The Kind Soul With Iron Resolve

Ahmed Kathrada was one of the great worker bees of south Africa’s struggle against apartheid in the 1950s and early 1960s; at Liliesleaf farm, in the middle class Johannesburg suburb of rivonia that was used as a hideout for the underground movement, Kathrada, wrote, worked and photocopied pamphlets tirelessly.

- Chris Bishop

When the struggle called on him to pose as a white man, he dyed his hair, put on make-up and pretended to be a portuguese man called pedro. it was a disguise that fooled people; despite this, he never felt comfortable going in to restaurants and the like where a non-white like himself was not allowed to go under apartheid.

This is the kind of gentle soul Kathrada was. iron resolve, always, when it came to principle, but never arrogant or full of bravado.

He admitted to me once, in an interview for CNBC Africa, that he feared he could have broken if he had been tortured by the special branch after his arrest. his heart was always tender and 26 years in prison left few callouses.

Once, on national radio, i heard Kathrada break down when a caller reminded him of a comrade who had been tortured to death more than half a century before.

If the scars were deep, Kathrada’s spirit maintained a salving sense of humour that often saw the absurdities of the struggle and the brutal system they were fighting. With a laugh he told me how Govan Mbeki – the father of south Africa’s former president Thabo Mbeki – used to sell the eggs he coaxed from the Liliesleaf chickens to his fellow activists despite their protestations.