Another South African legend has gone. Ahmed "Uncle Kathy" Kathrada, an unassuming, quiet man who has left South Africans with a legacy that is immediate, not historical. Born in 1929, two factors mark his life and his passing, as they did for Nelson Mandela: he was ANC through and through. And he was a nonracialist. The byline of the Kathrada Foundation, a nongovernmental organisation (NGO) he established, is to "deepen nonracialism". This is something he believed in to his core, even as others around him began to argue for an Africanist approach. He was saddened that others, in an attempt to advocate for "colour-blindness" or more strident African nationalism, watered down the noble value of nonracialism. He maintained that nonracialism was a radical solidarity that at its very soul had undoing structural and interpersonal racism, and wrote: "I would still insist that meeting the modern challenges of poverty, hunger, homelessness and so on requires an approach that has a nonracial...
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