Drawing hope from Kathrada’s example
4 September 2019
What does was one write about hope, when most of what remained of it died along with the pregnant woman shot just a few days ago on the Cape flats, as she walked to the shops to buy prepaid electricity.
Perhaps hope was badly burnt during the most recent service delivery protest in some or the other bankrupt municipality in South Africa.
Maybe it still hangs with one hand on the edge of the fiscal cliff; or it has possibly been detained alongside men and women – the ‘illegal immigrants’ – of the City of Johannesburg.
Perhaps it has been packed up in the bags of the increasing number of South Africans who are considering emigrating in the face of economic and social instability, and what seems like general political inertia and a lack of accountability.
Shakespeare suggests that “to climb hills requires a slow pace at first”. Yet, daily, we’re bombarded with information seeking to smear the courageous efforts of those fighting state capture and corruption in a bid to distract us from the real issues. While we may all think that we are still walking up the hill, it’s very likely that we’re being forced all the way back down, with the horizon of hope ever further from our grasp.
A sentiment analysis by the 2019 World Happiness Report ranks South Africa poorly, using income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom and trust and generosity as indicators. We’re only the 106th happiest country out of 156.
And while South Africans may be all the poorer in terms of our happiness, our lack of hope from a more global perspective is likely compounded by the fact that fascism and right wing racism is on the rise; that we’re dealing with a climate crises; and that wars, famine and abject poverty continue to corrode our basic humanity.
It is indeed a difficult task to write about hope at this time. So, where then do we find the ‘phoenix’ to regenerate it?
This week marks what would have been the 90th birthday of anti-apartheid activist, Ahmed Kathrada. August 21st was traditionally spent with Kathrada visiting schools and sharing stories from the past. The young audiences were always attentive as Kathrada regaled them with tales of courage and fortitude that defined his generation. The little anecdotes were woven together with important lessons, and a healthy dose of humor.
At the time, Kathrada’s recollections were just a form of preserving history. Little did we realise that it was actually his way of passing on the baton of hope from one generation to the next.
It is a hope that seemed to have been deeply ingrained in those incarcerated on Robben Island at the height of apartheid.
The 1960s were characterised by the heavy-handed approach of the apartheid government, resulting in the banning of liberation organisations, a crackdown on political activism, widespread arrests and torture, as well as a marked increase in security branch brutality.
On Robben Island itself, the 1960s were probably the harshest for political prisoners who had opposed apartheid, with strict censorship, poor living conditions and a rigid implementation of the rules and severe punishment for breaking them.
Anti-apartheid veterans, Shirish Nanabhai and Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim, jailed with common prisoners on the Island in the 1960s, often spoke about the tough conditions, which included regularly wading into the icy Atlantic waters to collect seaweed, or mining stone from a nearby quarry, coupled with regular beatings from warders. In the isolation section, Kathrada, and his elders, including Walter Sisulu and Nelson Mandela, were made to do hard labour, hammering slate into fine gravel day after day.
Even through this repressive period of history, Kathrada would say that they “never lost hope”. He would often speak of a block of concrete on the Island, in which a prisoner had inscribed, ‘ANC is sure of victory, August 1967’. It would be another 27 long years before this was eventually realised.
Kathrada’s own letters from the period seem to reflect a similar hope. In 1964, soon after his arrest, Kathrada wrote, “It is difficult to state how long this wait will be, but I feel as confident as ever that things won’t remain this way for long in this country. A change is inevitable and I feel it is almost imminent. Of course, I’m by no means a dreamer who believes freedom is around the corner, but I say change is imminent…As long as they don’t hang us, we are confident that we won’t have to remain in jail for a very long time.”
Even when being handed life sentences, one of the Rivonia Trialists, Denis Goldberg, in relief that it was not the death sentence, remarked, ‘Life is wonderful’!
It is the same optimism that Kathrada describes in his fellow political prisoner, Wilton Mkwayi, who would every year predict, “Next year, we are going home.”
He alludes to a similar fortitude in Bram Fischer, who himself was arrested soon after representing the Rivonia Trialists in Court. In a letter to Fischer’s daughters upon his passing, Kathrada writes, “To the prisoner he reenacted the well-established maxim that the road to light and progress traverses through the darkness of prison walls.”
But what was it that kept the essence of hope alive for the prisoners? Kathrada, in a 1968 letter attributes it to “one’s mental attitude” and the wisdom of “trying not to be unduly affected by the hundred and one pinpricks and hazards that are part and parcel of prison life”.
Secondly, Kathrada seemed to have accepted the reality of his situation early on. In 1964, he wrote, “Once having accepted the reality of what is facing us, time will pass fairly quickly. And uppermost in our minds will be the thought that the end of this difficult road will see us together again, to partake in the fruit of what we have been striving for.”
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, it is the show of defiance that not only characterised the pre-prison period for those incarcerated in Robben Island’s B Section, but united them in the fight against injustices within prison itself.
This took the form of establishing a covert communications infrastructure, going on hunger strike as a form of protest, setting up an informal political education system at the lime quarry where they worked, objecting to racial discrimination enforced by the prison authorities and repeatedly stamping one’s dignity.
