Thembile Ndabeni
It was the vultures and vampires from Pretoria killing people in order maintain the master-race-supremacy. They would do anything and everything to maintain the white-race supremacy.
They maimed, belittled, degraded, humiliated, and then killed the unarmed human being who was preaching about justice. The so-called Christians did all these evil things to him.
Just like almost every person of colour, Imam Abdullah Haron had humble beginnings, but he did not let them define him; on the contrary he defined them by realising a need to change them. Which is why it was easy for him to be fully involved in community activities especially in social welfare.
His services reached the poor and the needy. Even the course he embarked on to change the situation he and his people live under was peaceful. He knew his life was in danger. But he could not forsake his father and therefore had to take risks.
That was one of the outstanding acts about him that should be noted and be remembered, and his family respect him for that as well. He began to teach and in the process of teaching at a local Muslim school he befriended people whose friendship would be beneficial to him and his community. These were the same people who attended the Trotskyists/ Trotskyist tendency (Workerism) intellectual gatherings.
In turn they shared the ideas from the intellectual gatherings with him.
This was not about subscribing to the tendency (workerism) but listening, understand their thinking. As a result, these ideas furthered his understanding of socio-political circumstances of his community. After being influenced by ideas of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the Arab-Indian movements, he bought their books and extracted relevant articles for circulation purposes.
His friendship with Barney Desai who later became a member of the PAC connected him to it. As a result, the imam gave assistance to the PAC.
He also supported the activities of the ANC as well. He was also affected by the Group Areas Act as well.
As a person who was travelling, he met the members of the banned PAC and ANC beyond the borders of the country.
By killing the imam, the merciless killers, proponents, and advocates of white-supremacy caused a lot of damage to many people, family, faith-family, friends, communities, and the broader liberation struggle.
He died at the age of 45. On February 8, he would have been 100 years old. Yet if not all, most of the people who were involved in his killing lived far more than that age. But be that as it may he died as a martyr, and no one can change that.
Even if their racist successors and their surrogates can be in power tomorrow and celebrate, as they once said, why are their heroes not celebrated? They have an audacity to say the murderers are heroes. Yet people of colour do not see colour in terms of heroes. In fact, they are the ones who said and still say the likes of Bantustan/homeland leaders like Gatsha Buthelezi, Kaiser Matanzima, Lennox Sebe, Lucas Mangope and the rest were puppets of the apartheid regime.
People of colour said and are still saying the Tricameral Parliament was a farce. If you say the apartheid regime administration and its forces are heroes you are putting a stamp on the murder of Imam Haron, simple as that. Be that as it may, even if they are in power and celebrate the killers, those killers would only be martyrs to them.
Those murders created a widow, orphans, deprived other family members, faith-family, friends, and people in general a valuable person, and an asset. He did not die in vain, but a sacrifice to the liberation from the yoke of national oppression and economic exploitation of the people of colour.
He went through both physical and emotional torture. The physical torture is what he went through is clear and known suffered by people who fought for liberation, but its application differed. The emotional torture is humiliation, calling him names.
At the political front they deprived the liberation of a man that had a potential of uniting the progressive revolutionary tendencies, the ANC, PAC, and the Non-European Unity Movement (NEUM) since he had ties with them.
Perhaps the Black Consciousness movement as well. He also brought closer the two dominant religions in the Western Cape, Christianity, and Islam since he was revered in African townships as “Mfundisi” (reverend).
As much as death is hard to accept, it is worse with the one that did not happen naturally, but a deliberate act by sober and conscious people. Family, friends, communities, fellow-worshippers, and people in general should and must be proud of him.
His killers dirtied the Word of God and Christianity because they claimed to be Christians. They will go down in history as killers and he is remembered as a martyr.
* Ndabeni is a former history tutor at UWC and a former teacher at Bulumko Senior Secondary School in Khayelitsha.
Cape Times