AMEEN AKHALWAYA
Ameen will always be remembered as part of that generation of writers, who during the struggle against apartheid, never hesitated to choose the side of democracy, peace and justice, even at the possible cost (of) their own lives," the ANC said in a statement.
He was presented with the Extraordinary Award of the Foreign Correspondents' Association of Southern Africa. The association described him as a fearless fighter for equal rights and an inspiration to young journalists.
On the same occasion in November CNN bureau chief Mike Hanna described him as an honest, courageous colleague: "A man who always held up a light to the truth but never sacrificed the professional independence which was the ground on which he stood."
He studied medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin but his medical career was cut short by the death of his father. After trying his hand in accountancy, he entered journalism as a freelance reporter with the Rand Daily Mail (RDM) in 1971.
He was appointed metropolitan editor of the newspaper in 1982. After the closure of the RDM and the Sunday Express in 1985, he founded The Indicator, a pioneer in alternative journalism.
He joined the SABC in 1993 as executive editor of current affairs and Agenda, and then joined Absa Bank as media manager. In 1996 he was appointed media director of Cape Town's Olympic Bid Committee.
Mr Akhalwaya, who in 1978 was a founder-member of the Media Workers' Association of South Africa (Mwasa), was awarded the 1981 Nieman Fellowship to Harvard University in the United States.
Writing in the Mail and Guardian last year, he said: "The highlights of my career were to work for the RDM, to help start Mwasa, the Indicator Human Rights Awards, to interview (Muhammad) Ali, to break the story of the unbanning of the liberation movements a year before it happened, the Haj pilgrimage and to hear Madiba single me out for my 'marvellous contribution to the struggle'."
He is survived by his wife Farida, his daughter Zaytoon, and sons Zaheer and Zain. | |
Ahmed M. Kathrada
Ahmed M. Kathrada is a veteran of the South African liberation struggle, one of the famous Rivonia trialists and a long-serving political prisoner on Robben Island and Pollsmoor Maximum Prison. Kathrada was born to Indian immigrant parents on August 21, 1929, in Schweizer-Reneke in what was then Western Transvaal.
He became a political activist while still a teenager when he got involved in the activities of the Communist Party and the Transvaal Indian (Youth) Congress. In the 1950s, he participated in numerous campaigns of the Congress Alliance alongside African National Congress (ANC) leaders like Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. He was one of 156 leaders and activists accused in the marathon Treason Trial (1956-1961). After the banning of the ANC and other organisations in 1960, he continued his political activities in spite of repeated detentions and increasingly more severe house arrest measures against him. He went underground in early 1963.
In July of that year, he was arrested at the internal headquarters of Umkhonto we Sizwe (the military wing of the ANC) in Rivonia. Although not a member of Umkhonto himself, in October 1963, he became one of the accused in the Rivonia Trail, charged with sabotage and attempting to overthrow the government by violent means. At the end of the trial in June 1964, Kathrada, together with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Andrew Mlangeni, Elias Motsoaledi, Raymond Mlaba and Dennis Goldberg, was sentenced to life imprisonment. He spent the next 18 years with his colleagues in the isolation section of the Maximum Security Prison on Robben Island. In October 1982, he was moved to Pollsmoor Maximum Prison in Cape Town to join Mandela, Sisulu, Mhlaba and Mlangeni who had been moved there a few months before.
With the exception of Mandela, the Rivonia Trialists were finally released in October 1989. While in jail on Robben Island and Polsmoor, Kathrada completed BA degrees in Arts and Bibliography, as well as an Honors degree in History and African Politics. Following the Unbanning of the ANC in February 1990, Kathrada served on the ANC Interim Leadership Committee and Interim Leadership Group of the South African Communist Party. He gave up the latter position when he was elected to the ANC National Executive Committee at its conference in July 1991. In 1994, Kathrada was elected to the National Assembly for the ANC, and in September 1994, he was appointed political advisor to President Mandela in the newly created position of Parliamentary Counsellor.
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Yusuf Akhalwaya and Prakash Napier formed the first and only Indian guerrilla cell in Johannesburg(Lenasia). Between 1987 and 1989, they conducted thirty-five bombing operations as the Ahmed Timol Unit (named after a South African Indian school teacher killed by the State in 1971).
Their unit was first called the Mahatma Gandhi Unit, but they quite correctly renamed it. In December 1989, the unit was on the way to conduct another operation, when their bomb (a Soviet made limpet mine) went off and killed Napier and Akhalwaya. The ANC office in Lusaka released a statement after this accident, "Although they came from different religions, the love they had for each other was the highest form of brotherly love.
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