Schweizer-Reneke, a pukka colonial-apartheid town where the majority of the townsfolk only spoke Afrikaans, was the home of three leading and distinguished pro-democracy activists of Indian-Muslim origin.
One of them was Aziz Pahad, who died aged 82, in the presence of his family at his Saxonwold home on Wednesday, 27 September.
Nelson Mandela’s political lieutenant in the banned ANC, Ahmed Kathrada, was born in this faraway north-western town on 21 August 1929, the fourth child of six children in a Gujarati-Muslim family. Essop Goolam Pahad was born on 21 June 1939. Aziz and Essop were sons of Transvaal Indian Congress activist-parents, Goolam and Amina Pahad – also stalwarts of the unlikely and unknown right-wing town that gave birth to a trio of titans of the resistance politics who, individually and collectively, had contributed enormously to changing the landscape of a racially-segregated country into a democratic order.
In the 1940s, all three activists and their families moved to Johannesburg for better education, where their brand of activism grew from the schoolyards, campus corridors to the life in prison and exile and onto the highest echelons of parliamentary and ministerial politics in the new SA.
The passing away of the Pahad brothers this year – who were described as the ‘Siamese Twins’ while in exile in London by another Struggle-era veteran, Ronnie Kasrils, because they were two complex and different personalities, Aziz, more charming, gentle and friendly, Essop, more aggressive politically and outspoken – marks the last of a family of activists following the death of another brother, Junaid Pahad, soon after the death of Essop Pahad, aged 84 on 6 July 2023.
Amidst the outpouring of condolences and tributes, President Cyril Ramaphosa granted Aziz Pahad a Special Official Funeral Category 2 funeral and ordered the national flag to fly at half-mast.
On Saturday, 30 September, in one of the largest gatherings of political personalities and the community, Aziz Pahad was buried in Heroes Acre at the West Park Cemetery, near Essop Pahad’s gravesite and that of Ahmed Kathrada, who died of cerebral embolism on 28 March 2017.
All three natives of Schweizer-Reneke were accorded the highest honour by their political homes of the ANC and its ally, the SA Communist Party, and were accorded State-sponsored funerals. The trio served as ANC MPs in the historic Mandela Administration and at ministerial levels since 1994.
Kathrada spent 27 years on Robben Island, alongside Mandela and other comrade-leaders who were convicted for treason in the 1960s Rivonia Treason Trial.
Both Aziz and Essop Pahad were uniquely close to Thabo Mbeki n their long years in exile in Britain and, as deputy president and later president, the brothers were individually regarded as “Mbeki’s man”.
Kasrils explained that Pahad remained Foreign Minister from 1994 to 2008 because he was close to the “heart and soul” of President Mbeki – regularly guiding and counselling the ANC government’s international policies on the Middle East, war-torn Africa and condemned the US invasion of Iraq. Others say he was overlooked for the top diplomatic post in line with ANC hierarchical demographics.
After matriculating in 1959, Pahad graduated at Wits University with a BA in sociology and – surprisingly Afrikaans – the staple language of his hometown. Intense political activism, arrests, banning orders and imprisonment of ANC leaders banned the academically-qualified brothers into exile in the UK in the 1960s, until exiles were allowed back into SA in 1990.
Operating largely out of the UK, Pahad was one of the first Indians to be elected onto the ANC NEC at the 1985 conference in Kabwe, Zambia – the start of his diplomatic role-playing that earned him the deputy’s post in international relations and later a fully-fledged diplomat in foreign affairs in both the Mandela and Mbeki administrations; President Jacob Zuma posted him to Israel and Palestine, President Cyril Ramaphosa got him to chair the foreign affairs review committee, but after Mbeki was ousted by Zuma, Pahad turned down President Kgalema Mothlante’s appointment as deputy minister, describing it as a “very difficult and emotional” decision.
Passionate about upscaling relations with the Middle East and spotlighting the historic Gaza Strip conflict, Pahad spoke out against the US invasion of Iraq, telling the International Court of Justice that Pretoria was strongly opposed to Israel’s “security wall” on Palestinian land: “The Palestinian separation wall is not a security wall. It is a wall of occupation, a wall that has separated hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their families, their homes, lands and religious sites.”
As Mbeki’s man, Mandela’s heir apparently wrote in the foreword of Pahad’s memoir, Insurgent Diplomat – Civil Talks or Civil War?: “Humane and a sunny disposition and common touch” – a reflection of the close proximity of both leaders in exile, described by Mbeki as “a deep and abiding sense of comradeship”.
Among the tributes and homage, Dr Kingsley Makhubela, seasoned diplomat and ex-Chief of State Protocol at the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), recalled how he looked to Pahad as a sounding board on the conflicts in Africa among the war lords, saying that Pahad contributed to bringing peace to the DRC, Burundi and Angola; and had strengthened relations with oil-rich Saudi Arabia.
However, sadly though, his colourful career was sullied by his 2006 divorce from Sandra Black-Pahad, whom he married in 1994, over financial and motor vehicle squabbles. Black accused her husband of “emotional and financial abuse and neglect” in high court papers, with Pahad accusing his ex-wife of “behaving badly, being unsupportive of his demanding career, making outrageous financial demands and showing no remorse for damaging his property” as well as living beyond her means, preferring a Rondebosch over State accommodation.
Aziz Pahad – was he the top-flight diplomat who never got the number-one foreign minister’s job or would he be remembered as the foreign affairs envoy who charmingly upticked Pretoria’s global relations?
