Cape Town - When Ahmed Kathrada speaks, one has no choice but to listen.
The Struggle stalwart’s words are filled with emotion based on his experiences in fighting apartheid, and it is difficult not to be moved to tears when he shares his thoughts.
“The youth must carry the responsibility of eradicating racism to continue the fight where we have left off,” Kathrada said on Friday at a panel discussion hosted by mayor Patricia de Lille as part of the city’s Inclusive City campaign, a dialogue to address incidents of racism and promote a rights-based culture in Cape Town.
Kathrada detailed his experience as a seven-year-old growing up in a town 200km outside of Johannesburg. “I couldn’t go to school in my town because there were only white schools there, so I had to go to Johannesburg.
There I met all sorts of races. We played, we fought and we forgave each other,” he said.
He said the youth were key to beating racism. “Now it is for the youth to continue through reconciliation.”
Kathrada’s involvement in the anti-apartheid activities of the ANC led to his long-term imprisonment following the Rivonia Trial.
He was held on Robben Island and at Pollsmoor Prison and was Nelson Mandela’s best friend and confidant.
Kathrada told the audience of a visit to post-Nazi Germany, where he explored the Auschwitz concentration camp. He recalled seeing a lampshade made of human skin, pillows filled with human hair and bowls of gold extracted from the dentures of Jewish people. Kathrada likened the atrocities in Germany during World War II to those in South Africa during apartheid, saying they should never be repeated.
“We don’t know our past, that is South Africa’s biggest challenge, because the danger of not knowing your past is the repetition of it.”
Cape Times