One of the last survivors of the rebels who faced death with Nelson Mandela was a genial soul with a resolve of iron.
Ahmed Kathrada was one of the great worker bees of the struggle against apartheid in the 1950s and early 1960s. In the shadows of Liliesleaf, a smallholding in the middle-class northern Johannesburg suburb of Rivonia, used as a hideout by underground activists, Kathrada, wrote, worked and photocopied pamphlets tirelessly. When the struggle called upon him to pose as a white man – he dyed his hair, put on make-up and a moustache to pretend to be a Portuguese man called Pedro. It was a disguise that fooled people; despite this, he never felt comfortable going into restaurants where people of color were not allowed.
Discomfort in the heat of an armed struggle, against a brutal regime, shows the gentle soul that was Kathrada. He may have been strident when it came to principle, but never fell for bravado; humility was his middle name. He admitted to me once, in an interview for CNBC Africa, that he feared he could have broken if he had been tortured by special branch after his arrest half a century before. His heart was always tender and 26 rough brutal years in prison left few callouses. Once, on national radio, I heard Kathrada break down when a caller reminded him of a comrade who had been tortured to death more than 50 years before.
<div id="attachment_5630" style="width: 211px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5630" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-5630 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/funeral-076-201x300.jpg" alt="" width="201" height="300" />Kathrada’s widow Barbara Hogan and nephew Nazir</div>
If the scars were deep, Kathrada’s spirit kept a salving sense of humour. With a laugh, he told me how Govan Mbeki – the father of South Africa’s former president Thabo – used to sell eggs he coaxed from the Liliesleaf chickens to his fellow activists, despite their protestations. He also told me how the underground activists of Liliesleaf used to sell vegetables.
“Our best customer was the Rivonia Police!” he chuckled. It was the police of Rivonia who raided Liliesleaf with dogs, in July 1963, putting Kathrada behind bars on his way to trial for sabotage that carried the death penalty.
Even in the shadow of death Kathrada, in the so-called Rivonia trial in Pretoria, never lost his sense of humour. Prosecutor Percy Yutar quizzed him, on the stand, about a person who went by the initial K, referred to in Nelson Mandela’s diary. Yutar pressed in an attempt to humiliate: did Kathrada know anyone with the initial K?
“Yes,” replied Kathrada, “Mr Khrushchev.”
Even the judge laughed. The court spared Kathrada and his comrades the rope at the end of the trial in 1964.
“We subsequently found out that life was to mean life,” he said with gentle irony through his trademark smile.
When Kathrada emerged from prison, in 1989, apartheid had taken a lot more than his youth; it also took his birthplace. The place he grew up in, Schweizer-Reneke, in South Africa’s North West province, was bulldozed by the authorities in the cause of keeping the races apart.
Incarceration took even more. Computers, hotel room cards instead of keys and the paraphenalia of the modern world were a mystery. He tried driving on motorways that he had never seen, once, but found it too stressful. Even a harmless ATM spelled confusion as Kathrada found out one Sunday morning when he went to draw money with fellow Robben Island prisoner Laloo Chiba.
“He put in his card and it was swallowed, then I put my card in and pressed a few buttons and it was also swallowed. We had to phone the bank and they came to open up the ATM and get our cards out. Now Barbara gets my money for me,” he told me.
Former minister Barbara Hogan was Kathrada’s loving partner and they appeared kindred spirits. Kathrada would have loved to raise a family – a big gap in his life. The prison guards, on Robben Island, used to keep children cruelly out of sight of prisoners; Kathrada told me of the pain of more than two decades without that most natural sound; the carefree laughter of a child. Hogan was his family.
“When I phone home from overseas my first question is: ‘What happened in Isidingo (A TV soap opera), my second question is about whether the country has been overthrown!” says Kathrada drily.
One or two people in the African National Congress would whisper to you that Kathrada could be a bit star struck when it came to big names and would occasionally drop everything to be with them. It was Kathrada who accompanied the then United States senator Barack Obama to Robben Island.
When it came to integrity, there was never a waver, nor whiff, of scandal around Kathrada. I shall remember him for six words he shot back to me in the studio in 2010. I ventured that there was a rising generation of young people who chose not to know, nor care, about the causes and sacrifices of the struggle.
<div id="attachment_5632" style="width: 211px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5632" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-5632 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/funeral-041-201x300.jpg" alt="" width="201" height="300" />Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Julius Malema at the funeral in Johannesburg, South Africa</div>
“That is what we fought for.”
The principled and upstanding way of Ahmed Kathrada that South Africa is poorer for losing; sadly, many of those principles he fought for have been abandoned by a generation old enough to know better.

