This is a man about whom many different people have said many different things and hold different opinions. It behooves us in this context to first have a cursory glance of the facts about the man’s life which there is no doubt and can be no argument about.
As a teenager at the age of 15, he joined the Anti-Apartheid armed struggle and took the fight to the racist regime. At 17, he was imprisoned by the Apartheid regime in Robben Island becoming the second youngest prisoner to be on Robben Island. The youngest being former constitutional judge Dikgang Moseneke. He was arrested and detained in August 1964 and held against the 90 day detention law. He was charged under the Sabotage Act and sentenced on the 2nd December 1964 to 5 year’s imprisonment. He was released on the 1st December 1969.
In 1976 after addressing a Mosque in Surrey Estate, he was detained for allegedly inciting armed revolt against the Apartheid State and detained by the Apartheid authorities.
On 19 December 1979, whilst teaching at Westridge Senior Secondary School, he was served with a five year banning order by the Apartheid Regime.
After organizing school boycotts against racist education, on the 23rd April 1980, he was again unlawfully detained without being charged. The Apartheid regime detained him under Section 10 of the Internal Security Act. He was released on the 9th December 1980. He spent 240 days in detention without trial.
In June 1983, he was given a new banning order because the previous banning order was abrogated by the Internal Security Act. This new banning order was to expire on the 31 March 1986.
In December 1984, whilst attending the Islamic Friday Jumuah congregational prayers, he together with 56 others were arrested for attending an unlawful gathering. He was subsequently charged for being in contravention of the banning order by attending a social gathering.
On the 2nd May 1986, he was detained under section 29 of the Internal Security Act and on the 2 December 1986 charged for terrorism and sentenced on the 28 October 1988. He was convicted on the basis of the words of the Quran which the Apartheid state found to be subversive. The Apartheid regime released him on the 22 February 1991 with the following bail conditions:
- R5000-00 bail
- May not travel more than 100kms from his home in Cape Town.
- May not speak on behalf of Qibla or the PAC.
- May not call for mass mobilization or promote Unlawful Violence.
- He must sign at the nearest police station at least once a week.
The abovementioned facts give expression to Achmat Cassiem’s sacrifice for justice which is beyond dispute. Imprisonment and torture could not stop him. Suffering usually changes a person’s behavior and the Apartheid Government thought that by imprisoning him, he will learn his lesson and go away to live quietly. He could easily have done so. He had a career as an educator. He had a wife and children who needed him and who had to bear the burden of him being a political prisoner. But each and every time he endured personal suffering, he became more determined to fight harder against injustice. The number of times and the years he spent in Apartheid prison bears testimony to this.
Who is this man? Achmat Cassiem. Hardly a household name in the South African mainstream. Shocking? Maybe not if we are to consider that even in post 94 South Africa, the media and the public instruments of producing consciousness just like our economy has not been decolonized or democratized but rather remain in the ownership and control of elites. This is a person who spent his entire life fighting for the political and economic freedom of South Africans. He was a freedom fighter in his teens and at the age of 17 was the second youngest prisoner in Robben Island. Yet not a city, a town, a library or even a street is named after him. On the other hand, he was a person who didn’t seek acclaim and perhaps wouldn’t want any monument erected for him. He would rather that the same the money be used to advance the conditions of the poor.
An extraordinary life lived in the pursuit of justice. Achmat Cassiem schooled at Trafalgar in Cape Town which produced other revolutionaries such as James Marsh and former High Court Judge Siraj Desai. Desai too has remained an anti -capitalist leftist throughout his life who has in recent times enraged Israeli Zionists for his solidarity with Palestine. Desai and Cassiem were comrades who regularly picked one anothers brains and engaged intellectually. Sedick Isaacks who was a science teacher at Trafalgar and also an anti-apartheid revolutionary is known to be have inspired both James Marsh and Achmat Cassiem. Marsh himself, a humble giant and a committed socialist revolutionary and comrade of the late Neville Alexander also dedicated his life to the struggle against injustice and like Achmat Cassiem received very little recognition for his role in the anti-apartheid struggle.
