Ahmed Kathrada

It was June 13, 1964, in South Africa.

Seven men sentenced to life in prison arrived at the Robben Island prison. Among them was Nelson Mandela. And the youngest of them all, Ahmed Kathrada. He was thirty-four.

An eighth prisoner was missing. Denis Goldberg was held separately, in Pretoria, because he was white. Even in prison, apartheid divided men by their colour.

Kathrada was born on August 21, 1929, in Schweizer-Reneke, in the Western Transvaal. His parents had come from Surat, in Gujarat, India. He was the fourth of six children.

He got involved early. At about twelve, he joined the Young Communist League.

In 1946, at seventeen, he left school to join the Transvaal Passive Resistance Council, which was fighting the "Ghetto Act." He spent a month in prison in Durban, among some two thousand volunteers.

It was only the first time.

In 1952, he helped organize the Defiance Campaign. In 1955, he took part in the Congress of the People, which adopted the Freedom Charter.

Then came the Treason Trial. One hundred and fifty-six accused. All were acquitted.

On July 11, 1963, Kathrada was arrested at Liliesleaf Farm, in Rivonia. On June 12, 1964, he was sentenced to life in prison, along with Mandela and six others.

On the island, he studied. A degree in history and criminology, in 1968. Another in library science, in 1976. Then two honours degrees, in 1982 and 1985.

In 1977, his studies were suspended, after he helped Mandela with the memoirs Mandela was writing in secret.

He spent eighteen years on Robben Island. In October 1982, he was moved to Pollsmoor Prison.

In 1988, still behind bars, he received the Isitwalandwe, the ANC's highest honour.

On October 15, 1989, he was finally released. He had spent twenty-six years and three months in prison. He said then that he had never dreamed he would be accorded such status.

In 1994, he became an ANC member of Parliament. He then served as President Mandela's parliamentary counsellor.

He was offered a cabinet post. He turned it down.

He also chaired the council of the Robben Island Museum. The island of his captivity was becoming a place of memory.

In 2008, he created the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation. Its mission: to build non-racial values. Its programmes focus on non-racialism, democracy and youth.

He died on March 28, 2017, in Johannesburg. He was 87.

Kathrada came from an Indian family. His colour-blind "us" echoes the Ubuntu of his comrades, without merging with it: each one is a person, and no one is freed alone.

One day in June 1964, the prisoners had been divided by colour. All his life, he worked so that no one would be divided again.