By Editorial
Just over a year after taking up his seat in the National Assembly, life-long activist, public servant and of late a member of Parliament, Hishaam Mohamed died on Monday from a suspected heart attack.
Until he became an ANC MP, Mohamed had been head of the Justice Department in the Western Cape, spearheading several projects that sought to bring justice closer to the people, closer to the communities that had forged his activism in the 1980s.
During a time in which senior ANC members have become notorious for their crass materialism and the shadow of corruption that follows them, Mohamed was an exception.
A protégé of former justice minister Dullah Omar, Mohamed is the fourth ANC MP to have died this year. He was raised in Lotus River and joined the UDF in 1985. That year he would lead marches of his fellow high school students against the apartheid regime and spend much time in police detention.
In 1987 he enrolled at the University of the Western Cape, qualifying with a B.Juris and LLB degrees, going to study at Harvard in the US where he completed a Masters in Public Administration(cum laude) and a senior executive management course.
Mohamed started off his legal career at the Athlone Magistrate’s Court in 1990 as a clerk, days before the unbanning of the ANC. FW de Klerk’s speech in Parliament on February 2 prompted Mohamed to paint his car the colours of the ANC.
He served as a public prosecutor in Mitchells Plain from 1993 to 1994, and in 1995 was appointed as a senior family advocate in the Cape Town Office of the Family Advocate. He had been head of the Justice Department in the Western Cape since 1997, where he was best known for his dogged pursuit of child maintenance dodgers.
Having left the employ of the Justice Department, Mohamed launched the Southern Suburbs Legal Advice Centre along with several others, their mission to make the law accessible to those who could not afford lawyers.
His death robs his community of a champion who was always in their corner. Mohamed was perhaps one of the ANC’s few selfless and incorruptible public representatives, and although they do exist, they have been crowded out by those for whom party membership represents an avenue to riches.
The Star