UNREVISED HANSARD NATIONAL ASSEMBLY TUESDAY, 13 JUNE 2017 Page: 1 TUESDAY, 13 JUNE 2017 ____ PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY ____ The House met at 14:02. The Speaker took the Chair and requested members to observe a moment of silence for prayer or meditation. MOTION OF CONDOLENCE (The late Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada) The CHIEF WHIP OF THE MAJORITY PARTY: Hon Speaker I move the Draft Resolution printed in my name on the Oder Paper as follows: That the House — UNREVISED HANSARD NATIONAL ASSEMBLY TUESDAY, 13 JUNE 2017 Page: 2 (1) notes with sadness the passing of Isithwalandwe Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada on 28 March 2017, known as uncle Kathy, following a short period of illness; (2) further notes that Uncle Kathy became politically conscious when he was 17 years old and participated in the Passive Resistance Campaign of the South African Indian Congress; and that he was later arrested; (3) remembers that in the 1940‘s, his political activities against the apartheid regime intensified, culminating in his banning in 1954; (4) further remembers that in 1956, our leader, Kathrada was amongst the 156 Treason Trialists together with Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, who were later acquitted; (5) understands that he was banned and placed under a number of house arrests, after which he joined the political underground to continue his political work; UNREVISED HANSARD NATIONAL ASSEMBLY TUESDAY, 13 JUNE 2017 Page: 3 (6) further understands that he was also one of the eight Rivonia Trialists of 1963, after being arrested in a police swoop of the Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, and was sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island; (7) recalls that uncle Kathy spent 26 years in prison, 18 years of which were on Robben Island; and that after his release and the unbanning of the ANC, he was elected to the ANC‘s National Executive Committee in 1989, leading the organisation‘s Public Relations Department until 1994; (8) further recalls that he was elected to Parliament in 1994 and served as a Parliamentary Counsellor to his long-time friend and confidante, the late former President Nelson Mandela, with whom he was incarcerated on Robben Island; (9) acknowledges that while in prison, our leader, Comrade Kathrada, pursued his academic studies and obtained a Bachelor of Arts BA in History and Criminology, a Bachelor of Bibliography in Library Science and African Politics as well as two BA Honours degrees UNREVISED HANSARD NATIONAL ASSEMBLY TUESDAY, 13 JUNE 2017 Page: 4 from the University of South Africa in African Politics and History; (10) further acknowledges that he was also awarded four Honorary Degrees, including one from the University of Missouri; (11) believes that uncle Kathy left an indelible footprint which can never be erased, and a source of wisdom that will benefit South Africans from generation to generation; (12) further believes that his life is a lesson of humility, tolerance, resilience and a steadfast commitment to principles; and (13) conveys its condolences to his wife Barbara Hogan, the Kathrada family and the African National Congress.[Applause.] Mr C NQAKULA: Speaker and hon members of this House, firstly, I would like to appreciate the space that Parliament has afforded hon members of this House to pay homage to Ahmed Kathrada, as UNREVISED HANSARD NATIONAL ASSEMBLY TUESDAY, 13 JUNE 2017 Page: 5 part of our effort to preserve the memory of those who contributed to the liberation of our country to build a new nation, one based on new values. I hope, in deference to Comrade Kathrada, one of the heroes of the struggle for our freedom and one of the building blocks of our democratic dispensation, we shall be able to raise his memory as a mirror to look at our image as members of this House and scan the country to determine whether we have succeeded in emulating the freedom fighters of yesteryear, some of whom laid down their lives for all our people to be free. ―Comrade Kathy,‖ as many among us here used to call him whilst the younger generation of our people referred to him as ―Uncle Kathy,‖ was a member of this House in this First Parliament, working together with our first democratically elected President, the iconic Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, as the President‘s Parliamentary Counsellor. As we remember Comrade Kathy today, let us also declare our solidarity with those who, in recent times, lost family members in very unfortunate circumstances visited upon them by natural disasters in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape, and KwaZulu-Natal. There are areas of our country that are prone to those types of disasters where UNREVISED HANSARD NATIONAL ASSEMBLY TUESDAY, 