It is unusual to become an anti-apartheid activist at the age of 15.
The teen years. The transition from boyhood into manhood. The rush of hormones. The time when the scent and beauty of a woman become apparent and appealing to the eye, mind and senses of a young lad. A time when the smile, words and company of a lover is sought. Seventeen. A time to find love and be in love. A time to look forward. To think about a career path. Young girls and boys find solace in each other’s arms. It is the early 1960’s. The time when the best music was ever created by arguably the greatest songwriters of all time. The Beatles. John Lennon and Paul McCartney. “She loves you”, “I wanna hold your hand” and “Ticket to ride” are the songs played in all the houses in the world. In this time, in this context, here comes a seventeen year old lad, a revolutionary with extraordinary self-discipline who does not pursue the pleasures of his contemporaries nor yearnings of a boyhood heart. This is extraordinary, almost unbelievable and somewhat saintly.
When other teenagers are writing love letters and poems, he is drafting revolutionary pamphlets and fighting against Apartheid. While other seventeen year olds are enjoying the warmth of each other’s company and dancing in halls, he is breaking stone and lying on a hard bed in Robben Island, reading and reflecting on God’s words in the Quran.
He has determined his role as a freedom fighter in the pursuit of truth and justice. He is mentally and physically disciplined. Cassiem identifies his enemy in the Apartheid Regime. He is a thinker engaged in the search of knowledge and truth but he is not the island scholar who seeks knowledge to be an “intellectual”. He is an intellectual who acts, an activist. This is the method of his leader, Muhammad (p.b.u.h). Like Muhammad (p.b.u.h) he engages in armed struggle against injustice. He is alive to the realities and injustices of his time. His intellectual inspiration is drawn from the words of God, in the Quran. The Quran was and always has been Achmat Cassiems primary teacher. In this sense, Cassiems intellectual development is different from most other revolutionaries who are radicalized in universities by European intellectuals such as Marx and Engels. Cassiems Islamic revolutionary consciousness in the early sixties is all the more peculiar and singular when one considers that at the time, Political Islam was not in its ascendancy. Even being a believer in God was considered reactionary by many revolutionaries of the time. This was decades before the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Achmat Cassiem was therefore primarily revolutionized by the Quran and later influenced by amongst others, Muslim ideologues such as Imam Abdullah Haroon and Malcolm X. He had the most fervent faith and depended on God and God alone throughout his struggles. He was unfairly and mischievously misrepresented as a terrorist, derided and denigrated throughout his life by both adversaries and the mainstream media. He somehow always appeared secure in his faith, never bending, pulling back or acquiescing for a moment. Confidently and courageously expressing his Muslim and Africanist identity. A leader in the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania and Qibla. At the same time, he never displayed any external expressions of holiness and religiosity. Conversely Achmat Cassiem believed that it was through engaging in the fight for justice that a person developed his spirituality and got closer to God.
He never gravitated towards the elites, be they the wealthy class, the progressive academics or the powerful politicians. He never sought their approval or their company. He lived among the people and had the Prophetic quality of being accessible to the people. A few years ago my father happened to be visiting his friend Dullah in Cape Town and asked Dullah to take him to pay a visit to Achmat Cassiem at his house. Taken aback Dullah asked “Anwar are you just going go to his house like that without even calling him or making arrangements to meet?” And so my Dad like many others, visited a welcoming and warm Achmat Cassiem at his house, without making any prior appointment. His doors were open to the people.
