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Anti-apartheid activist Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim Remembered by Fellow Robben Islanders

Anti-apartheid activist Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim has died, the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation said on Monday at the age of 84.

The foundation said Ebrahim’s life, described by his fellow ANC activist Kathrada, “was one of courage, characterised by the spirit of sacrifice”.

In an interview with Radio Islam, fellow struggle stalwart Sunny Singh, who was imprisoned alongside Ebrahim on Robben Island, says we have lost a giant and we are losing them everyday, he said Ebrahim was a cut above the rest.

“Ebie in his own right, taking the context of the current situation and the decadent corruption… he raised the bar of the quality and standards of the organization that he represented,” said Singh

According to Ebrahim’s biography, he joined the liberation movement as a youth activist in 1952 at the age of 15 and participated in the Congress of the People Campaign which drew up and adopted the Freedom Charter in 1955.

Singh says Ebrahim was an active campaigner of 1950s, and after the banning of the ANC in 1960 he joined the armed wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe and had recruited Singh to join as well about 2 months later.

He was arrested in 1963 and charged under the sabotage act with 18 other accused in the Pietermaritzburg sabotage trial. He was sentenced to 15 years on Robben Island.

In December 1986, he was kidnapped from Swaziland by SA security forces and detained in SA, where he was severely tortured. He was charged for high treason and sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment on Robben Island.

In 1991, the appeal court ruled Ebrahim’s kidnapping from a foreign country was illegal, and that the SA court had no jurisdiction to try him. He was released from prison in early 1991.

In July 1991, he was elected to the national executive committee (NEC) of the ANC and also became a member of the national working committee.

He participated in the Convention for a Democratic SA (Codesa) negotiations which ushered in the postapartheid democratic government.

Ebrahim was elected as MP in 1994 and later served as deputy minister of international relations and co-operation.

“Ebie was one of those who were consistent, never waivered, he was not a coward. When the call was made as a volunteer to go underground and into the trenches of the struggle, Ebie was a willing volunteer who made no demands,” said Singh.

Singh described how Ebrahim would always put the country and the people before his own life.

“Never did we think it {the ANC} would decay to such an extent that the evidence is in the local government elections where the ANC was humiliated in a very severe way with the loss of key metros but its not end of the chapter, we haven’t reached a deadlock,”

He says something needs to be done to win confidence back from the masses and it will take the ANC a long time to regain the ground it’s lost.

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