Farewell To A Gentle Soul

Elections in Africa are not child’s play; if you run out of luck, you can pay with your life. This was true of Zambia’s Mapenzi Chibulu, an 18-year-old female opposition activist shot dead on the streets of Lusaka by police in political turmoil.
On July 9, in broad daylight, and a month before she was expected to join millions in voting for the next president, Chibulu lost her life. It forced the electoral body, the Electoral Commission of Zambia, to suspend campaigns for 10 days in Zambia’s capital.
As if the political turmoil was not enough, the copper producing country has done little to allay fears of investors, bearing hard currency, over a country that has struggled to diversify from mining.
The country, celebrating 52 years this year, is in turmoil as incumbent President Edgar Lungu, who has been in power for a year, is battling to stop opposition leader, Hichilema Hakainde, from wresting power. Lungu came in after President Michael Sata died in office. Hakainde is a businessman and a British-educated economist.
The two will face each other in a watershed election of August 11. Whatever the outcome, this election will be contested; whoever loses will claim electoral fraud after polls.
“For 50 years our nation has lived with peace, stability and freedom. There is no place for this type of violence in our society. I take a firm stance against any sort of violence in our democracy,” Lungu said in a statement.
To his opponents, his words ring hollow in the light of Chibulu’s death.
Political analysts say the electoral landscape, in the run up to the polls, has been punctuated by skirmishes between the ruling Patriotic Front and the opposition United Party for National Development.
“This comes as no surprise and we have been warning for months now that the political climate in Zambia was not conducive to free and fair elections and that the country risked losing its democratic reputation if authorities allowed this to continue,” says Gary van Staden, Senior Political Analyst at NKC African Economists.
“While the decision to suspend campaigning is a negative development, it at least provides some breathing space for authorities and political parties to put in place concrete measures to help take off the pressure that has been building over months now and threatens the credibility of the poll. The suspension of campaigning is the lesser of two evils but it remains an evil and any attempt to extend the suspensions will be unacceptable.”
While the election will pass, the challenges facing Zambia will not. Economists warn that politicians should not make it worse.
Herryman Moono, an economist from Economics Association of Zambia, says the unfolding political developments, marred by violence and government pressure on private media, has created political tension.
“The excessive use of force by the Zambia police, who are on record of cancelling opposition party rallies and recently the use of live ammunition leading to the killing of an opposition party supporter, while injuring others, is raising concerns about the security of the nation as we approach elections,” says Moono.
“These developments are creating anxiety among the local and international community. Should these continue, Zambia will slowly be perceived as a risky investment destination which has a strong and negative bearing on foreign direct investment in the short to medium term. An elevated risk profile arising from electoral violence can easily lead to subdued economic growth as investments – both local and international – dwindle.”
Moono adds that, beyond a damaged reputation and being a low grade investment destination, the Zambian currency would, in the midst of an electoral crisis, negatively affect the Zambian Kwacha which has been extremely volatile and poor-performing the past few years.
Thato Motaung, Associate Executive Director at the African Democratic Institute, says, to date, Zambia has experienced fairly peaceful and successful transitions of power; showing a promising trait of embracing the democratic will of the people.
“The key issues facing the build-up to Zambia’s election are mostly rooted in this insecurity. There is a large vocal citizenry, vigorous independent media, paired with a well-organized opposition; a combination that leaders often perceive as threatening. Hence we see the iron fist emerge in raids, police brutality and censorship in an attempt to pacify the perceived threat.”
On August 11, we will know who will take the reins.