The uncompromising nature of these revolutionaries is captured by Kathrada in a 1964 letter, where even regarding some personal issue, he states, “On matters of principle, there can be no compromise or weakening.”
It is a strength and firmness of attitude similarly displayed when he writes about the laws that he was accused of breaking by the regime. “We will be saboteurs or communists or both, and in the South African context, it is nothing to be ashamed of.”
So, in today’s South African context, what should we not be ashamed of doing?
Looking at Kathrada’s own life, we should not be ashamed about taking a principled stance, be it on issues related to racism, xenophobia and international solidarity, or on corruption and state capture.
From his own example, even if one is accused of going against the traditions of ‘political discipline’, we should be unashamed to speak out against leaders who have failed us.
Today, we should not afraid of calling out these very leaders, who instead of telling us the truth about how this country was stolen under their watch, continue to spin tales about spies and agents. These are leaders who continue to try to steer our country towards what Kathrada describes as “a path that it never imagined it would be on”.
These leaders, supported by a cohort of cronies; an entrenched state capture network within government institutions; political factions, parties and organisations who have found common cause; and discredited elements within the media, continue to stir up political chaos, so that attention is diverted from holding those implicated in state capture to account.
Just like Kathrada and his fellow trialists were accused of being ‘saboteurs’, ‘communists’ and ‘terrorists’, today, those who stand up for what is right are labelled ‘spies’, ‘enemy agents’, ‘anti-revolutionary’ and ‘anti-black economic transformation’.
Those supporting the Rivonia accused outside Place of Justice during their trial, and millions of others in succeeding generations, drew hope and strength from the liberation movement’s leadership at the time, even as they served their sentences in jail.
Today, we should be drawing hope from the individuals who have had the guts to stand up to state capture, with often serious consequences to their own lives, incomes and peace of mind.
There are the so-called SARS ‘rogue unit’ members; the likes of SAA whistleblower, Cynthia Stimpel and former GCIS head Themba Maseko; politicians like Mcebisi Jonas, Barbara Hogan and Pravin Gordhan; anti-apartheid veterans likes Cheryl Carolus and Mavuso Msimang; as well as civil society organisations, who have demonstrated to us how to defy those who think they can ‘develop a state by stealing from it’.
In the same week that we mark Kathrada’s 90th birthday, proceedings will begin in a case brought by the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation Board Chairperson, Derek Hanekom, against former President Jacob Zuma for labelling Hanekom a “known enemy agent”.
The Twitter trolls and the compromised individuals who have come to be associated with defending the former President will once again up their campaign of disinformation.
We will likely be fed a series of untruths, and will face a deluge of racialised vitriol.
Hanekom, who will be using his own money, is fighting this case because it is a matter of principle. Like Kathrada, Hanekom is of the view that we should be uncompromising when it comes to matters of principle. Today, it is Hanekom who is being subjected to humiliating treatment, tomorrow, it may well be someone else – simply because they have chosen to put the country’s interests first.
By now, we should be aware of the precarious reality of the situation our country finds itself in.
While civil society, and society in general, may have taken a step back in the hope that the renewed spirit of ‘Thuma Mina’ was going to carry us forward, the rude reality of our current context should force us to change our “mental attitude”. With an unemployment rate at 29% and a Fitch downgrade from stable to negative, we can ill afford to be distracted by those behind the state capture fightback.
Political education and information was important, even within the confines of prison. Today, with information easily accessible through various platforms, we cannot expect to change our society if we’re unaware of what’s at play politically, or we believe the misinformation we’re being fed. We should be equipped to challenge the various inaccuracies and the vicious attacks against leaders and public servants who have put this country above narrow political and individual interests.
The Robben Islanders organised themselves into various committees despite the difficulties of doing so, especially in the isolation section. We have no excuse for not organising and mobilising the progressives in society against those who seek to take us downhill.
In our society, where the right to picket, protest and express popular, public dissatisfaction is legal – we shouldn’t give way ‘placidly accepting our lot’.
We have a choice to simply watch as those who have only their own interests at heart dictate the agenda, or to define it ourselves.
We have a duty, not only to pick through the ruins and find hope, but to inspire it. We have to “rage against the dying of the light”.
We have examples today of how to do this, be it in the story of Greta Thunberg whose ‘school strike for climate’ has inspired a global movement; in Beijing’s ‘umbrella’ protestors who have lined the streets in their thousands for days; in how the Kashmiris have expressed their outrage at India’s repression, or in how Palestinians have defied Israeli occupation consistently since 1948.
There will be a tug of war over the next few months, or years even, between the corrupt and clean, the genuine and fake and those who aim to take us forward as opposed to those who want to take us back.
On one end of the rope, you have those who carry that baton of hope passed on from the likes of Mandela, Kathrada and Walter and Albertina Sisulu. The other end of the rope wields the baton of fear, instability, anarchy and division.
If South Africans simply lend a hand to side that represents hope, even if that hope is a mere flicker at this moment, it goes without saying which side will triumph.
Zaakirah Vadi is a member of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation staff. She writes in her personal capacity.
