Established in 2008, the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation was created to uphold and promote the values embodied by Ahmed Kathrada and his generation of anti-apartheid activists. As an independent and non-partisan organization, the Foundation is dedicated to advancing the principles of justice, equality, and non-racialism.

Kathrada, a veteran of the liberation struggle, spent 26 years imprisoned on Robben Island alongside his fellow Rivonia Trialists for opposing apartheid. His unwavering dedication to the ideals of a democratic, non-racial South Africa continues to inspire the Foundation’s work today.

Vision

A non-racial, inclusive, and socially cohesive society based on the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.

Mission

The Ahmed Kathrada Foundation is an activist-driven, non-partisan civil society formation, informed by Ahmed Kathrada’s activist, anti-colonial, and anti-racist perspectives. The Foundation aims to advance non-racialism through a set of programmes designed to achieve this vision. These programme areas include:

  • Liberation History
  • Advancing Non-Racialism
  • Strengthening Democracy
  • Youth Leadership and Activism

Each of these programmes is implemented with a key objective that emerged from the 2018 planning workshop: the development of a new generation of activists for social justice across all spheres of society

Key Objectives

The objective of the Foundation is to deepen non-racialism in post-apartheid South Africa. The Foundation works towards this objective by executing programs, projects and campaigns, which support
the following areas:

  1. Promote the values, rights and principles enshrined in the Freedom Charter and the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa
  2. Organise seminars, lectures, debates and discussions and undertake research on issues which promote a nonracial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa.
  3. Collect, record, promote and display, through historical artifacts and contemporary material, Kathrada’s role in South Africa’s liberation struggle and its relation to the role of other individuals, groups and movements both nationally and internationally.
  4. Establish a research and documentation centre that will provide selective historical and contemporary documentation and archival material on liberation history in South Africa in general, and to make this available for academic and scholarly research.
  5. Identify and support projects and programmes that will deepen non-racialism and create an equitable society
  6. Maintain a centre that will carry out all of the activities and programs of the Foundation.

“Remember that no struggle in any part of the world was won in the drawing rooms and conference tables…we must at all times know that, as with the struggles of all peoples, the main brunt will have to be borne by the youth” – Ahmed Kathrada