Essop Goolam Pahad, who died this week at the age of 84, was at the forefront of many of the political developments that helped shape modern South Africa.
Born in the small town of Schweizer-Reneke in the then Western Transvaal — now North West — in 1939, Pahad and his family moved to Johannesburg in 1945.
They moved to a two-bedroom flat on Becker Street in Ferreirastown — a neighbourhood that was to prove vital in his, and his brothers’, development as political activists.
In those days, the neighbourhood was a hive of political activity, with the Johannesburg magistrate’s court, scene of many political trials, just up the road from their flat.
On either side of Orient House, the building in which their flat was situated, were the offices of the ANC and those of the Transvaal Indian Congress. Not far from there was Chancellor House, where the legal firm owned by Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo was based.
His parents, Goolam and Amina Pahad, were political activists who were often harassed by the police for their struggle activities.
It is not a surprise, therefore, that by the age of 19, Essop Pahad was already involved in the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress and that, at 23, he was arrested for organising an illegal strike.
It was at his father’s offices in Johannesburg in 1961 that he first met a young Thabo Mbeki, with whom he was to form a close political friendship that would partly define his life.
Mbeki and another ANC Youth League member, Sindiso Mfenyana, had been sent by Walter Sisulu to Pahad to discuss the formation of the African Students’ Association.
Pahad and his younger brother Aziz were students at Wits at the time and Mbeki was about to complete high school.
Three years later, Pahad was slapped with a five-year banning order for his political activities. He and Aziz had to leave the country for exile in December 1964, joining their father who had moved to London.
In London that he met up with Mbeki again and they were instrumental in the formation of the ANC Youth and Student Section in the UK. They sang together in the ANC Youth and Student choir that was used to publicise the struggle against apartheid in a number of European countries.
In the book The Thabo Mbeki I Know, one of the stories Pahad tells is how he was introduced to his wife, Meg, by Mbeki, who studied with her at the University of Sussex, and how he, Pahad, had introduced Mbeki to his wife, Zanele, with whom he had been at Wits before they went into exile.
As Mbeki’s role in the post-apartheid administration grew, so did Pahad’s. In 1999, when Mbeki became president, Pahad was appointed minister in the Presidency
Abroad, Pahad continued his studies, obtaining a master’s degree in African politics at Sussex.
During his stay in exile, Pahad rose through the ranks of both the ANC and the SACP — and ended up serving in the highest decision-making bodies of both.
He was regarded as one of the SACP’s leading intellectuals and represented it in a number of international communist forums, including on the board of the influential socialist journal World Marxist Review.
Pahad served for 10 years on the World Marxist Review editors’ council in Prague, in the then Czechoslovakia. When he stepped down from the position, he handed over to a young and upcoming communist intellectual, Jabulani “Mzala” Nxumalo.
In an interview with Mzala’s biographer, Mandla Radebe, Pahad said one of the reasons he recommended Mzala as his successor was the SACP’s desire at the time to remove the perception that its leading intellectual thinkers were white.
“It was important to demonstrate the party itself had young black intellectuals … who could make a serious contribution to the serious theoretical debates,” he said.
This desire to swell the ranks of the SACP with younger and black thinkers seems to have been one of Pahad’s preoccupations towards the end of his time in exile. Working with the likes of Mzala, he is said to have spent time identifying other potential young recruits from South Africa and among the exiled community.
After the unbanning of the SACP and the ANC in 1990, Pahad played an important role in the negotiation process on behalf of both parties.
When the new government was formed and Mbeki was appointed deputy president, Pahad served as his parliamentary counsellor. As Mbeki’s role in the post-apartheid administration grew, so did Pahad’s.
In 1999, when Mbeki became president, Pahad was appointed minister in the Presidency.
By the time he retired from politics, he had gained a reputation as Mbeki’s enforcer and was often accused of bullying the then president’s political opponents within and outside the ANC alliance.
He did have an abrasive approach to debates and was never one to shy away from a fight — especially if it was of an ideological nature. He made many enemies. His insistence that “the battle of ideas” should not be surrendered to the South African liberal school of thought and those who continued to defend aspects of the apartheid system saw him lobby corporate sponsors for a book project on Mbeki’s intellectual tradition. The book, written by Ronald Suresh Roberts, was criticised from both the right and left for its pro-Mbeki stance at a time when the president was embroiled in controversy over his views on HIV/Aids and his stance on the Zimbabwean crisis.
To the end, Pahad believed Mbeki was right in opposing “regime change” in Zimbabwe. “We all understood why a regime change in Zimbabwe would have devastating consequences for us in South Africa; they could do the same to us if they did not like our policies,” he wrote in The Thabo Mbeki I Know.
On HIV/Aids he believed that the former president was simply misunderstood and that his only fault was that he stood up to Big Pharma.
“My understanding — I might be wrong — was that when he began to delve deeper into the issue, he began to see that something was wrong with the science, not necessarily that HIV does not cause Aids — it does — but that there was this great push for antiretrovirals to be rolled out, and yet, people were not taking into account the broader social issues like nutrition, safe sex, single partners and other important factors,” Pahad wrote.
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