When I think of Achmat Cassiem, I think about Prophet Muhammad’s words relating to his close friend and comrade Abuzarr Al Ghifari. “Abuzarr is more popular in the heavens than he is on earth”. Of the disciples of Muhammad (p.b.u.h) in South Africa, there is perhaps no one in deed and in spirit who is more Abuzarian than Achmat Cassiem. Abuzarr was Muhammad’s close comrade who was the first person to speak the revolutionary message in public at a time when Muhammad and the Islamic Movement in Makka were underground. He was beaten to a pulp by Makkan oppressors for his revolutionary oratory. Abuzarr who advocated for a socialist economy was also the most vociferous critic of post-revolutionary Muslims who pursued a life of luxury and opulence and an economy that created class divisions. Whereas 1994 saw the advent of constitutional democracy, Achmat Cassiem was vehemently opposed to a capitalist economy which in his view will continue to economically disenfranchise the majority of South Africa’s citizens and allow a few black people to become wealthy. In his words “People have not come to grips with the fact that the oppressed masses were in fact sold out at Kempton Park, the World Trade Centre and Codesa”. This view was at the time of 1994 considered to be radical and on the fringe, though it was very convincingly intellectually articulated in the works by activist writers such as, Freedom Next Time by John Pilger, Elite Transition by Patrick Bond and We are the Poors by Ashwin Desai.
Some argue perhaps convincingly that a person with Cassiems integrity and intellectual prowess would have had much more influence and popular success if he had engaged more in mainstream political discourse and the electoral process rather than remaining as a revolutionary activist outside of mainstream politics. It is however this latter route that Cassiem pursued. A principled revolutionary, no doubt but he had his imperfections.
There are hardly many South Africans who have spent more years in prison and sacrificed more than Achmat Cassiem but at the same time refrained from living a life of luxury.
For most of the anti-apartheid revolutionary activists, there has been a move from poverty to privilege, from township to suburbia, from struggle to luxury and ease, from shanty rooms to the business boardrooms, from faded jeans to Armani suits, from users of public transport to elite luxury vehicles. Achmats tongue teased and taunted the political elites. It made them uneasy and uncomfortable. He blasted them for betraying the revolution and reaching a negotiated settlement with the Apartheid regime that was never endorsed by majority. He was scathing in his attack of this elite transition. He said of these revolutionary elites ‘They the politicians have solved their own poverty problem but they have increased the poverty of the masses”.
The narrative of the Muslim Native of South Africa
Cassiem pioneered the conceptualization of the Muslim native of South Africa and the ideological roots of Islam in South Africa. This is captured in his work the “The Intellectual Roots of the Oppressed”.
According to Cassiem, Islam is deeply rooted in South Africa. Its ideology was brought with the slaves and political exiles. Its birth in South Africa is characterized by its resistance to injustice, specifically racist colonialism and subsequently racial apartheid and capitalism. Cassiem presents the revolutionary Islam that is rooted in Islam’s earliest manifestation in South Africa. The Islam of the masses, the peasantry and the working class compared to the elitist middle class Islam that has been popularized by the merchant trader and professional class in South Africa. In 1979, inspired by Prophet Muhammad (p,b,u.h) and the Islamic Revolution in Iran, he founded and led the Qibla Islamic Resistance Movement which fought against Apartheid.
His legacy
He had an insatiable quest for knowledge and a passion for reading. He loved discussing books with his comrades. He himself has been the author of a few books. “The Intellectual Roots of the Oppressed in Azania, The Quest for Unity, the Begging Bowl, Hunger Starvation and Malnutrition and finally “The Oldest Profession”. Cassiem did not acquire nor accumulate wealth. Every post-Apartheid president became a millionaire and almost all former revolutionaries who ascended to government and officialdom have lived a life of comfort, luxury and ease with millions in their bank accounts. Cassiem like Abuzarr remained with the people on the street. He never compromised with power. He was a revolutionary who fought against Apartheid institutionalized injustice at a time when there were only a few who had the courage to do so because taking up the fight for justice was dangerous and life threatening. He rocked the boat and went against the grain in his resistance to Apartheid. Again in the post 1994 context, he went against the grain by being a critic of electoral democracy that did not result in economic democracy. Today on the 14th July 2023, like his leader Muhammad (p.b.u.h) he leaves planet earth as a traveler without wealth or material possessions. Achmat Cassiem suffered no inferiority complex that has inflicted so many Muslims. Unlike some “colored” and “Indian” Muslims who aspire for whiteness, some rushed with glee to reside in “White leafy suburbs” and others even affiliated with white political expression in formations like the Democratic Alliance. Cassiem was an Africanist who advocated black consciousness. He was authentic. He expressed his thoughts clearly and concisely as a Muslim seeking justice inspired by the Quran. He made no apologies for this nor did he ever attempt to dilute his ideology.