The Price We Pay for democracy

Nazreen Pandor marches to the beat of her own drum. A daughter of political activists in exile during South Africa’s apartheid days, she understood quite young that injustice was something to be fought out.
Over 20 years later, she has made it a crucial part of her life and career in an innovative way and in an unsuspecting place.
“I grew up knowing that I had a bigger purpose, it wasn’t just about me but it was about how I could contribute to society so even when I became a director at Mazars it wasn’t that I got this job, so let’s build but it was about how can I use this job to give a voice to other women in corporate South Africa,” she says.
For the past five years, Pandor has been a director at the Human Rights and Social Compliance division at Mazars, a global auditing and tax advisory. She began her career as a lawyer at boutique law firm Mallinicks, now known as Webber Wentzel, and was trained by one of South Africa’s leading public lawyers. She left that experience knowing her strength in the world.
“I step into the world knowing I’ve been trained by the best, so I should be the best,” she had told a South African magazine last year.
At the firm she has spearheaded two very important projects that echo her commitment to social change even within the corporate environment. One is the Mazars’ Women’s Forum, a place for women within the firm to meet, talk and network with each other. The forum hosts breakfasts in both Johannesburg and Cape Town quarterly. She says it provides an avenue for women, like herself, to find role models and mentors in a network they are already a part of.
<img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-medium wp-image-29857 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4125-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4125-225x300.jpg 225w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4125-300x400.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4125-600x800.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4125-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/IMG_4125.jpg 767w" sizes="(max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" />
“I was lucky enough from a young age to have a number of role models and mentors who were saying to me, ‘you’ve got to network, you’ve got to network, you’ve got to network’ so it was something that was always ingrained in my mind.”
The other project is the ground-breaking Youth Employment Index which wants to involve the youth and various stakeholders as they deal with a daunting economic trend.
“It’s about creating decent employment. Not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, not everyone is going to get out of school and have the idea to start something big. Some people will have to fall into blue collar and white collar employment, but how do we make sure that when our young people are coming into these places, we are stimulating the economy&#8230;”
As soon as we meet her, Pandor, calm and confident, radiates an assertive elegance in a sweeping green dress.
“I have my dresses made,” she says before we could ask about a stockist.
Pandor is a practising Muslim and has incorporated her faith into all aspects of her life and personal style. She never ignores a call to prayer and even excuses herself from meetings to pray. Her outfits match the aesthetic of the cutting edge Islamic fashion and her sheila, headscarf, is colour-coded and styled in line with the look of the day.
There are difficulties with keeping up with her faith and career in a very South African corporate environment but she feels it is her challenge to face.
“I’ve always found it very difficult. It’s almost like when I am wearing a scarf I’m forced to have a different persona and because I’m a very vocal person, people look at me [and think] ‘so she does have a voice’,” she says.
The scarf is a recent addition to Pandor’s wardrobe and a crucial step in her personal quest to live out her faith. However, her commitment to it, like her hybrid corporate-social projects,
is resolute.
“On days that I don’t wear my headscarf, I feel naked. And I was a girl who never thought about it twice, I was in my power suits and it was very different&#8230;”
It was a major adjustment in her life but it is all part and parcel of Pandor’s belief in leading by example. As her career and personal life show, she is a woman’s woman, the kind of person many young women will model themselves on without hesitation. She is inspiration that will be tried and tested.

