relationship has become a life partnership.
Robben Island was tough for Kathrada and his comrades. Faced with harsh, often brutal guards and inflexible prison administrators, the prisoners had to find ways to fight for each improvement in their conditions. Moreover, they engaged in an ideological struggle among themselves — intra-ANC, between the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress, and later with the black consciousness activists. Perhaps these attempts amid adversity to keep up with political issues and to make some kind of ideological contribution to the movement helped them remain sane.
Having been released in 1989, Kathrada returned to his work as an ANC activist and was elected to Parliament in 1994, having narrowly missed becoming a member of Mandela’s Cabinet.
Like many of his comrades, adjusting to being “outside” was difficult. One experience that he undertook was his hajj to Mecca. Though still not a particularly religious person, Kathrada felt the need to fulfil one of his mother’s dying wishes — he found it deeply moving, particularly Islam’s non-racialism and multiculturalism (two values he’d lived all his life), but was less impressed by the consumerism of some of his fellow pilgrims.
Kathrada’s memoirs offer not only an insider’s view of the struggle; indeed, this is not even necessarily its strength. There are, after all, so many books now on the subject that go into far greater detail than he does.
Rather, the book soars through the many, often moving, pictures of the ordinary life of an activist, the images of the Indian community in the Transvaal of the 1930s and 1940s, and the loving portraits he paints of his comrades and friends (many of them now with their ancestors).
The book is also a tribute to decency and the desire for justice that drove a generation of activists, the likes of whom we shall probably not see again. One of them is Kathrada himself. His humility in his self-assessment is refreshing; and his kind-heartedness is reminiscent of Madiba. He also writes very well.