One of the hidden cables that enabled the leading lights like Nelson Mandela in the Anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim, affectionately called Ebie has died at the age of 84 at his Johannesburg home on December 6.
Born on July 1 1937 to parents of Indian origin, Ebrahim’s father Mohamed Adam Mod, belonging to the village Chasa near Alipore, travelled to South Africa in 1933 by boat from Gujarat. Ebie witnessed the racial injustice first hand at a very young age when he was deprived of a school for five years and saw his father get arrested twice.
Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent resistance campaigns in India, Ebrahim attended speeches by Albert Luthuli, the ANC leader who in 1960 became the first African to win the Nobel Peace Prize and by the time he was 13, he was already taking part in anti-apartheid politics. As an Indian, Ebrahim initially was not allowed to join the ANC. He instead joined the Natal Indian Congress and became a delegate in 1955. From 1956, he worked as a volunteer for the weekly newspaper, the New Age, which popularised the goals and achievements of the liberation struggle in South Africa
However, the sight of police shooting 69 protesters dead in the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 changed Ebrahim’s mind about peaceful resistance and pushed him to join the ANC’s armed wing. In 1961, Ebrahim was among the first recruited into Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in Natal. He commanded a unit that carried out Pietermaritzburg sabotage for which he was arrested and sentenced to spend 15 years in Robben Island prison whose other inmates were famous Nelson Mandela and Ahmed Katharda. In prison, Ebrahim completed two degrees, a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Commerce degree.
Released in 1979, he went into exile to rejoin the ANC. But in 1986, he was kidnapped by apartheid agents in neighbouring Swaziland, now Eswatini, and imprisoned again on Robben Island. Ebrahim was freed in 1991.
The apartheid regime of South Africa ended in 1994 and Ebrahim won a seat in parliament in the first democratic elections held the same year. After the election of Mandela as South Africa’s first democratic president, Ebrahim served as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Parliamentary Counsellor to Mandela. He later served as a diplomat and mediator in conflicts including between Israel and the Palestinians, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as in Burundi, Kosovo, Bolivia and Nepal. In 1997, Ebrahim was elected the chairperson of the Foreign Affairs Committee. In 2002, Ebrahim resigned from Parliament to work as the senior political and economic advisor to the then deputy president, Jacob Zuma. He served as a member of the National Executive Committee of the ANC for over 26 years, until 2017.
India presented to him Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award in 2013, for exceptionalism in his field and bringing prestige to India. He leaves behind his wife Shannon (49), a celebrated foreign news writer who he married in 2004 and two children.
