Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim, a former deputy minister of international relations who has died of cancer at his home in Johannesburg at the age of 84, was in the front line of the struggle against apartheid — and he paid a heavy price for it.
He spent 15 years on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela, and 10 years after his release was sentenced to another 20 years on the Island. The judge said he wanted him to be an old man by the time he got out so that he wouldn’t go back into the ANC underground as he did after completing his first sentence.
“Ebie”, as he was affectionately known, was born in Durban on July 1 1937. He was raised by his grandmother after his mother became ill and his father’s business went bankrupt.
“Ma”, as he called her, was the centre of his life. When she died in his early teens Ebrahim threw himself into politics to fill the emotional void.
Inspired by the speeches of Chief Albert Luthuli and Mahatma Gandhi’s passive resistance movement, he joined the Natal Indian Congress in 1952 when he was 14 and got involved in the Defiance Campaign.
He matriculated at Sastri College in 1959.
After the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 he lost faith in Luthuli’s vision of a peaceful route to freedom and in 1961 became one of the first members of Umkhonto we Sizwe.
He led an MK unit that blew up three electricity pylons and plunged the city of Durban into darkness.
Arrested in 1963, he was accused number one in the Pietermaritzburg sabotage trial, the “little Rivonia trial”. The state described him as “a dangerous, unscrupulous blaggard, totally lacking in respect for the government and opposed to its policy”.
Arrested in 1963 he was accused number one in the Pietermaritzburg sabotage trial, the 'little Rivonia trial'. The state described him as 'a dangerous, unscrupulous blaggard, totally lacking in respect for the government and opposed to its policy'.
In February 1964 he was sentenced to 15 years on Robben Island.
Two years after arriving he was one of the first prisoners along with Mandela and Ahmed Kathrada to enrol for a university degree. He completed BA and BCom degrees through Unisa.
In an interview with the BBC he described the treatment they suffered on the Island as systematic, calculated torture designed to break them down.
One short, closely monitored visit from a family member every six months was their only contact with the outside world. He shared a communal cell with 61 others, including Jacob Zuma. For the first 14 years his bed was a blanket on a cement floor.
Shortly before his release in 1979 he was banned in terms of the Internal Security Act, but he soon rejoined the ANC underground.
In December 1980 he was warned that an ANC courier running messages between himself and Maputo was a security police agent and his life was in danger. He was deployed to Swaziland as head of the ANC’s political military committee, an extremely risky assignment given that Swaziland was fast becoming a hunting ground of the SA special forces. He lived in six different houses to avoid assassination.
On December 15 1986 he was abducted from his house in the Umbuluzi valley outside Mbabane by two men who shot his colleague, Msizeni Shadrack Mapamulo, in the process.
He was locked up in Pretoria maximum security prison before being transferred to John Vorster Square in Johannesburg for interrogation in January 1987.
He smuggled a note out documenting his torture, which included solitary confinement and exposure to unbearably sharp, piercing sounds 24 hours a day which, he scribbled, had made him a mental and nervous wreck.
“I feel I shall not mentally survive this torture and what is due to come,” he wrote, but vowed not to betray anyone. And he didn’t.
He and two others were tried for treason, which carried the death penalty, for his role in planning landmine attacks on white farms in Northern Transvaal.
The state made much of his bond with Dutch anti-apartheid activist Helene Pastoors, who had been sentenced to 10 years for treason, and a love affair with another Dutch activist, Conny Braam, who had started an international campaign for his release.
In January 1989, at the age of 51, he was found guilty, sentenced to 20 years and returned to Robben Island 10 years after leaving it, one of the only prisoners ever to have received a second sentence on the Island.
'I feel I shall not mentally survive this torture and what is due to come', he wrote, but vowed not to betray anyone. And he didn't.
As the packed public gallery in Pretoria’s Palace of Justice gave clenched-fist salutes and sang struggle songs, a state prosecutor in the trial, which was covered by the New York Times, yelled “Long live the AWB”.
He was released from his incarceration for a day to confer with Mandela at Victor Verster Prison, who had been holding secret discussions with the apartheid regime and demanded he be allowed to consult with the political leadership on Robben Island.
In February 1991 he was informed his appeal against his sentence, which he didn’t think had a hope of succeeding, had succeeded on the grounds that his abduction had been illegal and the courts had no jurisdiction to try him. Within an hour he was on the island ferry to freedom.
In July 1991 he was elected to the national executive committee of the ANC and mandated by Mandela to set up a formation of anti-apartheid movements and parties to back multilateral negotiations.
He became an MP in 1994, chair of the foreign affairs portfolio committee, senior political and economic adviser to then deputy president Zuma, and was appointed deputy minister of international relations from 2009 to 2014.
SA’s chief rabbi Warren Goldstein demanded his resignation after he called on South Africans not to visit Israel because of its treatment of Palestinians.
He was involved in conflict resolution initiatives between Israel and the Palestinian territories, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Kosovo, Bolivia and Nepal.
Ebrahim was modest and unassuming about his contribution to the struggle for democracy. It won him awards including Spain’s highest civilian honour, The Order of Civil Merit, which King Felipe VI bestowed on him in 2015.
But it exacted a heavy toll on his personal life. He married for the first time when he was 66, and was only able to meet his daughter Cassia, born in the 1980s, for the first time when she was five.
He is survived by Cassia, his wife Shannon, a UN official he met while working with the non-aligned movement in 1998, and their children Sarah and Kadin.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.