The Ahmed Kathrada Foundation has confirmed in the early hours of Tuesday that the politician and anti-apartheid activist died at the Donald Gordon Hospital in Johannesburg.

"This is great loss to the ANC, the broader liberation movement and South Africa as a whole. Internationally, he was staunch in his support for the Palestinian struggle.

Kathrada, who dedicated his life to fighting the racial injustice of white-minority rule, was also one of the most senior African National Congress (ANC) leaders to criticise president Jacob Zuma's presidency as allegations of government corruption and maladministration mounted.

"We are deeply saddened to learn this morning of the passing on of our dear friend & founding trustee, Ahmed Kathrada," said the Nelson Mandela foundation on Twitter. "Hamba Kahle [farewell] Kathy."

"May Ahmed rest in peace and rise in glory," Desmond Tutu, the former Cape Town Archbishop, said in a short statement published on Facebook. May he rejoice in many heavenly cups of hot chocolate with his old friends and comrades, Mandela, Sisulu, Mbeki, Motsoaledi and Mahlaba, among them."

"Comrade Kathy was a gentle, humane and humble soul. He was a determined revolutionary who gave his entire life to the liberation struggle in our country," said Derek Hanekom, the tourism minister.

Affectionately known as "Uncle Kathy", the 87-year-old liberation struggle stalwart was hospitalised in Johannesburg earlier in March after surgery to relieve blood clotting on the brain.

On Monday, the Foundation said his condition had deteriorated rapidly and was "serious" with pneumonia affecting both lungs.

Last year, Kathrada wrote an open letter calling on the South African president to resign as a series of scandals, from using taxpayers money to upgrade his rural Nkandla home to summarily firing former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene in 2015, rocked Africa's most industrialised economy.

"I am not a political analyst, but I am now driven to ask: 'Dear Comrade President, don't you think your continued stay as President will only serve to deepen the crisis of confidence in the government of the country?'," Kathrada said then.

Born to immigrant Indian parents in the small town of Schweizer-Reneke in the North West province just before the Great Depression in 1929, Kathrada became involved in politics at the age of 12 when he distributed leaflets for the Young Communist League of South Africa.

Following decades of activism, Kathrada was sentenced to life imprisonment and hard labour in 1964, together with seven other ANC luminaries such as Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Govan Mbeki, after a guilty verdict during the Rivonia treason trail.

Jailed at the age of 34, Kathrada spent the next 18 years at the maximum security section on apartheid's most notorious prison, Robben Island, a few miles offshore Cape Town city.

He was moved to Pollsmoor prison in 1982 and was released from jail on 15 October 1989 at the age of 60, having spent just over 26 years in jail for his anti-apartheid activities.

After his release from prison, Kathrada was a member of parliament and he married anti-apartheid activist Barbara Hogan, who herself had been sentenced to 10 years in jail for high treason against the apartheid government in 1982.


/The Telegraph/

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