Qibla is a spent force today. Not a mass movement by any measure. However the other formations that Cassiem has inspired like the Mustadafin Foundation and Radio 786 are vibrant institutions in the Muslim mainstream of the Western Cape.
He was never ashamed of his identity as a Muslim, an African and as a revolutionary. This was the inseparable trilogy of his identity. He found no contradiction between being an Africanist and a Muslim. To Cassiem, how could a Muslim in Apartheid South Africa not be an Africanist and a freedom fighter? He had sharp facial features, was prim and proper in his dressing, and exuded charisma, almost always adorning a Palestinian Keffiyeh around his neck with a half-smile. In speech, he chose his words carefully and spoke eloquently, erudite to a fault, always articulate using logic without emotion as the focal point of his speech. He was militant in his anti-racism, anti-capitalism and anti-Zionism.
It is likely that he will be more inspirational posthumously in inspiring South Africans of different faiths to be authentic, unashamed and true to scriptural values of social justice and to carry on the fight on behalf of the marginalized and dispossessed for a fair and just South Africa with a democratized economy. Unlike most Western expressions of social justice where God doesn’t feature, Cassiem’s legacy inspires the African activist to not break with God, but be ever God conscious in the pursuit of justice and seek inspiration from the words of God.
In a culture of capture, where everything and everyone has a price, Cassiems greatest legacy is his revolutionary integrity. He had no price and simply could not be bought.
The Quran has been his primary source of inspiration and liberation. This same Quran that produced Abuzarr Al Ghifairi and Malcolm X produced Achmat Cassiem.
The foundation of his intellectual thoughts and revolutionary activity is rooted in the Quran. The Quran according to Cassiem was revealed by the Creator for all of his creation. “An Nas” is God’s reference to the people. God did not reveal the Quran for the Arabs and Muslims but for all the people of the world. It was this Quranic universalism that inspired Achmat Cassiem who struggled for justice not for Muslims but for all the oppressed people of South Africa.
The Apartheid regime could not tolerate the Quran and its insistence on truth and justice. The Apartheid Courts found the Quran read by Achmat Cassiem to be seditious. Achmat Cassiems articulation of the Quran’s demand for justice resulted in his imprisonment in October 1988 when he was found guilty and convicted on the basis of the Quranic verses.
Achmat Cassiem self-actualized the meanings of the Quran and God’s support for the oppressed and downtrodden. God’s words were synchronized to his heart and his actions which were in essence to resist Apartheid.
Today, a Friday the 14th of July 2023, the Muslim revolutionary day of mass gathering, the soul of Achmat Cassiem passes on from planet earth to meet his Maker. Almost four decades on from the Friday in which the Apartheid State charged and imprisoned him for his activities on a revolutionary Friday Jumuah and in the auspicious month of Haj, he passes on. He lived a life of defiance and he was indeed defiant to his last breath. Even cancer could not coerce him to seek a more comfortable end. He rejected chemotherapy and went out with a clenched first, kicking and fighting. Sadullah Khan, his comrade of many decades who presented the eulogy at the Friday Jumua said of Cassiem “A courageous man of integrity, who stood for what he believed in, often times he stood alone. He was among the most principled people who have left the earth. He was a voice of conscience. He died as he lived, neither conquered nor subdued”. As Achmat Cassiem fondly used to say “every day is a good day to learn and every day is a good day to die.” Indeed, his friend, his Creator chose for him an honorable day, Friday and the month of Zil Hijja to return.
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