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The Woman’s Woman

Our annual snapshot of the 100 women with the most impact are top politicians and CEOs, activist billionaires and celebrities who matter. In roughly equal measure you’ll find next gen entrepreneurs and media mavens, technologists and leaders in philanthropy – all ranked by dollars, media momentum and impact.
We’ve selected women that go beyond the traditional taxonomy of the power elite (political and economic might). These change-agents are actually shifting our very idea of clout and authority and, in the process, transforming the world in fresh and exhilarating ways.
This year the list features nine heads of state who run nations with a combined GDP of $11.8 trillion –including the No. 1 Power Woman, German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The 24 corporate CEOs control $893 billion in annual revenues, and 16 of the women here founded their own companies, including two of the three new billionaires to the list, Tory Burch and Spanx’s Sara Blakely. Speaking of, this year’s class has 14 billionaires valued in excess of $82 billion.
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<h4>Here, a quick peek at Power Women 2013:</h4>
Newcomers: Among the 15 newcomers on this year’s list are South Korean President Park Geun-hye (No. 11); Lockheed Martin LMT +0.52% CEO Marillyn Hewson (No. 34); CEO Tory Burch (No. 69);  Spanx founder Sara Blakely (No. 90) and Baidu BIDU -1.28% CFO Jennifer Li (No. 98).
Old friends: At this 10th edition, attention must be paid to the 15 who appeared on the inaugural list in 2004 and are still here today:  Oprah Winfrey(No. 13), of course. Ditto for Hillary Clinton (No. 5). But there’s also  Christine Lagarde (No. 7),  Sonia Gandhi (No. 9), Indra Nooyi (No. 10), Helen Clark(No. 21), Nancy Pelosi (No. 22), Anne Sweeney (No. 24), Amy Pascal (No. 36), Queen Elizabeth II (No. 40), Abigail Johnson (No. 60),  Ho Ching (No. 64),Diane Sawyer (No. 73), J.K. Rowling (No. 93) andGreta Van Susteren (No. 97).
She’s No. 1: Chancellor Merkel has made the list eight times out of the past 10 years – seven times as No. 1.
She’s the first: Forty percent  of the women on the list are “female firsts,” such as African head of state (Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf), billionaire to sign The Giving Pledge (Sara Blakeley), and CEO at IBM (Ginni Rometty). Even more impressive are a the women who are multiple “firsts”, such as Judith Rodin, first president of an Ivy League and of the Rockefeller Foundation  and Hillary Clinton.
Hillary stays on: Clinton’s CV is chock full of firsts: The only first lady to become a U.S. senator turned viable presidential candidate turned secretary of state. Now a private citizen, she continues to be one of the most watched and listened-to women on the planet. All bets on that she will be the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and the free world’s presumptive next leader. She’s done little to quiet the chatter, including hitting the speaking circuit last month at an estimated $200,000 fee per event and inking a reported $14 million book deal.
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Tech takes a second turn as a category on the Power Women list. Five tech women made the top 25 this year, including Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg (No. 6), Rometty (No. 12) and HP’s Meg Whitman (No. 15). There are 16 tech women in total, including also Susan Wojcicki, SVP of ads at Google (No. 30) and Sun Yafang, chair of Huawei Technologies (No. 77).
in South Africa. Joining the efforts of the U.N. are Angelina Jolie (No. 37), Shakira (No. 52), and Gisele Bundchen (No. 95). Beyonce (No. 17) rules the House of Dereon and Sofia Vergara (No. 38) co-owns LatinWE.
Businesswomen are booming in Asia: The whole region makes a strong showing, from China and Singapore to New Zealand and Thailand. Entrepreneurship is on the rise: see Zhang Xin (No. 50), The rising tide of female entrepreneurs:
A remarkable number of women are founders or owners of their own enterprises, not a few of whose eponymous companies are synonymous with high fashion. Consider Miuccia Prada (No. 58), Zara founder Rosalia Mera (No. 66), Tory Burch (No. 69) andDiane von Furstenberg (No. 74). Other self-made self-starters include Oprah Winfrey (No. 13), Arianna Huffington (No. 56), Chinese real estate tycoonZhang Xin (No. 50), and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, India’s first biotech entrepreneur (No. 85).
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The new celebrity role models: Sure, they’re famous but they deserve special attention for their outside work, be it ambassadors for meaningful causes or as business owners.
Oprah founded both Harpo Productions and The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls Sun Yafang (No. 77) and Solina Chau (No. 80). And Asian region women are showing their political might, from newcomer Park Geun-hye, the South Korean president (No. 11) and Burmese dissident and parliamentarian Aung San Suu Kyi (No. 29) to Australian PM Julia Gillard (No. 28) and Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra (No. 31).
Healing, feeding and educating the world: If they’re not topping corporations or state, the women on our list are heads of major nonprofits and NGOs and they wield as large budgets and impact millions, from Melinda Gates (No. 3) and IMF chief Christine Lagarde (No. 7) to Director-General of World Health Organization Margaret Chan (No. 33), World Food ProgrammeExecutive Director Ertharin Cousin (No. 49) and Harvard University’s Drew Gilpin Faust (No. 43).
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<h4>Joyce Banda</h4>
Malawi’s first female president (and second on the African continent) spent her initial year in office pushing for rapprochement with the international donor community while grappling with spiraling inflation and an angry populace at home. With foreign aid accounting for nearly 40% of Malawi’s revenue, Banda urged global financial institutions to restore the dollars and Euros frozen during the autocratic regime of her predecessor. But her decision to devalue Malawi’s currency by 50% – to meet IMF conditions – has resulted in soaring costs for food and fuel and widespread protests. Her first 12 months were also marked by progress in decriminalizing homosexuality and major public health initiatives such as the $15 billion Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria.
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<h4>Sri Mulyani Indrawati</h4>
When Sri Mulyani Indrawati addressed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in April, the Indonesian economist shared a curious insight: while high-income countries continue to suffer in the wake of the financial crisis, developing countries have come out relatively unscathed. The World Bank projects average global GDP growth of just 2.5% in 2013. Indrawati has served as managing director and the most senior woman at the World Bank since May 2010; as managing director, she oversees the World Bank’s operations in Asia and Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. After a series of deadly accidents in Bangladesh, the World Bank and the International Labor Organization have put pressure on the country to overhaul its labor laws.
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<h4>Liyuan Peng</h4>
China&#8217;s most public first lady since Madame Mao, Peng is the stylish second wife of new leader Xi Jinping. She toured with her husband during Xi&#8217;s first presidential trip abroad to Russia and Africa in March and was credited with putting a human face on the Communist regime; not for nothing, Peng is a member of the Public Diplomacy Association, an organized tasked to make China more appealing abroad. The former superstar folk singer is often joked about for being more famous than her husband: &#8220;Who is Xi Jinping? He is Peng Liyuan&#8217;s husband.&#8221; Fashion editors watch her for her (mostly) made-in-China style, but she&#8217;s also a U.N. ambassador for health and a Goodwill Ambassador for the World Health Organization focusing on TB and HIV/AIDS.
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<h4>Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala</h4>
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One year in office after a failed bid to for the World Bank presidency, Nigeria&#8217;s Harvard-educated finance minister produced a 6.5% increase in GDP from 2011 to 2012. Nigeria is the third largest economy in Africa with nearly $50 billion in foreign reserves.
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<h4>Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf</h4>
Johnson-Sirleaf is an African icon. She is the  continent&#8217;s first female head of state, a 2011 Nobel Prize winner for her work  n the global women&#8217;s empowerment circuit.
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Tag: Activists

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Farewell To A Gentle Soul

The Price We Pay for democracy

The Woman’s Woman

The world’s 100 most powerful women