13 JUNE 2017 Page: 6 some of our people‘s lives are taken by floods and fires. These are national questions that we need to address as a nation, using our collective wisdom as a weapon to mitigate instances where our people lose their lives. We should also extend our deepest condolences during this period, which we have defined as Youth Month in recognition of the contribution of our young people to the creation of our new nation, to the families of those whose children‘s lives were wasted wantonly by malicious attackers. Such brazen criminal actions, especially against the girl child, must be condemned by all peace-loving South Africans and must influence us, as lawmakers, to discuss strategies and tactics that will strengthen law enforcement in our country. It is a fact that the police, working on their own, will not eradicate serious crimes, like murder, in our country. One of the tactics should be our united action, working together with the law enforcement officers of our land across the length and breadth of our country. We should remember that most murders are committed by people who are closely related to the victims, and many of them happen behind closed doors or in isolated areas. UNREVISED HANSARD NATIONAL ASSEMBLY TUESDAY, 13 JUNE 2017 Page: 7 Let us use our constituency resources – human and material – to design programmes that educate the communities we serve on how to keep safe, ensure that, through working with the police, our communities see the law enforcers as allies rather than enemies, and build enough confidence to give the police information on crime and where the perpetrators of crime live. Comrade Kathy would have done exactly what I am talking about. Remember, Comrade Kathy was just a high school student, like the 16 June 1976 cadres, when he mobilised people against Jan Smuts‘ Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Act, Act 28 of 1946. Our people called it the ―Ghetto Act.‖ It was the ―Ghetto Act‖ that paved the way for the birth of the Group Areas Act, which saw the forceful removal of our people from their ancestral lands to barren spaces completely unknown to them, in pursuit of the dictates of the racist policies of the apartheid regime. I know there are some South Africans who do not want us to talk about the past – the past terrifies them. Those whose human rights were violated through oppression, exploitation, torture and long periods of detention without trial and those, including some members of this House, who were forced within UNREVISED HANSARD NATIONAL ASSEMBLY TUESDAY, 13 JUNE 2017 Page: 8 the context of the skewed philosophy of Bantu education to learn difficult subjects through the medium of Afrikaans, want to remember what happened them personally and to their kith and kin at the height of apartheid colonialism. They want to remember, as we celebrate Youth Month, the gallant young students who faced the bullets of the apartheid police on 16 June 1976 but were not cowed, as well as those mowed down by the callous police. It is part of South Africa‘s history and must be told and retold over and over again. [Applause.] These are those, perhaps embarrassed that for years they supported and voted for the racist National Party, who want us to airbrush the warts that forced people like Ahmed Kathrada and other South Africans of Indian extraction, as well as thousands of other black South Africans, into apartheid‘s ghettos where they were confined in terms of their tribal categorisation. We must always remember those things in order for us truly never to go back to such evil practices. It is worrisome that now and again racism rears its ugly head in our country. Gathered here as lawmakers, we should consider what else we need to do to ensure we decisively move away from all the negative tendencies that were part of the racial UNREVISED HANSARD NATIONAL ASSEMBLY TUESDAY, 13 JUNE 2017 Page: 9 policies of the past. Arguing that bygones should bygones and should not be part of the story we tell our kids is a blinkered approach to the difficult project of consolidating our democracy. To argue that we must not talk about Jan van Riebeeck and what he did to the Khoi and the San is to airbrush huge chunks from the annals of our history. We have an obligation to talk about Krotoa and about Dawid Stuurman. We must remind our people that, once upon a time, South Africans of Indian extraction were not allowed by law to sleep over in the old Orange Free State. Madiba‘s words at his inauguration as President of South Africa should always ring in our ears, especially these words: Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world. We must commend cadres like Ahmed Kathrada for taking up cudgels to fight on the side of the struggling masses of our people to free not only the oppressed but the oppressors as well.