Publication: Sunday Independent Issued: Date: 2007-06-23 Reporter: Jeremy Gordin

A Quirk of Fate Stymied Struggle Hero

 

Publication 

Sunday Independent

Date

2007-06-23

Reporter

 Jeremy Gordin

Web Link

www.sundayindependent.co.za

 

Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim, Jacob Zuma's former political adviser, has to smile at his claim being blocked at the TRC

In June 2005, when Jacob Zuma was fired as deputy president, Ebrahim Ismail Ebrahim, Zuma's official political adviser, found himself "unemployed".

Ebrahim, who shared a communal cell with Zuma for 10 years on Robben Island and will celebrate his 70th birthday on July 1, said this week: "Well, that's not so funny, is it? After all, I now have a baby to take care of, don't I?"

He does. Ebrahim and Shannon Field, his wife of two-and-a-half years, have a seven-month-old daughter, Sarah - and although Ebrahim is still one of the most famous, yet little trumpeted, members of the ANC's national executive committee and works in the international affairs unit at Luthuli House, the ANC headquarters, he seems to feel that he should be working hard at something else as well.

"Revolutionaries never retire, hmm?" murmured Field not so quietly and only slightly satirically as she made a bottle for Sarah and coffee for her husband at their Pretoria home.

It is difficult to know where to start describing the life of Ebrahim because his story is so intertwined with so many aspects of both struggle and current South African political history.

Born in 1937 in Chatsworth, Durban, Ebrahim became - via the 1952 Defiance Campaign, the Natal Indian Congress and the Congress of the People campaign - a member of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK). And, in 1964, he was accused number one in the Pietermaritzburg sabotage trial.

This trial was one of the three - the other two being the Rivonia trial and the Neville Alexander trial in Cape Town - that marked the apogee of the apartheid regime's war against the ANC in the 1960s. Ebrahim was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment on Robben Island. Among those who shared his cell, though only for 10 years, was one Jacob Zuma, who had been picked up with a group of potential MK recruits close to Zeerust.

"I was one of those who taught Zuma to read. He had had no formal education. But I have to say that he was exceptional.

"I'm not kidding: he began by being illiterate - and six months later was reading Tolstoy. Once, I gave him a cheap thriller and told him it would be good for reading practice. But he got bored with that - he said it was trashy."

It was due to the role that he played for Zuma in jail that Ebrahim became, and remains, one of Zuma's real confidants and advisers - as opposed to the list of wannabes and Johnny-come-latelies whose names are often touted in the media as part of Zuma's "inner circle".

Zuma has not been the only person who has sought Ebrahim's counsel over the years.

"One of the odd things while I was doing my second stint on Robben Island - this would have been in 1989-90 - was that a few of us would be told in the morning, 'Oh, you're going to the mainland today', though we would not be told why. It was myself, Patrick [Mosiuoa] Lekota, now the minister of defence, Tokyo Sexwale, now allegedly a presidential hopeful, and the late Elias Motsoaledi.

"We would all be taken to the Victor Verster prison to see Madiba, who wanted to let us know what was happening in terms of his negotiations with FW de Klerk and the rest.

"He wanted our input, wanted us in the loop, and also wanted us to keep everyone on the island in the loop - and for them to express their views. He never did things without widespread consultation. That's how we islanders did it."

After his release in 1979, Ebrahim went underground again and then left the country to work in Swaziland, Mozambique and Angola as a senior ANC organiser, working closely with, among others, Zuma, Ronnie Kasrils, now the minister for intelligence services, John Nkadimeng and Joe Slovo, the former minister of housing.

In 1985, Ebrahim was asked to go back to Durban from Swaziland to talk to underground leaders about the upcoming Kabwe conference, the ANC's second national consultative conference.

It seemed that one of the Durban units was "contagious" - and the security police found out about Ebrahim's presence and came after him.

The MJK unit - the Shaik family unit - was tasked with providing a "diversion" so that Ebrahim could get out of the country.

Ebrahim did escape - but the "diversionary" tactic resulted in the arrest by the security police of Mo, Yunis and Chippy Shaik and their father, who was known as Lambie Rasool.

As a result of his arrest, Rasool had a stroke and died, as did his wife - while three of her sons were jailed.

Ebrahim said: "The Shaiks were fantastic *1. They saved me."

And one friend of the Shaik family, who asked not be named, said: "You understand now the connection between all those people, including Zuma, who were active in Swaziland.

"The Shaik boys were to be trusted completely and were completely, completely selfless. Their relationship with their comrades was a great deal more than a 'generally corrupt relationship'."

In December 1986, Ebrahim was abducted from Swaziland by operatives of the national intelligence service and jailed in Pretoria.

"I was detained for six months in terms of section 29, the 'Terrorism Act', which I was glad about, because at least I was detained in terms of something - there was a record of me. A lot of my comrades who were abducted or detained simply disappeared.

"Then I sneaked out a note and Priscilla Jana, the attorney, brought an application - my counsel was the late chief justice Ismail Mohamed - arguing that, since I had been abducted, the regime had no right to hold me or interrogate me.

"It was Judge Johann Kriegler - later to sit in the constitutional court - who ruled that I should be tried or released; that the government had no rights over me because I had been abducted from another country.

"His judgment became quite a famous one in international law - though I see that the Americans have, in recent years, taken to flouting it with their so-called 'renditions'."

Ebrahim said that his torture at the hands of the security police at John Vorster Square during those months had been excruciating.

"The main interrogator - his name was Deetleef - said to me: 'I am not going to touch you but, if you do not give us information [which Ebrahim did not], I am going to do something to you - which, if you survive, is going to make me think you're not human'."

Ebrahim was placed in a specially sealed cell into which noise was piped all day, every day, and in which the light was never switched off.

"I was completely cut off for days on end and never allowed to sleep. I have to tell you that I almost went mad, I really did."

Ebrahim was eventually charged with treason in 1987 and sentenced to 20 years on Robben Island.

He seems very amused that the sentencing judge said to him that he had to be given 20 years because "clearly your earlier 15 years didn't do you much good".

"Well, you have to have a sense of humour," said Ebrahim, mentioning that he had been requested to make a statement at the truth commission.

"So I went along and told them about my torture and the trial - the one that became quite famous internationally - and then I got a letter signed by Tutu, saying that the commission could find no record of my incarceration or trial and that, therefore, I would not be getting any reparation.

"I still have the letter around somewhere. The next time I see Tutu, I must show it to him."

With acknowledgements to Jeremy Gordin and Sunday Independent.


*1       Another article from the tame editor of the Shaik House Journal.

Luvly, luvly, luvly.