New Delhi: Aziz Pahad, a politician and veteran of the South African anti-apartheid movement, has passed away at age 82. This comes just months after the death of his older brother and fellow activist Essop Pahad.
On Wednesday night, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) reported that Pahad passed away at his Johannesburg residence.
The third of five sons, Aziz Goolam Pahad was born on December 25, 1940, in Schweizer-Reneke, in the North West province. His grandfather immigrated to South Africa to work in Indian stores from the northern Indian state of Gujarat. When he was five years old, his family relocated to Johannesburg.
Pahad was issued a banning order in 1963 for his involvement in the anti-apartheid movement, mainly through the Transvaal Indian Congress, when he was still a student. His movements and public actions were restricted by the order, and he was frequently taken into custody. He and Essop left South Africa and went into exile in 1964 following the Rivonia Trial.
Pahad lived in exile for a while, principally in London, England, but also briefly in Angola and Zimbabwe. In 1966, he earned a diploma from University College London, and in 1968, he graduated from the University of Sussex with a master’s degree in international relations. From 1966, Pahad worked full-time for the African National Congress (ANC), assisting the growth of the anti-apartheid movement in the UK and Europe. He was then first elected to the party’s National Executive Committee at the ANC’s 1985 election conference in Kabwe, Zambia.
Pahad visited South Africa again in 1990 as the talks to end apartheid were taking place and Nelson Mandela was released. Pahad won the ANC’s nomination to serve as the party’s representative in the new National Assembly in South Africa’s first post-apartheid elections in 1994. Additionally, he was added to the Government of National Unity as the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs by newly elected President Nelson Mandela.
In September 2008, in response to the ANC National Executive Committee’s decision to recall Mbeki, he announced his resignation from the administration. In 2014 and 2017, former president Jacob Zuma appointed him as one of the government’s special envoys for Middle East peace. He was also the special envoy for South Africa’s bid for a seat on the UN Security Council.
He has cautioned against future global conflict, telling the SABC, “Personally I think that the international community might be sleepwalking itself to either an accidental or a decision to go to another big power conflict, and they must understand that another world war is a war that nobody can win because of the nuclear proliferation and because all powers have announced major new weapons. So hopefully common sense is going to prevail.”